‘Atlanta Monster’ Producer Tenderfoot TV Lines Up True Crime Podcast Series ‘Insomniac’

EXCLUSIVE: Tenderfoot TV, the company behind the hit Atlanta Monster and Up and Vanished podcasts, is launching its latest series – true crime story Insomniac. The podcast, which explores the dark world of serial killers, is produced for iHeartRadio Original Podcasts.

Monster Presents: Insomniac, hosted by Scott Benjamin, will look at five serial killers across ten episodes including The I-70 Strangler Herb Baumeister, The Rochester Strangler Arthur Shawcross, Stephen McDaniel, Donald Henry “Pee Wee” Gaskins Jr. and The Candy Man Dean Corll.

It will tell these stories with a twist; it will also explore the process through the eyes of host Benjamin, who spent hours researching grisly crime scene photos before it started affecting him. The process began to consume him and he started to experience insomnia. Insomniac is the story of that journey – one man’s freefall from objective researcher to tormented subject.

It is the latest doc series for Tenderfoot TV, which is run by Donald Albright and Payne Lindsey. The company, which has had around 400M downloads for its podcasts including To Live and Die in LA with The Dirt author and Rolling Stone writer Neil Strauss, also previously adapted its Up and Vanished podcast with Ben Silverman’s Propagate Content for Oxygen.

Repped by UTA’s Grace Royer and Oren Rosenbaum, Tenderfoot TV is also in talks with production companies and networks to develop other adaptations of its podcasts. “We’re figuring out the best way to do it,” Albright told Deadline. UTA also represents iHeartRadio.

The series is being exec produced by Tenderfoot TV co-founder Payne Lindsey and creative producer Meredith Stedman.

“I started this podcast with the idea to just tell stories of lesser known serial killers – the ones that very few have ever heard of,” said Benjamin. “But along the way, I experienced some significant losses in my family, and that, combined with completely immersing myself into the lives of these killers, day-after-day, has changed something inside of me. The podcast became more of a personal narrative, one that explores the ways in which those of us studying these horrifying minds work to try and return to some kind of normality.”

“This true crime podcast is unlike anything we’ve seen before at Tenderfoot. It not only recounts the crimes of lesser-known serial killers, but explores the effects that these deeply disturbing stories have on those who tell them,” added Stedman. “Scott opens up and takes listeners on his personal journey, immersing himself in heinous crimes. The psychological impact is chilling.”

Listen to the trailer here.