Nina Gilden Seavey, AB '78, will speak about her podcast "My Fugitive" as part of the St. Louis International Film Festival on Saturday, Nov. 13 at 4:00 p.m. in Brown Hall Auditorium.
Gilden Seavey was 12 years old on May 4, 1970, the day the Air Force ROTC building on the Washington University campus burned to the ground in an anti-war protest. Her father, civil-rights attorney Louis Gilden, represented several students arrested and sentenced on federal charges, the only such charges levied against protesters in the U.S. One of them, Howard Mechanic, fled and became one of the longest-running fugitives in U.S. history. As an adult, documentarian Seavey picked up the trail, intent on finding out what really happened that night on the campus of Washington University and why these students suffered such unique and intense punishment. Her decade-long investigation, originally conceived as a documentary, culminated in the eight-part podcast series My Fugitive. Now, more than 50 years later, Seavey returns to the proverbial scene of the crime. St. Louis Public Radio host Sarah Fenske and Seavey will engage in a wide-ranging discussion about My Fugitive and the tangled story it uncovered.