“I’m really tired, but the thing is, the cases just keep coming.”
This is Kelly Siegler talking about the work she does on her long-running series Cold Justice, and on her newest series Prosecuting Evil with Kelly Siegler.
In Cold Justice, Kelly and her team attempt to crack murder cases that have lingered for years without answers and closure.
“I feel like as long as we’re making progress on those cases, and we keep filing charges against the perpetrators, I just can’t quit,” says Siegler.
She carries this feeling into Prosecuting Evil, in which Siegler uses her courtroom expertise to revisit trials, explaining the intricacies involved in bringing murderers to justice.
Siegler’s resume in the courtroom is extensive. She served as a prosecutor in the busiest courthouse in the Texas. In that role, Siegler tried approximately 200 jury trials, including 68 murder cases in her 21 years on the job. Twenty of those were capital murder death penalty cases, with Siegler securing the death penalty in 19 of them.
Through her work on Cold Justice, Siegler has successfully helped bring about 56 arrests and 24 convictions.
Prosecuting Evil features several cases in which Siegler faced off with formidable defense attorneys, while working alongside the investigators and interacting with the victims’ families, revealing the tactics used to secure convictions.
A large part of the series features people that Siegler worked with on these cases many years ago, an element of the show that pleases her. “The cool part is that a lot of my old friends — who are retired now — I would call them and go, ‘hey, I know you don’t like doing the TV thing, but let’s talk about this case,’ and they would agree to do it.”
While Siegler enjoyed this part of the job, she admits that reaching out to the victims’ families was a bit more difficult. “Four of the ten cases that we explore in the series are ones that I handled and for those, I said, ‘I need to call the family. I had a relationship with them when they were going through the toughest time of their life.’ I wasn’t going to just let one of our producers make that call.”
When talking to the families about participating in the series, Siegler first told them that if they didn’t want to do it, she understood. “Then I explained why I think it’s important to show everyone these trails, and they understood and signed on.”
As for how Siegler feels revisiting these cases, she says, “At times it felt like it just happened, and then at times it felt like it was 100 years ago. And the families have kind of said the same thing. There were parts of it that you go, ‘wow, I forgot about that.’ But, yeah, at times it was odd in that I thought I was ready for it, but I realized I wasn’t quite ready for it, but even given that feeling, I knew that these stories needed to be told, so we did that.”
The ten cases featured in this season of Prosecuting Evil, with titles including “Theater of Law,” “The Wig Shop Murder,” and “We Let Evil In,” are all ‘really, really different,’ says Siegler. “I don’t think anybody’s going to have any complaint that any of them are similar, or boring, in any way. They are all very unique with a lot of twists and turns that will take viewers on a journey for sure.”
She points to the episode “We Let Evil In” as being particularly moving, saying, “It’s about a brutally horrible murder of this perfect girl who met up with a horrible boyfriend and wait to hear what he did to her. That one’s gonna break your heart.”
Throughout her tenure in the legal field, Siegler, who is respected for her doggedness in courtroom, says that she’s certain that the cases she’s worked on have had an effect on her.
“The thing is, I just don’t have time for fake shit, so yeah, these cases have changed me. You can’t live through the day after day stress, the trauma and the emotion, and seeing how these perfectly good people have these horrible things happen to them for nothing they’ve done wrong and not be affected by that. All of that shapes who you are and how you think about good and bad.”
Siegler says that what makes Prosecuting Evil different from a ‘lot of the other shows out there,’ is the trajectory that the cases go through — from the investigation through the trial, leaving nothing out.
“That’s the goal here,” says Siegler, “we want to make people understand how things work, especially when it comes to death penalty cases. I think people in the legal system get way too much criticism from people that don’t understand the process and we want to remedy that.”
And she adds, “I think when people watch this show, they’ll see these cases, and go, ‘dang, I thought I knew some things about how this would go, but there’s something I never knew.’ That’s the cool thing here — going behind the scenes with the investigators, the lawyers and the families. I just know that people will walk away after an episode and say, ‘That was exciting, and I really learned something.’
‘Prosecuting Evil with Kelly Siegler’ premieres Saturday, November 18th at 8 p.m. et/pt exclusively on Oxygen True Crime. Episodes will also be available for streaming on Peacock in early 2024.
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