Billy Jensen: Inside Misconduct Allegations against True-Crime Star

“It’s the end of an era,”Podcast network Exactly Right Tweeted May 20, 2222. “Jensen & Holes: The Murder Squad is going off the air.”The tweet caused dismay among true crime professionals. It featured Paul Holes (now retired detective) who solved the Golden State Killer cases and Billy Jensen (who helped to finish the 2018 bestseller). I’ll Be Gone in the DarkAfter Michelle McNamara passed away in 2016, a book was written that described the hunt for the serial killer. McNamara and Joe James DeAngelo Jr. found their match when they teamed up as armchair detectives and real detectives to track the killer. The Murder SquadThis ignited the fire and we aimed to become the first true collaborative true-crime program and bring together citizens sleuths and experts to solve cold cases.

It worked, to an extent — the hosts Some claim that they have cracked the code at least one cold case — so it was a shock when the podcast was unceremoniously discontinued. After three seasons, the show was still in existence. Both hosts had new books and thousands of followers on social media, commenting and liking every tweet and photo. The podcasting company started by the hosts of the popular show, Exactly Right. My Favorite MurderKaren Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark offered the following: “end of an era”Tweet as the public statement and did not reply to Rolling Stone’s requests for comment. The company limited replies to the tweet, but that didn’t stop the network’s fans from demanding answers. According to one user on social media, “Time to step up and be honest because the rumors going around are about to get ahead of this.”They did.

Two podcasters made public episodes that featured Jensen’s alleged sexual misconduct in June. One of those podcasters claimed that Jensen had slapped her during an otherwise consensual encounter – something Jensen has deniedBoth publicly on his website as well as to Rolling Stone. Subreddit’s true crime podcasts exploded after a so-called “mega thread” to discuss Jensen. Paul Haynes, who had also worked on McNamara’s book, posted lengthy diatribes about Jensen that landed him a cease-and-desist from Jensen’s lawyers. The true-crime social network was soon in a frenzy over the allegations, and people were quickly choosing sides.

“Taken by themselves, some of these allegations show embarrassing behavior in my private life,” Jensen tells Rolling Stone. “However, when these moments are presented inaccurately, all together, and without context, the result is to not only mischaracterize each of the individual events, but also fundamentally misrepresent who I am and have been as a person.”

Jensen alleges that Jenn Tisdale, the podcaster who claimed he slapped her, has enlisted her friends — including Haynes, who Jensen claims harbors a professional grudge — as part of an “organized effort. …to collect negative stories and criticisms about me to share to the public wholesale.”

Haynes and Tisdale disagree strongly with this description. “I was not acting in tandem or collaboration with anyone else,” Haynes tells Rolling Stone. “The number of stories of which I was aware increased significantly as women I didn’t know began reaching out to me to share their own experiences with [Jensen], and as other women posted their stories anonymously on Reddit and Facebook groups. This was no coordinated ‘smear campaign.’”

Jensen also claims Tisdale made these allegations against Jensen only because he declined her advances. His websiteHe also shared flirtatious text messages she sent him before and after the alleged encounter. Tisdale denies all of this. “It’s my understanding that Billy sort of framed it as I’d been scorned,”She said. “Like I had a crush. No, I did not. I never had romantic feelings for Billy.” Tisdale says that she decided to speak about the alleged slap on her podcast after she heard about allegations following a 2021 party that ultimately led to Jensen’s removal from his podcast. In response to Jensen’s allegations of a smear campaign, Tisdale insists that she and others are “coming together to find solace and comfort which is not a coordinated effort to spread negative information about him.”

Five sources have spoken with them. Rolling StoneJensen has a history touching women inappropriately. Two podcasters tell Rolling StoneJensen had inappropriate physical contact with the children, touching and grabbing them without their consent. The alleged behavior came to light following an Exactly Right Halloween Party in 2021. A workplace investigation led to the conclusion of the investigation. Murder Squad.

A detailed list of questions was provided by Rolling StoneJensen made an apology for some of the alleged actions and denied other aspects. Jensen also told the magazine that he has a drinking disorder and mental health issues. He has entered rehab to address both of these. “While I understand some might be cynical of my seeking treatment, I needed to not only address my alcohol use, but my mental health as well,”He says. “The only thing I can do now is keep working the program to be and stay accountable, make direct amends where appropriate, and treat my underlying issues so that I stay on the forward path.”

Terra Newell and Celene Calderon-Olsen

Terra Newell, Celene Calderon Olsen and Celene Calderon Olsen allege Jensen acted in an inappropriate manner with them.

Images courtesy Terra Newell and Celene Kalderon-Olsen

Alvin Williams, podcaster, attended Exactly Right’s Halloween party in mid-October 2021 as the plus-one of his friend, an employee of the network, whom he declined to name. The woman in question didn’t respond. Rolling Stone’s requests for an interview and her attorney, reached for comment, declined to discuss the matter. Williams, the second podcaster to go public, first shared his account of that evening’s events on his show, Affirmative murder.He recalls Jensen appearing drunk at the party and that his friend approached him to tell him that Jensen had grabbed her buttocks. In a sworn statement Williams gave to his friend’s lawyer in April 2022, which Rolling StoneHe said that his friend contacted him again several months after the party, to discuss the alleged incident. “[She] told me Billy grabbed her after he came up behind her, and that she felt extremely violated by this,”Williams made the swearing statement. “I felt [she] was hurt, and deeply affected by this incident.”

Jensen confirmed Rolling StoneHe was the subject of an investigation at work regarding the party. Jensen says that a lawyer at Exactly Right contacted him soon after the party to connect him with an investigator. “said they received complaints from three people saying that my hugs and embraces had been over the line,”He says. “One person had said I hugged them for too long and talked too closely to them; one said I put my arm around them multiple times; and one said I touched their behind during an embrace.”

Jensen claims that he was informed he had been abused after the investigation was closed. “acted inappropriately”The podcast was then canceled. “When I was informed of the complaints, I was shocked, embarrassed, and hated to hear that I had made others feel uncomfortable,” Jensen tells Rolling Stone. “The behavior described to me sounded obnoxious, with me making a spectacle of myself and being too familiar with people. To all of this, I want to make clear that I was unaware I had done anything untoward, and it certainly wasn’t intentional — I would never want to make others feel uncomfortable in any way, and I am deeply sorry.”

Jensen isn’t new to the true crime community; he got his start in the Nineties as a reporter on Long Island, and went on to cover crime for alt-weeklies and magazines, including Rolling Stone.He joined a community of web detectives in 2016 that have been recognized for helping to solve major cases. Families of victims have started to trust podcasters and amateur investigators since the rise in popularity of true crime podcasts. In 2019, CBC’s investigative podcast, CleoCleopatra Semaganis Nicotine was a missing girl from her indigenous community. Last year, the family of Gabby Petito, a 22-year-old who was murdered by her fiancé on a cross-country van trip, Thanks to social-media sleuthsThank you for your support.

After the success of I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, Jensen – a lanky, self-described “goth” who towers over six feet tall in his signature black leather jacket – built a career as a media personality and a brooding crusader for justice. He’s appeared on Discovery ID shows, co-hosted the true crime podcast The First DegreeBooks were written by. Murder SquadHoles was greeted at increasing true-crime conventions by screaming fans. He’s also been ProfilingThis publication. It all seems to be coming to an abrupt halt.

Terra Newell claims Terra Newell is the best. Rolling Stone Jensen was inappropriately rude to her more than once after she was invited on a June 5, 2019 episodeOf The First Degree. Newell is perhaps the most famous survivor in modern true crimes. The story of Dirty John (the first crime saga to run the media gamut from newspaper series to podcast to documentary to scripted series), she was the unlikely hero who, in 2016, stabbed her mother’s scam-artist husband to death in self-defense when he attacked her in a California parking garage.

Newell says the first alleged inappropriate incident followed a signing for Jensen’s bookFollow Me to Chase Darkness on Aug. 13, 2019, in Los Angeles. Jensen, his First Degree co-hosts, Newell, and Newell’s friend Rachael O’Brien went to a bar after the event. Newell said she was “intoxicated”Some details of the interview are not clear, but Jensen claims that he began to flirt with his co-hosts and started talking about his open marriage. This arrangement is well-known among his friends. He also made public statements about it on his site in response to the recent allegations. “[He was] grabbing the back of my neck. He was grabbing my thigh. He was grabbing me all over the place,”Newell claimed. O’Brien, watching the alleged touching, asked her friend if she was OK, then excused herself. O’Brien confirmed Newell’s account to Rolling StoneShe said she had to leave the gathering after becoming uncomfortable with Jensen’s behavior toward Newell.

Newell said that Jensen attempted to convince her to get a hotel room after the party was over. “He also said something about how he would go down on [his co-worker],”She said. “He was telling me about how good he was at going down on women.”However, they never shared a room. Newell claims Jensen kissed her before she got in her Uber.

O’Brien says Newell told her about the conversation and the kiss when Newell came to her house later that night. “Terra is an incredibly smart girl and very sweet,”She said. “I think that’s what made me most disgusted by him, is that he knows she’s a victim of trauma to the scariest degree. So if you’re a dude that’s advocating for women, how about don’t go after the most vulnerable?” At the time, though, Newell stood up for Jensen, and encouraged O’Brien to move forward with a podcast episode she’d recorded with him. “I was just trying to make excuses for his behavior,”Newell said. “I thought this was all my fault.”

Jensen was the next to Newell at a true-crime event at L.A. bar Idle Hour, Oct. 18, 2019. “I’m actually dating someone at this time so any flirty behavior with him is absolutely not OK,”Newell recalls. Jensen began making advances again on her, she claims. “He was grabbing my legs that night, grabbing my thighs, grabbing me by the back of the neck,”She recalls. “During this time a lot of people saw this and then it became a rumor that he may have had a relationship with me.”

Death Becomes Us Day 1 Portraits at Gramercy Theatre 03/21/19. Damien Echols, Dave Hill, Billy Jensen, Paul Holes. Photo Image Credits: Nicholas Karlin www.nicholaskarlin.com www.karlinvillondo.com

Billy Jensen was co-host of the show with Paul Holes ‘The Murder Squad,’Podcast about true crime hosted by the Exactly Right network.

Nicholas Karlin/Karlin Villondo Photography

At the time of these interactions, Newell says she dismissed Jensen’s behavior but reassessed them after the Exactly Right employee allegations came out. “To be honest, I was friends with Billy for a while until this stuff started coming out,”She said. “And then I realized I was just another girl that got groped by Billy Jensen.”

Jensen tells Rolling StoneThat he understood it as a “mutual flirtation”Newell and he shared a mutual kiss, noting that they maintained friendship for three more years after the alleged incidents. “I have incredible respect for [Newell] as a person,” Jensen says. “She is a survivor, but that was not the context of our relationship — I saw her as a peer in the true-crime space.” As for her account of his language at the bar that evening in L.A., Jensen said hearing it “makes me ashamed — and I have previously apologized to her for over-the-top comments. Terra actually suggested to me in May that I go to rehab, which I am doing currently.”

Celene Beth Calderon Olsen is a victim advocate and podcast host who has openedly discussed her experiences with surviving sexual assault. Jensen also allegedly acted inappropriately towards her in 2019. Jensen & Calderon-Olsen bonded over mutual disappointments in a Netflix Ted Bundy documentary. The two met up in Washington, D.C. at the Death Becomes Us true criminal and pop culture festival.

Calderon Olsen reports that festival participants were seen meeting in the bar of Watergate Hotel while they were there for the event. “I remember walking in and Billy immediately grabbed me and started hugging me to the point where it was a little too long,”She said. “It was just kind of jarring because I actually had [seen] him an hour or two prior to this, and he didn’t have that same interaction. It was almost a different person when I saw him at the bar.”Calderon Olsen claims that everyone was drunk that night, even Jensen.

Calderon Olsen claims that she was speaking with another man at one point during the evening. Jensen was standing behind her when Calderon Olsen felt Jensen touch her head. “I felt [Jensen’s] hand just grab and smack, basically, the back of my head,” Calderon-Olsen says. He then grabbed her head and held it in his hands, she claims. “Then I could feel him running his fingers through my hair,”She said. “It was this weird moment, almost being sandwiched between the two [men].”

Former police officer and criminal behaviorist Sarah Cailean, a friend of Calderon-Olsen’s who was also in attendance, recalls seeing Jensen touching Calderon-Olsen’s hair. “It was very awkward,”She said. “It wasn’t like he brushed past her. It was very obvious and pronounced, this sort of petting, stroking her hair. Her face was every bit as shocked and embarrassed as mine was.”

Calderon Olsen claims she expected better from Jensen. “He’s well aware that I’m a survivor,”She said. “He’s very familiar that I’ve been outspoken about my rape. So again, to have somebody who is supposed to be well-versed in survivors and victim sensitivity, those boundaries were crossed.”Jensen for his part claims Calderon Olsen to be part of the “organized effort”He spread negative stories, which she denies. She also calls “irresponsible,”Jensen claimed that she came out to support his accuser at Exactly Right. Jensen asserts that he has “no recollection of this moment as [Calderon-Olsen] describes it, other than that it was a friendly hug. I did not ‘smack’ or ‘grab’ the back of her head.”Jensen claims that Calderon Olsen never raised any objections to him. Jensen states that he learned about this allegation after he was asked for comment by Jensen Rolling Stone.Calderon Olsen and Cailean continue to be proof that he is still alive. “friends as normal”Jensen mentions that Calderon Olsen tweeted the incident and Cailean tagged him. (“Thank you for a lovely time… looking forward to when we are all in one city again!,” reads Calderon-Olsen’s tweet. “What a fantastic night,” reads Cailean’s).

Two other sources suggest that Jensen had been whispered in the true criminal community well before. Murder Squad was cancelled and allegations of Jensen’s inappropriate touching came to light. A former friend of Jensen’s, who says she had a falling out with him over reporting decisions he made in one of his podcasts, says that Jensen has long been known as a “missing stair” — as in, something you warn newcomers about so they don’t trip. “In various communities, there are people who are missing stairs. People who a whisper network will warn you about,”She said. “So, regarding Billy, there have been whispers for a long time, but he was just a drunk guy that hit on your friends.”

Jensen seems to have been disassociated from the community over the past two weeks. The First DegreeHosts told Rolling Stone he’s no longer part of the podcast. His upcoming book will be released. Killers Amidst Killers: Hunting Serial Killers Operating Under the Cloak of America’s Opioid EpidemicThe publication of, which was scheduled to appear this summer, has been delayed indefinitely. And of course there’s the end of the Murder Squad.

Since the show’s ending, sources Rolling StoneAccording to the people I spoke to, they are now reassessing their relationship with Jensen. Calderon-Olsen, the podcaster who bonded with Jensen over the Bundy documentary, hasn’t seen him since the alleged hair-touching incident in November 2019, but says they communicated a few times since then: once in December of that year, he let her know he’d mentioned a Bundy project she was working on in an interview he did. “I felt honored at the time he would do something like that for me, even though I was still stewing over what had just happened a few weeks prior,”She said. He also sent condolences to her after the death of a close friend. “Again, all these signs pointing to, he was a good guy.”She claims she also reached out to him with an official request for a production company and acknowledged that she had tagged him in some of her social media posts. They lost touch after the 2020 pandemic.

Newell said she cut all ties to Jensen during Jensen’s help with her book. She had seen rumors circulating online about his behavior at the Halloween party, which made her rethink her interactions with him in the past, which she says she hadn’t quite yet processed. “That was really when it clicked for me that this behavior is not OK,”Newell said. Newell claims that she used a lot of alcohol in social situations, but that she has stopped drinking since Jensen’s intervention. “This whole Billy thing coaxed me into one hundred percent not drinking anymore,”She said. “Because it has really been traumatic.”

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