The Burden

After thirty years of government impunity, the amnesty laws that helped bury Argentina’s horrific past are overturned. The trials against the junta commanders are reopened, and slowly, one after another, they are brought to justice. The trial against the pilots begins with Miriam and Enrique Piñeyro as key witnesses. It is the moment Miriam had been waiting for. The culmination of the inves...

It’s 1979, Miriam is free, but living in exile in New York City where she is surveilled by the junta. She’s among the few to survive imprisonment. In the years that follow, unidentified bodies start to wash up on the shores of Argentina. The bodies are swollen and bloated, but the perpetrators are unknown. Years later, democracy returns to Argentina, but still no one is held to account...

The lack of media attention on the TV story is disheartening, but Miriam has a bigger plan up her sleeve and redirects all her energy to the courts. With the help of Nobel Laureate Adolfo Pérez Equivel, who himself survived a death flight, they file a formal accusation against the pilots at the federal prosecutor’s office. The evidence is mounting, the Argentine Navy hands over thousands of...

One day, Miriam sits in her office when she gets a call from the stringer she hired to go look at one of the Skyvan planes which had been sold to a Florida businessman. The owner reveals that he has the flight logs dating back to the dictatorship. Those logs are a break. They could lead to the pilots of the death flights. With Enrique Pineyro’s help, who now joins the investigation, they dec...

Miriam and Giancarlo team up to search for the planes. She shows up at his tiny apartment every day after work at a TV station. They share pasta, cigarettes and scour the Internet for clues. One day, they stumble upon an obscure group of hobbyists who lead them to more details about the planes. Confident that they’re onto something, they try to enlist the help of a well-known Argentine pilot...

 It’s 1978. The World Cup, the most popular sporting event in the world, is hosted for the first time in Argentina. The Argentines are losing their minds with excitement. From a small cell in the middle of the city, Miriam can hear the cheers from the stadium a mile away. Her captors recruit her to work on the junta’s media propaganda machine; she must celebrate the very regime th...

An Italian photographer with a specialty in the horror humans do named Giancarlo Ceraudo shows up in Argentina to learn about the death flights during Argentina’s military dictatorship. He’s obsessed. Who are the pilots who flew these homicidal missions? He knows the planes will hold clues. To find them, he needs Miriam’s help. If she accepts, she will have to confront  pain...

It’s 1977, Argentina. The military has seized power. Miriam Lewin is 19 years old, an activist, and a target of a brutal dictatorship. She’ll spend two years in prison. But Miriam is one of the lucky ones..... Her fellow prisoners will be tossed from airplanes to their deaths on the infamous “death flights.” Three decades later, Miriam is a respected investigative journalis...

Miriam Lewin is one of Argentina’s leading journalists today. At 19 years old, she was kidnapped off the streets of Buenos Aires for her political activism and thrown into a concentration camp. Thousands of her fellow inmates were executed, tossed alive from a cargo plane into the ocean. Miriam, along with a handful of others, will survive the camp. Then as a journalist, she will wage a decades lo...

He was the detective who could get the confessions other cops couldn’t. Thus the nickname, Father Frank. It was Father Frank who rescued the prosecution’s case against Cal—until that conviction was overturned. And it was Father Frank who helped put away a 16-year-old for murder—until that conviction was also overturned. So how good was Father Frank really? The DA reopened his cases, and some even...

When we last heard from Calvin Buari his murder conviction had just been overturned. But he didn't have a place to live. A lot has changed in Cal's life since then --  for one thing, you won't believe where he lives now. And Cal has brand new priorities. He says he wants to be a "family guy." So Cal is looking for love after lock-up. Or maybe it's not exactly love he's looking for? Listen now and...

George Santos, the former Republican Congressman from New York, told a lot of stories about his life and his credentials. Many of which, it turns out, were not true.  Deep Cover Producer Amy Gaines McQuade, who grew up in Santos’ congressional district, speaks with insiders and experts to try to answer the question: Who is George Santos… really? Listen to Deep Cover: George Santos wherever you get...

Emel was a jailhouse legal maestro who had been locked up for 19 years for a murder he insisted he didn’t commit. Then he was forced to plead guilty to helping commit a murder in order to get home. But he clung to a letter. A letter that came from the real killer, and that one day might set him free. In body and mind. Empire on Blood is a production of Orbit Media in association with Signal Co. No...

In 1978, Pope John Paul I was found dead in his bed just 33 days after he was elected. The official story is that he suffered a fatal heart attack. But in the years since his death, some have claimed he was murdered to cover up crimes in the Vatican. The question of the Pope’s death has never been definitively answered, but there is one man who claims to know the truth. A man from one of New York...

In the aftermath of the court’s decision, Cal must adjust to a new reality. Where can a man like Cal find peace?  With a mother he hasn’t seen in a decade? In a heatless van in the dead of winter? His girlfriend has waited for Cal for a decade, but he can’t bring himself to sleep inside her house. Freedom is hard.  Empire on Blood is a production of Orbit Media in association with Signal Co. No1 S...

Cal’s last-shot hearing finally arrives: his new lawyers are in place, the new witness ready to testify. Turtle Man has called their written affidavits worthless “toilet paper.” He threatens to come out of retirement to make sure Cal stays locked away. But the Bronx DA has other ideas. Empire on Blood is a production of Orbit Media in association with Signal Co. No1 See omnystudio.com/listener for...

Joe Barry,Cal’s private investigator, hired in desperation when Cal’s case seems all but dead. Joe’s a hard drinking, Bible-toting P.I. who’s not afraid to lie in the service of the truth. When he connects with a witness who claims she has the answer, she gives Cal a sliver of hope. Empire on Blood is a production of Orbit Media in association with Signal Co. No1 See omnystudio.com/listener for pr...

Cal has been in prison for years as Dwight rules the Corner on Blood,which once belonged to Cal. Then Dwight “catches a body” and is sentenced to 25 years to life for murder. One day, Cal and Dwight, the man who testified against him, cross paths in a prison yard. Both Cal’s and Dwight’s worlds turn upside down, and alarmed prosecutors in the Bronx call in their ace. It’s all up to Father Frank no...

Calvin Buari’s former protégé in the Bronx crack trade, Dwight Robinson, loved and admired Cal. But then, feeling shunned and nursing his own ambitions, Dwight charts his own course — first with guns, then with something even more lethal: his testimony.  Empire on Blood is a production of Orbit Media in association with Signal Co. No1 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Calvin Buari, who once drove BMWs and dealt crack from a violent corner in the Bronx, has served 22 years of a life sentence. The charge: double homicide. Cal insists he’s no murderer —  someone else even confessed to the crime. Things are looking up for Cal when a legendary defense lawyer agrees to take on his final appeal. But then it all comes crashing down.  Empire on Blood is a production of...

Allen Karen was one of the best homicide prosecutors in the Bronx. He devotes his life to fighting crime – and to rescuing the 20 turtles that roam his bachelor pad. Karen uses his considerable skills – and his power to offer deals –  to land a conviction in a three year old case no other prosecutor even wanted to try. Calvin Buari is in his sights. And Turtle Man is determined to take him down. ...

The Burden: Empire on Blood is set in the Bronx, NY, in the early 90s, when two young drug dealers ruled an intersection known as “The Corner on Blood.” The boss, Calvin Buari, lived large. He and a protege swore they would build an empire on blood. Then the relationship frayed and the protege accused Calvin of a double homicide which he claimed he didn’t do. But did he?  Award-winning journalist...

Peter McIndoe is the founder of the Birds Aren't Real movement-slash-conspiracy theory. He is also the author of the book, Birds Aren't Real: The True Story of Mass Avian Murder and the Largest Surveillance Campaign in U.S. History . Peter doesn’t believe any of that, by the way, but he has good insights on the type of people who do. Plus, how public access to subway brakes, the inability to licen...

Justin Bonus talks to Steve and Dax about his journey from hiphop entrepreneur to nationally acclaimed attorney for the wrongfully convicted.  The Burden is a production of Orbit Media in association with Signal Co. No1 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Did Steve and Dax get it wrong? Is Louie Scarcella as bad as his portrayal in the media? Steve and Dax speak with several of Scarcella’s colleagues who share their admiration for him and stand by his work as a detective. The Burden is a production of Orbit Media in association with Signal Co. No1 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.