What's next after Violation? Introducing a new murder mystery, 'Beyond All Repair'

If you loved Violation, host Beth Schwartzapfel has a new recommendation for you. Hosted by Beth's esteemed colleague, Amory Sivertson, Beyond All Repair is a new podcast from WBUR & ZSP Media — coming soon right here in this feed.

It all started back in 2018 when Endless Thread — a WBUR podcast Amory co-hosts — did an episode about Shane — the youngest brother of the Correia family.

If you haven’t listened already, you’ll hear how Shane went from a turbulent childhood and a period of homelessness to a career as a lawyer. Shane also shared the story of his sister Sophia — who, as a young, pregnant newlywed, was accused of brutally murdering her mother-in-law.

To this day, Sophia swears she didn't do it. But she's never been believed.

This podcast is a result of Amory's three-year-long reinvestigation into a cold case that has ripped this family apart. It's a gripping story of a woman who wasn’t believed and a search for the truth that will leave you questioning everything.. and everyone.

Beyond All Repair premieres right here, in the Violation feed, on March 7 wherever you get your podcasts.

Beth: Hey everyone, I know I said that the last episode was the last episode of Violation, and it was, but I'm dropping in here one more time to leave you in good hands. WBUR, the station that we at The Marshall Project partnered with to bring you Violation, has a new series coming out that I think you're going to like.

And that will hopefully fill the Violation-sized hole in your heart. In some ways, it will literally fill the Violation-sized hole because you will be able to listen to it right here, in this feed. You don't have to go anywhere, or subscribe to anything else. This new show is a sibling he-said-she-said murder mystery called Beyond All Repair.

The reporter behind this series, Amory Sivertson, we go way back. And I've been hearing about this story for about as long as she's been working on it. So I wanted her to come here and share more about it with you. Hey, Amory.

Amory: Hey Beth. Thanks for having me in your feed.

B: You know, Amory, Violation would never have happened without you. You were our biggest cheerleader, and I am forever in your debt for that. I am honored to have Beyond All Repair in my feed.

A: Well, thank you. That means a lot to me. And, um, it was a dream come true to watch come together because part of the reason why we're chatting now is that the story that became Violation and the story that has now become Beyond All Repair, which will be the next thing in this feed, we were like talking to each other about these stories before we knew that they would end up becoming podcast series.

B: Yeah, I mean, I think there's always been a sort of mind meld, you know, you had the audio of expertise, I had the criminal justice background, and we would kind of just shoot the s*** about what we thought would be good podcasts what we thought would be good stories how we thought like The Marshall Project and WBUR could work well together. And it's just really cool to watch how this has evolved.

A: Yeah. Um, so for listeners who are very confused and are like, who the heck is this woman? I will just say for your sake, Hello, I'm Amory Sivertson! I make podcasts at WBUR and I typically co-host a show called Endless Thread. And the story that is Beyond All Repair actually sprung out of an episode of Endless Thread. I'm not sure if you knew that, Beth. Did you know that?

B: I didn't know it until I listened to your first episode today.

A: Okay, so we talked to, for Endless Thread, my co-host Ben Brock Johnson and I talked to a guy named Shane, and we were talking to Shane about his experience with homelessness when he was a teenager, shortly before he graduated from high school.

[Shane: I was angry and pissed and sad, and I only had until morning when, when school started for like some normalcy.]

A: And Shane had this kind of timeline of trauma in his upbringing, and just one of the notches along that timeline had to do with something that happened involving two of his siblings, and in particular his sister, who, when he was 13 years old, she was accused of murder. And was charged with murder.

[Shane: I remember like going into the lunchroom and like this group of kids is like coming toward me and, like, the kid that I don't like is like, "So is it true that your sister killed someone?"]

A: And we didn't go into the details really when we were talking to Shane to make that Endless Thread episode because it was, again, just one part of his story. But he reached back out to me a few years later in 2021 and said, Hey, you remember my sister? She wants to tell her story and, you know, be believed and try to change her life.

[Sophia: The only thing I can do because I'm at my bottom is stand up for myself because I have zero expectations that anyone else can do it for me.]

A: Before I ever talked to this woman on the record, Shane's sister on the record, I wanted to talk to you about it immediately. Do you remember that phone call?

B: Oh, I remember it so well. I think it was a beautiful sunny Saturday and I was working in my garden and I had you in my ear and we were talking while I was weeding and I remember thinking, holy shit, this story, it just has so many layers. It's just every time you think it's done, you find out there's more to it.

A: Yeah, and you were catching me up on the Jacob Wideman story because you had already been working on that and it did just feel like one of these moments where I just felt really lucky to have someone that I could talk to, that we could talk together about our stories and kind of nerd out together.

B: Totally. Ditto. Right back at you. So I described Beyond All Repair as a sibling, he-said-she-said murder mystery, but tell me about the central figure. Her name's Sophia.

A: Yes, so Sophia is Shane's sister, and in 2002, when she was 23 years old, she was newly married, she was six months pregnant at the time, and her mother-in-law, is brutally murdered. She's bludgeoned to death with fireplace tongs, and Sophia, just a couple days later, is arrested for the murder. And she finds out that it is one of her brothers, not Shane, the youngest, that we did the episode of Endless Thread about, but another brother named Sean, who has accused her of the murder.

[Sean: The person kind of took, it was like, stalking off of their face. It turned out to be my sister.]

A: And Sophia, you know, has always said that she did not commit this murder, but she is arrested, she is tried, she gives birth to a son in jail, and she hasn't seen him since. So here we are. Twenty two years later, she's now in her mid forties, she is currently in hiding, and she's been talking to me for about three years and telling me her side of the story.

Her goal is to get justice for her late mother-in-law. And really, she wants to meet her son. She wants to meet this son that she hasn't seen since the day that he was born.

[Sophia: And I do not want another one of his birthdays to go by without at least having an image of me and hearing the truth about what I'm sure he's read and heard about his entire life.]

B: Sounded to me like you were careful to say she says she didn't do it. What do you think? Did she do it?

A: Oh, Beth, Beth, Beth, Beth, Beth. You're going to have to listen to Beyond All Repair to find out. What I can say is, I know where I land on what happened. And Shane, who I mentioned in the beginning from that episode of Endless Thread, he has become a part of this too. And will make an appearance throughout the series because Shane is a lawyer now.

He went from, you know, being unhoused to now being a lawyer. And now he has gone through the case file, not with me, but kind of adjacent to me. And I've gotten to hear, and the listener will get to hear, his thoughts on the case as both Sophia's brother and Sean's brother, the person who accused Sophia, and as a lawyer.

[Shane: Even if she committed murder, I know that I love my sister, but she needs to also be held accountable if she committed murder.]

A: He also comes to a conclusion and lands in a place at the end of the series about, about what actually happened.

B: Thank you and congratulations to you on Beyond All Repair. I'm so excited to hear it. I'm so excited for our listeners to hear it and I just want to tell our listeners to stay subscribed to Violation to hear Beyond All Repair in just a few weeks. Amory, can you believe it's just a few weeks? You ready?

A: Woooo, yeah. Well, to that point, we got the trailer first. That's February 22nd. So that'll be the first thing that people get to hear. And then we'll drop episodes one and two, uh, together on March 7th.

B: Stay tuned people.

A: Thanks, Beth.

B: My pleasure.