Hear more from Connie Walker in this week’s episode of Origin Stories.

About Origin Stories Have you ever wondered how your favorite movie, book, podcast, TV series, or documentary came to be? Each week, veteran journalist Matthew Shaer sits down with a writer or director to unpack the creation of a work close to their hearts (and ours). The conversations cover everything — the frustrations and the joys, the setbacks and the breakthroughs. Intimate and eye-opening, Origin Stories is the ultimate podcast for anyone curious about the creative process.

In this episode Connie Walker, the award-winning Cree journalist and host of Stolen, shares the backstory of Stolen: Surviving St. Michael's — her deeply personal investigation into Canada’s Indian residential school system. Reported while she was at Gimlet, then the biggest podcast company in the world, the series earned her both a Pulitzer Prize and a Peabody Award in the same year — the first podcaster to do so.

To Connie, all great audio documentaries begin with a central question:

“It doesn't have to be the question you end up asking the whole way through,” she explains. “But initially, you have to start with that.”

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An unexpected development in Ella Mae’s case raises questions around justice and closure for families like hers, and Kristina’s.

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As we go deeper into Kristina’s circle, a surprising connection takes us back to the start of our investigation, back to Sweetwater.

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Violence erupted at home not long before Kristina went missing. Could her disappearance be an act of retaliation?

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Jiní news, nunchucks, and a gruesome discovery near where Kristina Carrillo lived.

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The Stolen team is traveling back to the Navajo Nation this week to cover some important developments. The stories of Ella Mae Begay and Kristina Carrillo are still unfolding and we are continuing to report on their cases. We will be back next week.

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A terrible rumor leads to the discovery that another woman is missing in the Shiprock district. Why is barely anyone looking for her?

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The search for answers in Ella Mae’s disappearance leads her family to take matters into their own hands and raises questions about policing on the Navajo Nation.

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In a remote corner of the Navajo Nation, Ella Mae Begay lived alone in a little blue house. Until one summer night when she and her truck disappeared, never to be seen again.

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Violence. Retaliation. Disappearances. The Navajo Nation is 27,000 square miles of remote terrain with just over 200 tribal police officers. This season on Stolen, Connie Walker’s investigation into the cases of two missing women leads her on a search for justice in a place where people say you can get away with murder.

This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Fund for Indigenous Journalists: Reporting on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Two- Spirit and Transgender People (MMIWGT2S).

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More than five years after Jermain Charlo went missing, her ex-boyfriend Michael DeFrance is sentenced after being convicted of federal firearms offenses.

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