The podcast explores the surprising darkness at the core of the Dead’s music and the culture surrounding them, and the phenomenon of how susceptible Deadheads, in their free-wheeling nature, have been to predation…

The point is made early on that there is not a serial killer who has been hunting down Deadheads for decades. As prolific cybersleuth Todd Matthews explains in an interview, what he established by linking these cases to the victims’ Grateful Dead fandom is a commonality that garners attention—murder and the Grateful Dead is pretty tantalizing as far as headlines go—and hopefully helps solve cold cases.

“The real commonality is this sort of vulnerability that exists in a lot of different subsets of people,” Lindsey says. “The importance of this whole thing is that, by bundling them all together like that and giving them a moniker, it creates this commonality that is noticed. And so people who are part of the Grateful Dead world will see this, and they’re likely the people who could help solve it.”

It’s tempting to generalize about Deadheads in order to get to the heart of that vulnerability, but it’s also valuable in understanding why there is a link between these cases.