Moment of Truth: The Murder of Michael Jordan's Father

James Jordan, the father of basketball legend Michael Jordan, was found tragically murdered in the middle of swamp just days after his 57th birthday in 1993. There were many mysterious circumstances surrounding his death, but the investigation and trial were deemed a success, resulting in the conviction of two teenage boys.

But why does one of the convicted still proclaim his innocence almost 30 years later?

We are joined by award-winning director and producer of the soon to be released docu-series Moment of Truth, Matthew Perniciaro. The five-part series uses never-before-seen archive footage to tell the story behind the murder of James Jordan. It also tackles police corruption in Robeson County, North Carolina, and how that may have influenced the murder investigation.

Matthew aims to give us insights into how Michael dealt with his father's death, and what made this crime so hard to solve. He explains what motivated him to make Moment of Truth, and the challenges he faced along the way.

Moment of Truth premieres on IMDb TV, Amazon’s premium free streaming service, on April 2nd.

“Despite the fact that we think we’ve made so much progress as a society and as a culture, this just shows how far we still have to go.” - Matthew Perniciaro

Time Stamps:

00:09 - The trailer for Moment of Truth.
03:15 - When and where the docu-series will be released.
04:10 - What the series is about.
06:41 - Who James Jordan was and how supportive he was of his kids.
08:48 - The mysteries surrounding James’s whereabouts before his death.
10:15 - The cross-county search and the difficulties with identifying his body.
11:43 - The acceptance of the suspects' guilt at the time.
14:21 - How Michael Jordan was affected by his father's death.
15:52 - Why Michael and his family didn’t want to do an interview for the film.
18:10 - The history of police corruption in Robeson County, NC.
25:04 - The public disbelief surrounding the narrative of the case.
32:57 - The issues with the police interrogations of the suspects.
37:24 - How the idea to make the docu-series came about.
40:57 - How Covid disrupted the filming process.
45:24 - What Matthew's experiences were in directing the series.
48:05 - The difference between being a producer and an executive producer.
50:45 - What Matthew's goals are when he chooses which films to produce.
57:17 - The different projects he is now working on.  

Resources:

Moment of Truth (2021)
Disclosure (1994)
The Truffle Hunters (2020)
The Fight (2020)
Bow and Arrow Entertainment
Sundance Film Festival
Alamo Pictures

Connect with Matthew Perniciaro:

LinkedIn

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Transcript for Factual America Episode 54 - Moment of Truth: The Murder of Michael Jordan's Father

Matthew Perniciaro 0:00
Hi, my name is Matthew Perniciaro and I'm the co-director and executive producer of Moment of Truth.

Speaker 1 0:08
They were as close as any father and son could hope to be.

Speaker 2 0:11
I'm lucky to be a part of what he is, what he stands for and what he is doing right now.

Speaker 3 0:15
This is the father of the most famous athlete on the planet, Michael Jordan. And on his 57th birthday, he was an unidentified dead man in the swamp in the middle of nowhere.

Speaker 4 0:27
The body has been positively identified as Mr. James Jordan.

Speaker 17 0:31
In North Carolina, you probably couldn't find a more famous family than the Jordans.

Speaker 12 0:37
There was immense pressure to solve this case.

Unknown Speaker 0:40
Police have charged 18 year old Daniel Green and 18 year old Larry Demary with first degree murder.

Speaker 5 0:45
They were paraded into the courthouse for the cameras. I mean, it looked like you were broadcasting the Superbowl out there in the parking lot.

Speaker 6 0:52
Anything you want to say to the Jordan family?

Speaker 7 0:54
I didn't kill him.

Speaker 8 0:55
Authorities say Jordan died of a single gunshot wound to the chest. But no blood was found in the car.

Speaker 9 1:00
It couldn't have happened as described.

Speaker 10 1:02
They did not find a bullet hole in the chest area of the shirt. And how is it suddenly there when this case comes to trial?

Speaker 11 1:09
1I'm trying to stop sort of corruption, but maybe I shouldn't.

Speaker 12 1:14
This case was complicated from the very beginning. There had been a history of racial injustice and law enforcment corruption in Robeson county.

It is not uncommon in Robeson county for innocent people to be charged just to close a case.

The jury didn't hear all the facts.

Unknown Speaker 1:30
There were people involved who didn't want information revealed.

Unknown Speaker 1:33
So they start hitting them against each other.

Unknown Speaker 1:37
I'm starting to believe he's telling the truth. You shot and killed Mr. Jordan.

Speaker 17 1:42
He's wearing the dead man's jewelry. It doesn't look good.

Speaker 8 1:45
Both of us kind of like pause. And again.

Speaker 9 1:48
There is still so many lingering mysteries to this case.

The hardest part is watching the people that you love suffer because they know that you 're innocent. In this country we have an expectaion that freedom is a right. It is not. Freedom is a privilege. I'm fighting for my freedom.

Speaker 17 2:03
It's finally time that someone tells the truth.

Matthew 2:12
That is a trailer from the soon to be released docu-series Moment of Truth. And this is Factual America. We're brought to you by Alamo pictures, a London based production company making documentaries about America for international audiences. I'm your host, Matthew Sherwood, and today we're talking about James Jordan senior, Michael Jordan's father, who was tragically murdered in 1993, under mysterious circumstances. And talking to us about this, in arguably North Carolina's most notorious county is Matthew Perniciaro, the award winning director and producer of Moment of Truth. So, Matthew, welcome to Factual America.

Matthew Perniciaro 2:50
Thank you for having me.

Matthew 2:51
It's great to have you on. How are things with you?

Matthew Perniciaro 2:55
Things are good. You know, we are very excited to have this series be releasing on April 2. So it's only a short while away and excited for people to see what we've been up to for the past few years.

Matthew 3:07
Okay, well, excellent. Well, as you say, and as our listeners and viewers have heard or seen, Moment of Truth, as you said, releasing on April 2 on IMDB TV, Amazon's Premium free streaming service. And so congratulations on this finally being released. And is this your feature length, or series directorial debut?

Matthew Perniciaro 3:32
It is. I've produced many documentaries throughout my career, I've been producing for about almost 20 years. And I've directed a lot of short form documentary projects that we've done in the past. But this is my first long form series or feature debut. So I'm very excited about it.

Matthew 3:52
Well, that is exciting. And congratulations again. And thanks for coming on. So this is one of those Moment of Truth. You don't necessarily know exactly what it's about just from the title. So maybe you can tell our listeners what this series is about?

Matthew Perniciaro 4:09
Sure. Moment of Truth is about the murder of James Jordan. And the investigation and trial afterwards that resulted in the conviction of two teenage boys, Larry Demary and Daniel Green. And we tried to take a complete 360 degree view of the case presenting all of the facts in a way that I don't believe have ever been presented before. Using footage that has not been seen in decades or never before publicly, to create kind of almost like a trial itself. The arguments that have existed around this case as to what what transpired. This is a case that has been shrouded in a lot of mystery for decades and conspiracy theory. And well, those are interesting on one level, our true interest in this story was to get to the truth of what actually happened and how this occurred. Because there's a lot of evidence that took place at trial and has come out since that raises questions about what we were all told 28 years ago.

Matthew 5:22
I think you've already now told us why this is doc worthy. I mean, it definitely was a heinous crime. Anyone who, I mean, I was living in the States then. You did describe these mysterious circumstances. And, you know, I'm always wary of we don't have any spoiler alerts here, but you know, Daniel Green in particular, one of the teenage boys you mentioned has professed his innocence of the murder. That's fair enough to say, I think and...

Matthew Perniciaro 5:58
Daniel's, you know, proclaimed his innocence since the day he was arrested. You know, Larry, who's the other teenager who was charged with the case, charged with crime, he took a plea deal and admitted his guilt as part of that plea deal. But Daniel's maintained his innocence for, you know, nearly 28 years.

Matthew 6:21
Well, let's start with, I mean, the victim here. Maybe tell us a little something about James Jordan senior. Because a lot of people will have seen The Last Dance recently. And certainly for those of us who remember Michael Jordan's career, his dad played quite prominently certainly there in the early days.

Yeah, James was an unbelievable supporter of his children and their ambitions. And, you know, we had found this one amazing piece of archival footage, and we could talk a little bit about how we work with archival in this series, later on, but that talks about, you know, James and Delores Jordan were fixtures at every North Carolina basketball game. And in the state of North Carolina, the Jordan family was immensely celebrated. Obviously, Michael is, you know, probably one of the most, if not the most famous people to ever come from the state of North Carolina. But James was a beloved father, and a beloved individual in the community. And it was a great loss, I think, not just for his family, but for the community. And it was very shocking that this crime could take place in North Carolina.

Some more will come out, from both sides here of this conversation. I lived in North Carolina for the better part of six years. In the 80s and early 90s. So I am aware of a lot of people in North Carolina, who almost saw Michael Jordan as godlike, really. You know, as even a potential answer to problems. People, you know, every person who had a very legitimate reasonable charitable thing that were working on would be - hey, what if we write to Michael Jordan, you know. That was part of it. So he is beloved, even those who didn't necessarily go to the same university he went to. But I think, what I found interesting, I mean there's many things that are interesting, what reminded me of, and I'm not making any allegations here. But there's these mysterious circumstances about his murder. You don't expect everyday the greatest of all time basketball player, his dad to be murdered. But, you know, he's missing for weeks, and it's never reported. And he's, I think he misses his birthday, doesn't he? And it's just, it's kind of, that's, that adds to the mystery, doesn't it?

Matthew Perniciaro 8:48
I think a lot of things added to the mystery. You know, I think because of the high profile nature of the Jordan family, you know, there was an immediate sensitivity to this. But I think also James, you know, he traveled a lot. You know, he went around a lot. And then you have to remember this is, email in 1983, email is in its early stages, you know, cell phones are in their early stages, it was not common place for us to be connected, day in day out, like we are now. And it was not uncommon for him to go on a golfing trip with his friends and not be in touch with anyone for a week or two. You know, it was these, so it didn't raise any immediate concerns. But when he started not showing up for some previously planned events, the family started, I believe it was like a security detail started looking into potentially what was going on. A public investigation was not opened at that time. But Michael's you know, team started looking into it. When the car was found, when his car was found abandoned, that is when the public you know, the law enforcement search took place in full.

Matthew 9:59
Yeah. And than even when he was first found, his body found, unfortunately, he was a John Doe, wasn't he? I mean, they didn't even realize that that was Michael Jordan's father.

Matthew Perniciaro 10:11
They didn't. You know, I think there was a lot of confusion in those early days of the case, because it was very complicated. You know, his body was found in South Carolina, Robeson County, which is where the crime took place, is right on the border of North Carolina, the southern border of North Carolina and South Carolina. So James's body was found in South Carolina. And the car was found, not in Robeson County, where the crime took place, in a different County. So ultimately, so you know, it's interesting that they put the pieces together on it, you know, within a matter of weeks. I think, you know, when you look at the degree of complication around the case - you had two state level enforcement, you know, law enforcement agencies, and you had multiple county law enforcement agencies, all kind of sharing and pooling information and trying to put together all the different aspects of what could have transpired here. And that ultimately led to the interrogation and the arrest of Daniel and Larry.

Matthew 11:13
Indeed. Probably will be getting more into this later as well. But, they very quickly zero in on them. And the thing is, if you do a quick search on this on the internet, or whatever, pretty much everything gets presented as it's pretty, pretty black and white. These teenagers did it. Story's done, isn't it? I mean, there doesn't seem to be, on the surface immediately, do you see any, get any wind of controversy really?

Matthew Perniciaro 11:41
Yeah, I think that's a fair statement. You know, the public story was the story that the national media adopted very quickly. And it was that this was a robbery, or a carjacking that went wrong. And, you know, that these, you know, the statements were made that these two boys so you know, James Jordan, was driving back from Wilmington, which is where the Jordan family's from, to their home in Charlotte, you know, which is about a three hour three and a half hour drive or so. And had gotten tired, it was late at night and pulled over off the side of the highway. And these two young young men, you know, tried to attempt to rob him and it went wrong, and they shot him. In cold blood. And that was the public story. I think one of the things you have to look at is, even at the time, there were a lot of questions about that story. And what those questions ultimately resulted in has been decades of conspiracy theories. And we know when things don't add up in a criminal case, despite the public narrative that you're being told, a lot of times, it does lead to these kind of conspiracy theory, nature, you know, things emerging, you know, and ultimately, there were things that didn't add up. But it's just not the things that everyone thought they were. Everyone thought, Oh, this must be tied to some larger narrative. And you know, and series, like The Last Dance have talked about this already. And, you know, that was not, diving into the conspiracy nature of this was not our intention here, our intention was to discover the truth of what transpired and how that was obscured. But, you know, it did give birth to all these theories and rumors. And that's because a lot of things even at the time didn't add up and make sense. It's just not what people thought it was, those things weren't adding up because of something different.

Matthew 13:49
Well, and I want to talk some more about that, if we may. But what, one last thing about the Jordans on this one is that, I thought it was interesting, I don't know. I'm a bit slow. But I hadn't really put two and two together, looking back on that time. But you kind of even one of the final episodes, you talked about how this affected Michael Jordan. And I never even really necessarily tied it directly to his retirement and picking up baseball and that era of his career.

Matthew Perniciaro 14:21
Yeah, I think the Jordan family this is the greatest loss of their lives. If that happens to anyone, and I think because you know, that changes you in a way. And I think for us, you know, in approaching this story, we always kept that in mind. You know, and we wanted to approach this with a great sensitivity. This is the patriarch of their family and he was taken away from them in cold blood, you know, in a matter of moments. And you have to kind of look at the humanity of those situations and treat them with great respect. And, you know, I do believe that Michael's retirement shortly thereafter James's murder, whether it was conscious or subconscious, we'll never know. But he knew his favorite sport was baseball. He wanted to be a baseball player himself, and he loved when his kids played baseball. So I think, you know, one of the journalists that we interviewed made that connection, and I think that there's, you know, something to look at there.

Matthew 15:24
Yeah. As you said, I think you mentioned James Jordan almost went Pro is a baseball player. And I think as you, I mean, your series says at the end, I have watched the whole thing, you know, you have reached out to the Jordans. And they've always been, I mean, very private about this. And in a very, I would say, dignified way, to be honest about the whole affair. So, unsurprisingly, they didn't say yes, let's go on camera or anything?

Matthew Perniciaro 15:52
Of course, yeah, we felt you know, I mean, my partner in this series is Capitol Broadcasting Company, which owns WRAL, which is one of the largest news networks in North Carolina and the largest in triangle area, which obviously covers Chapel Hill and the University of North Carolina. So they've been covering Michael, as a athlete since the late 70s, early 80s. And there's a long standing, you know, respect between everyone involved. And out of that respect, we wanted to offer the opportunity to say we understand that this is difficult, and we understand that, why you most likely will not want to, but if you wanted to participate and comment, we would love to talk to you about it. Michael and the family have only talked about this a handful of times over the past three decades. So they, through spokesperson, respectfully declined to participate in an interview and we've respected those wishes and, you know, like I said, they're treating this with a degree of respect. It's such a heinous crime. It's such a sad situation for everyone involved, and such a great degree of loss. That was the only way you could honor this story was treating it with respect.

Matthew 17:08
Okay. And it's not the only tragedy, I think, as we find out, as we watch this series. So actually, I'm going to say this, why don't we take an early break? And we'll be right back with Matthew Perniciaro, director and producer of Moment of Truth.

Factual America midroll 17:25
You're listening to Factual America. Subscribe to our mailing list or follow us on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter at Alamo pictures to keep up to date with new releases or upcoming shows. Check out the show notes to learn more about the program, our guests and the team behind the production. Now back to Factual America.

Matthew 17:44
Welcome back to Factual America. I'm here with director and producer Matthew Perniciaro. His docu-series is Moment of Truth, releasing on April 2, IMDb TV, the premium free streaming service from Amazon. Matthew, this is gonna sound like a cliche, because we're talking about a documentary, but one of the main subjects is also Robeson County, isn't it?

Matthew Perniciaro 18:09
That's very true. In telling this story, I don't believe you could tell the story correctly without telling the story of Robeson County, which is the county where the crime took place. It is a long fractured history of violence, racial injustice, and corruption in law enforcement. Which, you know, like a lot of times in the documentary space, and when a lot of filmmakers are looking at telling stories in the true crime, space and documentaries, specifically, a lot of assumptions are made. With this case, due to the nature of it taking place so long ago, a lot of the assumptions that one might have made 25-30 years ago have come to pass. And you know, many of the, the sheriff's department was embroiled in a scandal where a lot of this corruption that had long plagued the department was brought to light by the district attorney's office. And many, many sheriffs and deputies were charged in that, which is called Operation Tarnished Badge. So knowing that, you know, we weren't having to make leaps on a lot of the assumptions we were making. They were based in fact, which is a really interesting perspective when you know, when you're telling stories such as this.

Matthew 19:28
Yeah, I think so. I mean, as you discussed, it's, is it still, it's at least one of the poorest counties in North Carolina, if it's not the poorest.

Matthew Perniciaro 19:41
I think one of the. I think it, you know, it really depends on the year, that five year period. But it's traditionally, you know, one of the poor counties in the country.

Matthew 19:52
Yeah, I mean, eastern North Carolina is traditionally the poorer part of the state and so it's certainly, and its south, southeast. Majority Native American, which is an interesting element to this, the Lumbee Indians, I know about, guess the third of the population is white, and the quarter is African American and it had a long, well, like a lot of counties in the American South, would have had a, had a troubled history. Specifically even more so than others. And then this whole thing about the police force. Now I can, I don't try to personalize these sort of interviews, but I can now speak personally on this. I used to drive through Robeson County on a regular basis. And I wasn't especially a very religious man at the time. But I would pray that every time I drive through there that I would not get stopped. Because we all knew. I mean, it was even before operation tarnished shield or whatever it's called, tarnished badge. I mean, you did not want to get stopped in Robeson County. So I would be on I-95. I would, whatever speed limit I was doing, legal or not, officiall legal. But, you know, as soon as you hit the county line, I would go under the speed limit. You know. And people knew that, it was sort of, I think you talk about it very well, I mean, it so happens to be, what, almost exactly halfway between sort of South Florida and New York, on cocaine alley, which is really I-95. So the crack, the cocaine, the crack cocaine epidemic really hit Robeson county hard. And so I don't think it's any, you know, there's no, as you say, it's a very interesting place to be to do a true crime doc, isn't it? Not only have these suspicions, but it's pretty much all been confirmed.

Matthew Perniciaro 21:51
Much of it has, much of it has. And it is. I believe, you know, one could do a whole documentary series just on the history of Robeson County. And, you know, what we are approached this and really looking at all the facts. And once we looked at all the archival material and the interviews, we knew that the history of Robeson County, telling the history of Robeson County was going to be such an important part of the story. Which is also why we really fought creatively, to put that in the earlier parts of the story. Because, you know, as you said, you know Robeson County. I grew up in North Carolina, I know Robeson County. And I know that it's not a place that you would want to ever pull your car over to the side of the road, or that you would want to get pulled over by law enforcement because of that history. But we know that audiences don't have that view and that insight into the county. So we wanted to place it very early in the series, because it does kind of inform your understanding of everything that has transpired up until that point and will transpire from that point on. And, you know, it is an immensely fractured place. It's one of the, you know, most violent places, especially at that period of time, that you can think of. You know, the highest murder rate in the state. And, you know, one of the editor, former editor of the Robertsonian newspaper, Donnie Douglas says it was just a bit like the Wild West, you know. And I think that that's a fair, you know, comparison for how things were at that period of time. The drug business taking control. Certain deputies, not everyone by any means, but certain members of law enforcement were involved in that trade. And certain people that come into the play in this story, surrounding this case, were involved in that trade. So what we've always wanted to do from the beginning is use the crime and the killing of James Jordan, as kind of a gateway into a larger conversation about corruption in law enforcement, and systemic racism in the criminal justice system, which is really kind of embodied by this crime taking place in this county. Had it taken place in a different County in North Carolina, if it had taken place in Raleigh, where I grew up or Charlotte, where the Jordan family lived, it might have been a very different situation. We don't know. We can hypothesize about that. But specifically taking place in Robeson County, led to information being in question because of how certain facts were treated, and how certain, you know, elements were given, of evidence were given from law enforcement to the prosecution. You know, I think the prosecution tried, they tried the evidence that they were given. I think the question is the root of that evidence.

Matthew 24:42
Yeah, as you said, it also further leads to this other sort of conspiracy that's been out there about the mystery around James Jordan's death and you know, all kinds of crazy stuff that people had ideas about maybe being behind this. But as you said previously, anytime you start having these, things that just don't add up, then just people's minds will run wild with them.

Matthew Perniciaro 25:03
And that's exactly what happened. Right? And we saw that, you know, and we use some articles and some, you know, information that was really strolling around the time, it happened almost immediately. I mean, almost immediately, people were like, something must be happening here. And it's my belief, having spent a lot of time with this story and with this case, that that's because of these things that didn't add up. And the story of why those things didn't add up, is the part of this that has never been told. And so that's part of what really motivated us was bringing those elements to light, so people could have a full understanding of what happened.

Matthew 25:41
Okay. And I think this obviously, then takes us to the other big main, one of the main subjects of this film, is obviously Daniel Green. Now, again, I'm sure you'll economize a bit in terms of what you share, because we want, you know, you want people to see the film and for the film to speak, the series to speak for itself. But is it fair enough to just say that things are not as they have necessarily been reported. And he himself is a victim of Robeson County?

Matthew Perniciaro 26:14
What I would say is, the way we present this series, we wanted to build it almost like a trial itself. And we were very fortunate, you know, because of some amazing work that had been done, you know, by the news team at WRAL, starting in the 90s. They're really the kind of authority on tracking this case, really, you know, for a long period of time. We had the ability to have materials to work with, that no one has ever had access to before. And I think, if you look at the approach to that, it's really about giving a voice to Daniel. Because Daniel has not had a voice in this conversation, you know. One, this case was not reported on nationally, nearly as much as it was in the state of North Carolina. And here's a person who's maintained his innocence for almost, you know, 30 years. And, you know, that is in many cases, but especially ones that are as high profile as this, you would think that would be a bigger national news story, with a lot of the social change. And as we reevaluate so many things that were handled improperly in the past, for a variety of reasons, that story has not gotten to a place of national, large national attention. What I always kind of say, when asked this question is, I am not a judge, and I'm not a jury and I am not an attorney, you know. Because it is not our job as documentarians, I believe, to kind of make that determination. At the law, it's our job to be the vehicle to present all the facts and allow the audience and the viewer to come to their own beliefs as to what happened. I think, where I ended up personally, and I am comfortable in saying this, is I believe there's enough question of fact that a new hearing is something that should be granted. Because there is enough evidence, and there are enough things in question as opposed to what was presented, or in some of the things that were not even allowed to be presented during the original trial that had come out since. And statements that have come out since from other individuals who were involved, who didn't speak at the time of trial. I think that a new hearing is warranted.

Matthew 28:31
I think you do that very well. And, you know, you've even got the the DA on, who comes on. I thought that was quite impressive. I mean, you know, and he obviously believes he got the right, when you're talking about Daniel Green, you know, he has his views, and he's very upfront about it, as well. I thought that was extremely well done.

Matthew Perniciaro 28:51
Thank you. And look, and it's a real testament to, you know, also the team, the team of journalists that I worked with in creating this: Clay Johnson, Jay Jennings, Shelley Leslie, kind of leading that team from a producerial standpoint. And, you know, I think, working with one of the larger news networks in this day, there's a history of reporting facts that is very celebrated, you know, in the state of North Carolina. I think, therefore, people were very willing to speak about this, knowing that the story would be told with a degree of integrity. Johnson Britt, the district attorney, is absolutely convinced that he got the right guy, in convicting Daniel. And that's his opinion. I believe that with the evidence that he was given, that if you were given the same degree of evidence, and you're a prosecutor, that might may be your belief as well. You know, a lot of people try to look at this case and say, oh, who were the good guys and who were the bad guys? And I don't, I think it's not as simple as that. Right? We live in a very gray, in gray areas in our society. And this is a case that fully exists in those gray areas. I think Johnson Britt was elected to be the district attorney, and he was doing his job as prosecutor in that case, based on evidence that was provided to him. I think the question is, is the evidence? And I think the question is, you know, when you look at these things that, you know, with a, almost 30 year difference in view of how society was then, I think if you look at the jury, it was a very compromised verdict. People convicted, the jury convicted Daniel, but they didn't necessarily believe the testimony that convicted him. And you know, so I think there's always been question about this case. And that's what we really strive to do, is present all of those questions in a concise manner, and then allow the audience to go on that journey and have a real understanding of both sides of the argument. Like I said, we structured the series like a trial, you know. There's almost two prologues. There's the investigation and the discovery of the murder. There's the history of Robeson County. And then once we're in the final three episodes, we're really kind of entering a trial, the prosecution goes first, the defense come second. And that's by design, because there's going to be people who come out on both sides of this. Some people are gonna say, Oh, yes, those two teenagers are guilty. They did it. And then some people are gonna say, No, there's something we need to look more here, look into more here. And that's what life is, right? So, as a documentarian that was our goal, you know, to present all sides of it. So having Johnson Britt's voice in that conversation, as well as Daniel's post-conviction attorney, Chris Mumma, who's fighting for his innocence, you need both sides of that argument if you're going to tell the full story.

Matthew 31:48
And I think in fairness to Johnson Britt, he even acknowledges mistakes he made, you know, and trying to, and he's very upfront about that. And I think, one last thing I'm going to ask about. One thing that comes out of this, I think, at least for me, because I've seen a few of these true crime docs, of kind of a similar line of, you know, do you have an innocent man, you know, is he been convicted wrongly or certainly have a particular crime in question, it's this, if anything, and I don't know if you want to speak to this, but I think police just have to get better training on how you really should interrogate potential perpetrators. Because it's this, I've seen it elsewhere, where it's always this kind of, they latch on to this is the, maybe even rightly, you know, whether they're whatever was going on, maybe they do legitimately think these two are the ones. But then the way they elicit the confessions and everything is just, it's so suspect, sometimes.

Matthew Perniciaro 32:56
I agree with you. I think that there's, I think many of those aspects are suspect. And I would imagine, again, I'm not an expert in police testimony, but I'm only you know, have an understanding of what transpired in this case, because of extensive research and reading the logs and going through all the tapes. I don't know if the practices have improved in any way, shape, or form since this period of time. I don't know if it was specific to tactics that were used in this area of the country that, you know, maybe would not be acceptable today. But there are a lot of issues with the interrogation. It's something that we revisit a couple of different times throughout the course of the series and reveal more pieces of information from that interrogation that resulted in kind of this public story. I think it's also something to be said that, you know, these two individuals, these two teenagers were known to law enforcement, specifically, Larry. He had a history of, you mentioned earlier, you know, that crack and cocaine coming up by I-95, you know, really took root in Robeson County. It's an area where, you know, people would swap vehicles, and you know, it was known on the route for drug smuggling. And Larry was involved in that, you know. And that's not a matter of assumption, that's a matter of fact. He was involved in the drug trade. And law enforcement was involved in the drug trade, we've come to learn, you know, over the years. So well, we don't know what their interaction was with one another. It was known and Daniel mentioned this at one point, it really struck me is that, Larry would get pulled over by the police and then let go. You know, one of the things that I noticed, which really is shocking is when the police, when law enforcement, when the sheriff's firm is walking Daniel and Larry in and out of the buildings, Daniel's in handcuffs, Larry is not. And I think most shocking, Larry was allowed to go home while he was still in this, the Sheriff's Department, you know, jail awaiting to be transferred, he was allowed to go home and have dinner with his family on Sunday nights. I had never heard of anyone who had been charged with first degree murder that was allowed to leave jail to go have dinner with their family on Sunday nights. So there's a lot of questions here. And there was a lot of, it started in that interrogation where it was decided who was going to get treated one way, and who was going to get treated a different way. And so, I do believe that, you know, if those types of practices are still existing, that's definitely something we need to look at as a society. And that starts with the training, as you said. I think, you know, I think that's, a big for us, that's really the largest part of this, right? Like I said, the crime is a gateway to this larger story of flaws in our criminal justice system. And flaws in our law enforcement. And the fact that we're still seeing these, you know, we were very heavily, you know, deep in the edit of the series, when everything came to light last summer, the murder of George Floyd. And it was just such a sobering reminder of how little progress we've made, despite the fact that we think we've made so much progress as a society and as a culture. It just shows how far we still have to go. And working and telling the story, especially, like said as we were editing after, you know, everything came to the forefront of the public conversation last summer. It just was, like I said, it was a very sad reminder that we need to relook at everything.

Matthew 36:43
Yeah. I think that's what strikes all of us, almost all of us, here we, you know, here we go again. It seems like and as you say, in that context, I mean, I want to ask you, how did this, you've mentioned WRAL a few times. Saw appearances by people I even remember from my days there, how did this film come about? Was this something because they, I hadn't put two and two together. But you know, because early on, you know, the journalists say, something like, well, this is why we wanted to bring this story to light. And then slowly I realized, no, wait a minute, and then put two and two together and Capitol broadcasting, that this is something that, did they approach you? How did this come about?

Matthew Perniciaro 37:24
So I grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. I moved to North Carolina, late 80s. We started moving in the late 80s. But officially was living full time in 1990. So, I lived there at this period of time, where as you said, you know, this was a massive story. And I was there up until I went to college on back in New York, which is where I was originally from. And Jimmy Goodman, the Goodman family has, you know, owned Capitol broadcasting since its inception in the 1940s. Goodman family. And Jimmy Goodman, who's one of our executive producers of the series, he was the real impetus for the idea of this series. He had reached out to me, we went to high school together. We've been friends, you know, since the 90s. And his brother Michael. His brother, and I were, Jimmy was older than me. So he was like, the cooler guy. Michael was a year younger than me. So Mike and I are actually better friends growing up. But Jimmy had seen obviously a lot of the documentary work that I've done as a producer over the years, right, and said, Hey, you know, we have this massive archive. And I don't think anyone even knew that this existed, most local news networks didn't keep their tapes, they didn't keep their archives from the previous decades, you know, just because of the volume of storage space and the maintaining it in climate controlled environments. And they did. WRAL did. And so when they got to digitize in the 90s, you know, it was 2018, the 25th anniversary of the crime was coming up. And he said, you know, I have my news team working on this. And as I mentioned, you know, some amazing, you know, journalists working out of that station, you know, Clay Johnson, who I co direct episodes one and two with. J. Jennings, who was co-editor and Cliff Bumgardner, who was co-cinemaphotographer and worked as an archivist on the series as well, just amazing, Emmy Award winning news team at WRAL. And so they kind of started gathering this as something that potentially was going to air on the network at first. And then Jimmy called me, on their network. And then Jimmy called me and was like, Look, as we're kind of putting the pieces together, and this thing, I just think it's so much bigger. And he started telling me about this archive and started telling me about some of the interviews that they'd already secured, you know, and they had banked in their, you know, in their archives, and I was like, This is definitely bigger. So that's when I got involved and really, you know, we started working together as a team to create this series. And it's been an amazing journey. I mean, it's been, you know, the series, we were working and then COVID obviously happened, which slowed everything down, you know, and limited what you could do from a production standpoint and a travel standpoint. We actually did the majority of the edit for the series in COVID. But yeah, that's how it came to be. It was really, a high school friend called me up and said, Hey, I have this, we're working on this, we have this idea to do something with this. What do you think? And I was like, Yes, I absolutely want to be a part of it. So then that very organically grew into, you know, co directing and then directing final three episodes myself.

Matthew 40:30
Okay. I think as you mentioned the use of archives. I mean, you weren't living down there yet. But I was there during the standoff at the Robesonian. And I thought that was, brought back a lot of memories, because I remember when that happened. So I was gonna ask you about this. So you didn't, as you say, what's the post production under COVID. But you were, I guess you got a little bit lucky. Because it seemed to me a lot of the film, that you did get a lot of filming done.

Matthew Perniciaro 40:56
Yeah. A lot of the filming was done prior. Yes. And we were actually, we were filming. I mean, pretty much up until we had shut down. You know, I think one of the last interviews with Amanda Lamb was filmed in late February or the first week of March. I mean, it was this, it was the following week, you know, that we ended up having to shut everything down and move into a virtual work environment. And look, there were more interviews that, you know, had COVID not happened, that I would have loved to have gotten. But we pivoted and we made it work. We did a lot of audio interviews from that point on. And, you know, so we could mix that with some of the footage that we had, you know, we had follow up questions a lot of times. You know, when we're making documentaries, you know, you realize, Oh, we need to address this item or that item that's, you know, explained more. So, you know, sometimes there'll be second interview shoots, in different environments. But in this case, we could do those via audio and ask additional questions. So that was, that was great. And, yeah, we were very fortunate to have the degree of access that we have, to have the degree of footage. But it was funny, I mean, a lot of this stuff, like, you know, we didn't get a chance to do an additional B roll shoot, which is something that would have always been planned. So I would call Cliff and I'd be like, okay, like, you just have to go out. One man and a camera. And like, here's the shot list. And he'd go out and get some of these drone shots and get some of these exteriors. And he'd FaceTime me from his car from wherever and say, hey, look at the camera angle. And I say, Okay, great. Yeah, that's great. The elementary school, you know, exterior. And so we were just really doing it all virtually. And we figured out how to make it work. And we're extremely proud of, you know, not just extremely proud of the series itself. But, you know, it was a pretty Herculean task to kind of see it through to the end. So we're very proud of being able to make it this way.

Matthew 42:54
And so, as you've already mentioned, you've got this long, long for someone who's so young, by my standards, of producing, but why did you decide to direct?

Matthew Perniciaro 43:07
Well, I always wanted to direct for a long period of time. And you know, I've produced many documentaries. You know, the first documentary I ever produced, you know, I'm very, I'm very fortunate, I kind of took a very sideways path into the entertainment business. I dropped out of college when I was 19, which I don't advise anyone to do, because it's not an easy road. But I was going to NYU, and I dropped out of college, because I'd read like that Paul Thomas Anderson dropped out of college. And I was like, hey, if he can do it, if he dropped at NYU, I can drop at NYU. And I moved to Los Angeles in 1999, kind of packed up my car and my uncle lived out here. So he was like, you can crash on my couch while you figure out what your next steps are gonna be. And I just started working on sets and originally came out to LA thinking that I would be a writer and a director. And as I was working on sets as a PA, and started working for a distribution company for a number of years, and realized that producing was something that I loved and, like loved the idea of doing, so I just started making movies, and I produced my first movie when I was 23. So that was where my career came from. But, you know, I always still wanted to direct. I always still wanted to write. And I would direct a lot of the short form documentary content we would produce, you know. We did, you know, my company, we do a bunch of series for Marvel. You know, we did, a series with Ta-Nehisi Coates about the place is run on the Black Panther called A Nation Under Our Feet. And, you know, I directed that. And so I was directing, but I wasn't kind of taking credit for directing. And then when Jimmy reached out to me about this story, and I really started delving into, you know, outlining it and restructuring it and looking at what footage existed, what we needed to add, what we needed to get. You know, I just felt so connected to it, having come from that place and lived there at that time. And honestly witnessed so many of the things, the themes and the things we're going to be talking about in this series with my own eyes at a young age, which really informed who I wanted to be, and the types of films I wanted to make and stories I want to get out to the world. I just, I was really passionate about directing at that point.

Matthew 45:21
And did you enjoy it?

Matthew Perniciaro 45:23
I did. I absolutely loved it. You know, I love producing and I'm still gonna continue producing as well. And it's not like I'm just taking that hat off permanently and putting the director hat on solely, but I absolutely loved it. And it's something that I'm definitely going to continue doing as I am moving forward in conjunction with my producing. And, you know, with documentaries, which is something I love, you know, I produced my first documentary, we started filming it. And we started really, the filmmaker had filmed some footage prior, you know, which is very important footage is film called More than a Game about LeBron James. And the director on that, Kris Belman, had actually followed them their senior year, he started that as a school project. Then he was living in Los Angeles and said, I have all this footage. And I was like, yeah, that's very important footage. So that was the first documentary we were producing. It premiered, Toronto 2008 and then came out in 2009. But I always loved documentary, I always knew I wanted to produce documentary. That was my first and it became part of my practice as a producer to always have documentaries, at least one or two documentaries in production and post each year. And I'm extremely proud of the work that I've done. You know, we just had a film that we produced called The Truffle Hunters, just came out a couple of weeks ago. And then last year, we had The Fight, which was about the ACLU, and a film called Disclosure on Netflix, which is all about transgender representation in media. What I love about documentaries is that it allows you to enter into all these worlds. And, you know, I think, if you enter into those worlds, and you understand the gravity of, you know, these are real people's lives. So there's a real responsibility to telling the stories truthfully. I hope that everyone takes the approach to documentary the same way. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. But, you know, that's always my intention. And you know, being in the director's chair, I get to kind of, you know, be on both sides of that equation.

Matthew 47:38
I think you just raised, because I was gonna ask you about this, on The Truffle Hunters and The Fight. I've heard, I've had several people recommend Truffle Hunters to me, so I'm keen to see that. But you have an executive producer credit. So is that, how is that different for your? Is it different for you - producing versus executive producer? And what stage do you get involved in with those projects?

Matthew Perniciaro 48:06
It really depends on the project, right? You know, so both of those projects, I would say I was, you know, myself and my company and Michael Sherman, my business partner, we were involved relatively early. But we weren't, you know, we're based in LA, The Fight was shooting in New York, we knew that we weren't going to be day in day out producers, you know. And I do believe that people who put in the work deserve that credit. I think that credit sometimes kind of gets handed out for a variety of reasons, that is not you know, the person, anyone who ever asked me is like, what does a producer do? And I always kind of say, like, well, if a film wins the Academy Award for Best Picture, the producer is the one taking home the statue, because they're really involved in every aspect of the creation of that film. Many times, in many cases before even the director is hired, you know, a producer is developing material. And so it's, I really believe that that credit should be preserved for the people that are going to be on set every day, putting in that work. On all three of those films, we knew that we were not going to be, you know, the ones on set every day, we're going to be involved in more of a advisory capacity and, you know, we weren't able to travel to Italy to shoot Truffle Hunters. And Michael and Gregory are the only two producers on that film that they're also directors and writers of that film. And they deserve those credits because they were the ones in there every day. We were talking to them consistently. We were going through all the cuts, going through all the footage, you know doing the work from a creative and from a business perspective, helping kind of structure the film financially, etc. But, you know, and working with them throughout the process, you know, I always say, regardless of what my credit is, you're going to get all of me on everything I have to offer. But I do believe that, you know, If I'm not in the trenches day in, day out on a shoot, then that person, someone else should get that producer credit. And I knew on that on that film, specifically, we were filming some other documentaries, which will be coming out later this year, that we physically couldn't be present when those specifically to The Fight and in Truffle Hunters were filming.

Matthew 50:19
And we should give a little shout out to your firm, it's Bow and Arrow Entertainment, right? So I don't think we've done a shout out yet for them. Any preferences or is it just each role is a little different, you like producing versus directing?

Matthew Perniciaro 50:35
I like, and this has always been our philosophy at Bow and Arrow, it's built off of my philosophy, and Sherman's philosophy, our personally. You know that we like supporting different voices. We like getting voices out into the world that need to be heard. And, you know, we always say that if you look at the films that we've made, it's a really wide group, you know what I mean? A lot of times, you'll see production companies, and they'll say, oh, they're really good at doing comedies, and they focus on comedy. Or this company's really good at documentaries, and they just do documentaries. And this company is really good at, you know, horror movies and they just do horror movies. Our interests are varied. We want, we love all different types of film. So we work with all different types of filmmakers. And want to, you know, help bring those films to life. And so, we kind of always equated to, if like, we were an art gallery, and we were curating one gigantic group show, all the paintings on the walls are very different. But the through lines of how those decisions were made to participate in those films are similar. And you see that kind of connectivity between them. I love all roles. I love making films. I just wanted to, I wanted to do this my entire life. So regardless of what my credit is, or regardless of if I'm, you know, I can only be present in so many places at one time, which I'm aware of, but if I can participate in more films in other capacities, and help those filmmakers in other ways, that's what I've always done my whole career. So I love doing all aspects of it.

Matthew 52:13
I think that's great. I mean, it's even more specialized than you made it out to be. I mean, I know production companies that only do, maybe they only do music docs, or maybe they only do doc series, or you know, or true crime or whatever. It starts, you know, and companies get pigeonholed that way, too.

Matthew Perniciaro 52:32
Yeah. I mean, you know, I think early in my career, I was always like, I'm never gonna get pigeonholed. I think it may be part of it kind of came from that place. And I think kind of as I actually started making films and started working in different environments with different types of filmmakers and different stories, I realized that I just loved every aspect of it. You know, some of my favorite films are documentaries. Some of my favorite films are, you know, Silence of the Lambs is technically a horror film. It's one of my favorite movies. I mean, it's got some issues that didn't stick with time. But you know, from a filmmaking standpoint, Jonathan Demi did things. I think created the modern insert in a way that is like, it changed cinema, you know. And, you know, so there's all types of different films. And I think, as human beings, we have different interests, right? So why limit yourself to just one thing. Which is an exciting place to approach our world from, in entertainment.

Matthew 53:27
And you've done well from it. But do you ever find that as an issue when you go into discussions with different studios, or whoever? That they want to, they do want to, I think gets us maybe to human nature, we do tend to pigeonhole people.

Matthew Perniciaro 53:43
Yeah, I think that's natural, right. I think like, you know, a lot of times what happens, I think most with filmmakers, you know, if someone kind of gets in the genre space, they think they can only do genre, you know what I mean. If someone gets into comedy space, they only look to them for doing comedy. One of the great kind of joys of my life, and my career has been working with the community at Sundance. And the Sundance Institute and participating in the Sundance Film Festival. And I'm very fortunate to have had a lot of films play at that festival. And films of all different types, you know. And I think that's one of the things that I think that film festivals give us a great ability to do, is to not just discover new voices and new filmmakers, and new actors and artists across the board. But it also allows a diversification. You know, they're curating these selections, and they're coming at it from looking at how do we present different types of things, then you're gonna see directly on the traditional studio system. And so that's, you know, I've always enjoyed too like when a filmmaker, like let's say, there is a filmmaker who's known for doing X, and then they go and make their indie film, and that's why? You know what I mean. I think that the fact that that space exists in our community is wonderful. That's why I also really believe strongly that we have to protect it. And we have to make sure that, you know, a lot of people have always said for so long well, you know, independent film and documentary, it's not good business. And it's like, well, no, it's just, sometimes people don't know how to approach it with a business mindset. So that was also a big part of Bow and Arrow was, you know, a lot of times in my career, I always felt like, Oh, I produced this job and produced this job and produced this job. And then I get to, every two or three years produce something I really loved. And that was like, so Sherman and I, when we started the company, we were like, well, what if we build a business around producing the films that we love? And what have we tried to do that? You know, and that means sometimes smaller budgets, that means paying ourselves a lot less. That means, you know, not doing things traditionally. But ultimately, I think we were very proud of what we've created over the past seven years and the films we've brought out with the world.

Matthew 56:01
Yeah, and I think you're gonna be far happier, aren't you?

Matthew Perniciaro 56:05
Yeah, exactly. That's what it really was down to is, you know, I mean, I love filmmaking because I love filmmaking, you know. And independent filmmaking is not an easy job. You know, entertainment in general is not an easy job. I remember reading a statistic that it was like a 3% success rate and success was defined by you can just do that job and not have a second job to support yourself and just pay your bills. I think, in the independent world, you would minimize that number substantially from 3% even. But, you know, but it's what I love doing. And I'm very, I feel fortunate every day and lucky every day that I get to do it. And the fact that that's now circled back for me in my life and my career back to directing and back to kind of creating in this way, it's something I feel I'm very appreciative of, and I think about that every day.

Matthew 57:04
Well, I hate to say it, but I think we're coming to the end of our time together, Matthew. But before we go, I just wanted to ask what is next for you and also for Bow and Arrow?

Matthew Perniciaro 57:17
Yeah, I'm, I'm working on a couple projects on that. I cannot speak about yet.

Matthew 57:24
Always the case, always the case.

Matthew Perniciaro 57:27
That I cannot speak about yet. But a couple things that we're just getting shooting going on right now, that I'm really excited about. I'll come back or I'll shoot you an email or something and tell you all the details. And from Bow and Arrow standpoint, we have a couple of documentaries that we're working on, with some really exciting filmmakers as well. So I'm excited for the world to find out about those couple months from now.

Matthew 57:49
Okay. Well, thank you once again. It's been a pleasure having you on. To remind our listeners, we've been having a lovely chat here with Matthew Perniciaro, director and producer of Moment of Truth, it will be available on IMDB TV from April 2.

Matthew Perniciaro 58:09
Thank you for having me.

Matthew 58:10
I also want to give a shout out to our engineer Freddie Besbrode and the rest of the team at This Is Distorted studios in Leeds, England. A big thanks to Nevena Paunovic, our podcast manager at Alamo pictures, who ensures we continue getting such great guests like Matthew onto the show. Finally, a big thanks to our listeners. And as always, we'd love to hear from you. So please keep sending us feedback and episode ideas. Whether it is on YouTube, social media or directly by email. And please remember to like us and share us with your friends and family wherever you happen to listen or watch podcasts. This is Factual America. Signing off.

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