Hello world, welcome to WFHR's rapid support, proudly brought to you by
Cronk conceptives for this August 1st, 2025, have your host James here. We're here
to talk with some of our favorite people, the historic point pass. We have Mike
Hittner with us, could see him, Mike as always. Yes, good morning, James and
everybody in Radio Land. We're talking today specifically about their wonderful
event, who done it. And for that, of course, we bring in our good friend Luke
Conkel, who of course, the writer of these and everything. Luke, nice to have you in
studio. Man, good morning, James. Good to have you here, man. We appreciate the
time from you guys and all the effort, all the energy that is put into these
events. We really do appreciate the way you keep history alive over there
for us. Let's dive into this one, this particular who done it, going to be
premiering Saturday, August 9th, 2 to 5, over at Wakely Road in Naku. So we'll
give you more details as we go along here. But Luke, where do I go with this
story? What do I tee up to so you can take it and everything? There's a lot of
different angles on that. That's what we all want to know, right? Yeah, this
year, we have a known as a locked room mystery where somebody turns up dead
under some, well, obviously, it's a mystery. So mysterious circumstances and
figuring out whether the sheriff seems convinced that it was a natural death.
But not everybody is on board with that theory. So the trick isn't necessarily
figuring out who done it, but what happened? And how'd done it?
Multi-faceted, a lot of times it's just who done it, but this has got all
different aspects and especially since it was a locked room and he was in there
by himself. You know, of those kind of mysteries. Some of my favorite home stories
are the ones like that. When it comes to the idea, is this something you've had
for a while, when you've been chewing on for a while, or just something that came
recently? Yeah, every year I sit down to write this and think,
yeah, this might be the last one I'm running out of stuff. But then usually as
I'm working through it, I come up with a couple other things that I want to
throw in there, but you know, might be, might make things a little bit too
difficult or might add too many threads. And so this is, this is one of the
threads that I started pulling on a couple of years ago. It's coming back
around. Luke came out and during the festival and he was looking for ideas I
think in June and he brought his three little girls with him and he was looking
for ideas. He evidently got an idea because actually this is a 15th year for
Luke from 2010 till now. So it's really impressive. You know, as a side note,
really, being able to, as a loose writer and as a creative, I'm blown away by
what you do, man. I think it's really, really cool, especially with the
energy behind it, the passion behind it, the reasoning behind it and everything.
I think that's very cool to do. When it comes to being able to hammer this
out and then, you know, get it out there, get it to everybody, how did that
process go? Once you had that idea, getting it written? Yeah, I, you know, Mike
can speak to it a little better, but it's a couple of weeks later this year.
And I, you know, I warned him that that just meant that it was a couple more
weeks that I could procrastinate and get him. Yeah, so, you know, from sort of
the idea phase that, you know, it starts out, I have obviously kind of an outline
of what the reveal is going to be, you know, who done it or what happened.
Yeah. And then, you know, working backwards from that outline to more of an
outline of, you know, each character, you know, figuring out first which
characters I need and, you know, how they're going to, how they're going to
connect maybe sort of loosely to past years that sort of thing. And then
outlining, you know, each character, maybe mode of means opportunity, that sort
of thing. And then, you know, from there, taking some of their, you know, like
Mary Wakeley has, you know, she's sort of evolved into the town gossip character.
And so, you know, where does, you know, being the town gossip fit into this
particular years mystery, that sort of thing. Is there any danger of this being
a little similar to a murder she wrote in scenario where it seems like
everywhere, Angela Lansbury went, there was a murder. I don't know if
anybody ever caught that. But it seems like, so what's going on over
awakely? Well, there's so many, like over these, I'm kidding, if you're a
fan of a lot of these British detective shows, these really, really small
communities out in the, in the hinterland have one murder after another, and
you want to work in all these murders. Come this town is about 400
people who's coming through there. I know exactly what you're talking about.
Yeah. It all serious this. Look, how do you keep from, and I can't
imagine it's, it actually probably happens with the story somewhat, but you
don't want to repeat yourself. You don't want to go to the same well too many
times. And as Mike touched on, you've been doing this for over a decade and
everything. How do you keep yourself from doing that? How do you keep yourself
fresh with this? Yeah, I don't, I don't know. It's probably organic. Yeah, I
don't have, I don't have a good answer. You know, I try to, I try to not, you
know, like, it's a locked room mystery. We had one other locked room mystery
about four or five years ago now. You know, so I try to not do, you know, the same
kind of mystery. I, you know, I, I'm, I'm trying to decide how to answer this
question without giving too much away. But, you know, the, you know, the, you
know, there's, there's really only a small handful of, you know, motivations for
murder, you know, so, you know, kind of cycling through them and, yeah, you
know, let's go, let's do it. Going back to it. Yeah. I know I'm a big fan of, you
know, detective shows and all of that. And I grew up loving Colombo, like a lot of
people. And I remember reading, not too long ago, actually, a lot of the writers on
that show would approach it as they would start from the end and then go back.
Yeah. Is that a little bit of what you've done before? Yeah, that's, that's
essentially it. Yeah. Yeah. You know, figuring out, it's interesting to me. That's a
cool way to write. I would, I've never written that way. And I find that awesome.
That's really funny. I want to try it immediately. Yeah. For some people, especially
my wife, she loved Colombo because she had it solved in the beginning. And then
they went back through and showed what transpired to that point. And, you know, for
some people, it's kind of a different genre to do it from backwards forward or
something like that. Yeah. And this is sort of a, you know, people
talked about monk, you know, being a sort of reincarnation of Colombo in some ways.
And one of the, one of the sort of fun things about that show is in a lot of
cases, no pun intended, they would actually give you the, they would show the audience
the actual crime at the beginning. Right. And then you would have to sort of
figure out not, not what happened, but how monk figured it out. Right. So that's, that's,
I mean, none of our actors know which one of them did it. But I think
this year more than other years, I think maybe if they read carefully, they can maybe
figure it out. And so there's, there's maybe a little bit of that flavor here where, you know,
that we, they might actually know what happened in their sort of trying to piece it together
for the audience. You kind of saw where I was going with this with those shows. I think
law and orders, another one, another one of my favorites, where they kind of give you the crime.
And then you kind of have to figure out yourself and you're playing along my home in a way
with this. It's, it's almost like a game show in some ways of trying to figure out who the,
the, you know, the criminal is and all that. And then we of course have our who done it,
which is extremely similar to this. And to those that may not know much about this event, Mike,
can we tell them how this breaks down, how this goes? Well, it starts at two o'clock. People
usually come, some early people come at one thirty. I would suggest for those that would like to
do this and are somewhat serious about it. Probably don't come any later than probably three,
three thirty because it takes you time to go from one character to another and they're spread out
somewhat not, you know, not more than a couple hundred yards, but they're spread out. And what one
character says, you may want to go back and verify what tiles them into this other character or
maybe some, the other character told something that conflicts with what the other person told you.
So you got to have time to go back and forth. And sometimes, you know, people do it four or five
times that really get into this, you know, that love this sort of murder mystery sort of thing. And
so I, you know, opens that two in it and Luke does the reveal at five or shortly after five. And so,
you know, plan plenty of time. I think I would say at least a minimum of an hour and a half. So
you got time to go around. You don't necessarily have to be there at one thirty. Some people are
there one thirty. They enjoy that. They sit down. They probably picnic or something. I don't
know. I mean, I'm in the house. I don't know all time what's happening on the outside. But
I'm thinking some field is to enjoy the day. I think too. And the camaraderie that maybe friends and
family have with it. Being outdoors, being in on those grounds alone is a great time. And it
just feels good, especially this time of year. Getting to play like I've been fortunate to do a lot of
roles in my life. And I'm hopefully fortunate to do more. But I playing Sherlock Holmes will
always be way up at the top for me. You get to play Sherlock. You get to be this. You get to be
Columbo. Get to be all of those characters. All your favorite detectives and everything. Go
out there and ask these different actors, these different people playing these characters,
these questions and kind of find out for yourself who'd done it. I appreciate bringing up one point
that I've, I remember in years past I had somebody bring up. Well, can I go back and ask people
questions after I talk to them? And there's not really a, I would say that there's, there's
probably rules to this. But more rules that are just kind of common sense, you know, more so. Not
to play that, let's say that so bluntly. But I, you know, nobody's going to tell you who,
who did anything because they don't know. I think that's a really cool part of this look.
So even if they wanted to, they can't say anything because they don't know. That's awesome.
We can't give it away. And that's good that we don't know because you know, it could make inferences.
You know, it's easy the way you look or something and you could give it away and you don't even
know you give away. So I think that it's important for people to go around. And I think that people
really get into it after a while and they go around. And then when other people, they're listening
to what questions and answers they get because sometimes, you know, they're getting different answers
than maybe you got. And so you can kind of catch somebody in maybe not alive, but in maybe
an untruth. Yeah. Yeah. There's, there've been a couple of times where folks have benefited
almost more from, you know, some people are kind of shy. They don't want to ask questions right
up front. And so they've, they've benefited from listening into like two or three groups
asking their own questions and realizing that maybe some stories are a little inconsistent, you
know, even with the same character. Sure like had Watson to balance off of and everything. So the
idea of doing it with a group or something or working with people, I love that. That's a fun way
of doing this. And when it comes to the story, it's a fun one, an exciting one and it has local ties
to it, which also can, you know, give out history lessons in itself as well. Well, we got a new thing
written into it this year. Carvers claim, which was refuted by the US Congress in 1823, where a guy
went through as a, when it was British area and had mapped it out and somehow he had signed some
treaties with Sue Indian chiefs allegedly, allegedly that he had, had 10,000 acres. They gave him
and all this, you know, flimflam people were trying to sell on this, probably up as far as the
Civil War later. It's trying to sell some of this land on that basis yet. Yeah. That's a really
interesting part of this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I always try to have some little, you know, historical
connection. He likes factoids. Yeah. Hey, I'm with you. I'm a, you know, in all of us being
lovers of history, really in like an event like this is such a fun way of getting it across.
There are teachers out there that are like, oh, can I do that? That's an awesome lesson plan.
And this is probably one of our earlier ones. This takes place in the early 1840s where a lot of
them were up closer to the Civil War and this sort of thing. So this is back, you know,
right after Carvers thing was turned by down by Congress. A lot of people have probably didn't know
the facts of it or even knew about the Congress turning it down. So they were still going on the
flimflam guys trying out there to sell real estate. Yeah. Yeah. And if we have some regular folks
that come back every year, you kind of have to suspend disbelief a little bit with our timeline.
You know, people that people are here that maybe, you know, were here, you know, a couple of years
in the future. But, you know, we probably have to study who's president in the 1841 or something.
Yeah. That's art. That's art. You know, that's part of the responsibility of the, you know,
people, the, the people being entertained is to be able to take a little suspension of belief
and all that. All the shows we mentioned, all the books all done that, you know, they've all done
that. So it's, it's something that I think, but especially if you're coming to this event,
one of the major reasons I would think is to be a part of this, to be a part of the who done it,
and you're going to be able to do that. And we encourage you to not only do that, but check out
the grounds, you know, look around a little bit, especially if you've been there in a while,
or if you've never been down there, it's a perfect opportunity to come check things out.
It's a good opportunity. You know, the barn will be open to three-base shed,
the bunkhouse, the house. So you can go around and see some of those buildings if you haven't been
there or maybe haven't been there for a while. So, and we separate all the characters, you know,
like the haluses, Maggie, and Jeremiah will be in the barn, but one will be at the small door,
and one will be at the big door, and the same with the, the turners, one will be in that three-base
shed on the north side and one will be on the south side. We separate all the characters so
they can conclude with each other, you might say, and they have to kind of tell their story as they
see it. It's a great idea. Yeah, one thing to watch out for though, you know, you talk about the
sight and that sort of thing is that, you know, every once in a while we'll have somebody that
will see, you know, an artifact, you know, some, you know, sight dressing, and assume that it's
been planted as part of the mystery. But, you know, we don't, we don't need to rely on physical
evidence. Right. And there's no, there's no props that pertain to his death there. So they,
so they're looking around for strange bottles or something, maybe it was a poisoning or whatever it
was, and they're always looking for something. Yeah. I would have definitely done that.
Yeah. We look forward to this one and it's right around the corner, everybody. The historic point
bosses murder mystery, who'd done it coming up Saturday August 9th, two to five over three,
six, four, wakely wrote in the coosa admission is five dollars for adults, students are three
dollars pre-school, a member, pre-school in members are getting in for free. As we always like to
note, Mike, those prices haven't changed. If you've been coming to this for 10 years, we appreciate
you guys doing that. We want to support you guys like you're supporting us with stuff like that
in keeping history of life. It's a few back system. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Get on down and make plans for this one. And if you'd like more information,
you can go to historicpointboss.com, head on over there, bookmark that page and keep up the day
and all the great things they're doing. We'll be talking next month, probably about the harvest
fair and some other great events coming up over there, Mike. Thanks James and WFHR. Yeah.
Thank you. And look, great to have you in studio, man. Great to be here. Thanks,
for being here. We appreciate you again. And appreciate all of you for joining us for another
edition of WFHR's Rapids Report, probably brought to you by PocketSeptic.
