Tamron Hall’s crime series features victims of ‘someone they knew’

“You always wonder when you see these stories, ‘How did this happen?’” asks Tamron Hall. “Did this person not see any other alternative?”

Hall tells us about her recent crime series on Court TV, and that is the query the Emmy Award-winning talk show host tries to reply—how someone may very well be compelled to harm someone they know.

The series, which debuted March 6, tackles stories with a singular connection: The victim knew her killer. The killer was driven by common emotions that were beyond his control, including jealousy and greed. Hall tells ESSENCE that when reporting on these types of cases on the show, she often thinks about family members like her friends.

“At any given time, any one of us could fall in love or befriend another adult who doesn’t mean us any good,” she says. “In this show, the person is in the house. It’s not the person lurking in the garage. It’s level one of your house. It’s so fascinating and eye-opening.”

She also thinks about her sister, Renate. She was murdered in 2004 and was a survivor of domestic violence. The only person of interest in her case was someone she knew, and that person was not charged in her death. Rather than dwell on whether justice could be served, Hall has motivated herself to focus on the stories of people like Renate, first through her long-running series , and now through .

“I never want anyone to believe that these shows have no purpose,” she says. “They’re not only for us to sit down on Sundays and switch on the TV and be delighted by another person’s tragedy. Not in any respect. All of these stories have something in common, even in my sister’s case, if you ask yourself,

We spoke with Hall about this latest project, her “deeply personal” connection to the causes she champions, and the way she keeps Renate in mind as she pursues her goals and elevates the stories of black women.

BEING: We all know you as a chat show host. But up to now you hosted on ID and now you do Court TV. Why are these exciting projects necessary so that you can do?

Tamron Hall: I feel that is part of the explanation I became a journalist, truthfully. It’s about giving people the chance to inform their stories. And those stories occur all too often, especially if you’re a reporter, and I started off, a reporter who covered crime, and it was connected to tragedy; but they will be inspiring and galvanizing at the identical time, if you see people fighting for justice for his or her families. They can be enlightening. When people ask me why I feel these crime shows have been on for six seasons or are so popular, I feel people think, is that me? Is that somebody I do know or love? I feel these shows hit a nerve in that way.

I personally have spoken to ESSENCE before concerning the loss of my sister. Of course it became deeply personal, those kinds of stories. But from the very starting of my journalism profession I felt that with the ability to sit down with people and allow them to speak about their journey, the great, the bad and the sad, was a responsibility I didn’t take flippantly. That’s why I’ve enjoyed doing these kinds of shows over time.

As someone who has lost someone in a way much like the people portrayed in , do these cases ever fire up emotions for you? Is this something you’ve been capable of work through over time?

I do not think you may ever recover from the loss of a member of the family, and positively not one which’s unsolved. Today is the anniversary of my dad’s death. My dad died after contracting pneumonia. It doesn’t go away. He would have been 92 today… Losing a member of the family never leaves you. What makes my sister’s loss something that pertains to my work is that it’s an unsolved crime. And it is a case where I do know her past was connected to her being a victim of domestic violence. So for me, doing a show like this definitely has a private connection. Absolutely, once I see a story just like the ones we cover, where the suspect is someone he knew, or the person convicted is someone he knew, it hits an emotional chord since the only person of interest in my sister’s case is someone she knew.

I read that you recognize who this person is and also you usually are not able to confront them, and that you simply sometimes feel guilty to your sister’s death. Can you speak about that?

I’m not a vigilante, so I’m not able to confront anyone. I even have to undergo the justice system like anyone else, and sometimes it really works and sometimes, as we all know as African Americans, it fails. I also are not looking for to consult with an individual of interest. The police investigated and we were told that on the time they couldn’t do anything concerning the allegations. There was not enough evidence. So for me to report this story or speak about it under the pretext of, “Will there be justice?” didn’t serve me. What helped me was to talk up, as my sister’s children do, on behalf of victims of domestic violence. That is something that’s empowering and something that could make a difference.

When I speak about guilt, it comes from the experience she went through as a victim of domestic violence. It was an experience my family didn’t know how one can take care of. We didn’t know what to say. We asked, inappropriately, unconsciously, “Why can you just leave?” But over time we learned that that is not the way you reply to or help victims of domestic violence. After public incidents where victims were asked that query, we now know higher and I hope we are going to do higher. So I take advantage of my platform to say, “How can we help? What should we say?” These are things I didn’t know once I lost my sister, but I do know now. And we speak about this stuff with

The show is just not meant to make you afraid of people you recognize, it is not meant to make you distrust them, nevertheless it’s a chance to learn through the Court TV archives and the cases, the video footage, even the interviews that they have on file, how these situations unfolded. Because it’s mind-blowing that in the future someone could be a friend and the subsequent day they could be a murderer.

What’s next? And how do you realize your dreams that you simply managed to comprehend along with your sister in mind?

My sister was very ambitious. We’re each Virgos. Definitely an ambitious person. And for me, the subsequent book within the series is Jordan Manning, the crime reporter. The first book was, and now I’m in the center of writing the second book within the series. I used to be really inspired by the Nancy Drew books in my profession and life, and I desired to create this character. I didn’t realize that there wasn’t a black female crime reporter within the fiction world. So starting the series, I learned a lot about writing, the industry, the business of buying books, and the content that’s or is not available for black women to see themselves. So I created this character hoping that black women would see themselves and her journey. They won’t see themselves as a crime reporter, but in several features of her life: profession, family, love, and wanting to assist.

We’re now in our third season of the talk show and we just… chosen for seasons 4 and five. It was a whirlwind. When we began the show, me and Wendy [Williams] We were the one single hosts who were creating, producing and hosting shows with Black women. Now, looking back on it and knowing that we’re in our third season and we have managed to proceed, with an outstanding team, it’s all very surreal. I hope that not only would my sister be proud, but that ladies who I’ll never meet are proud that they cheered me on and that I worked hard to do right by Black women within the sense that we’re not a monolith. We don’t all think the identical, we do not all dress the identical, we do not all do the identical, but I feel all of us share a standard goal of showing what we’re capable of in order that we’re not devalued, as we frequently are.