The Ticking Clock

By Arabella Saunders

Creative writing classes often tout that the end of a story is the most important part. That if a reader spends minutes, hours, days or even weeks reading a story just to come to an ending with no answers or conclusions, then it’s no good.

But what happens when a story doesn’t have an ending yet?

That’s a question journalist Delia D’Ambra – a former Outer Banks resident turned Florida-based reporter – is tackling with her true crime podcast, CounterClock.

CounterClock goes backwards in time to the period leading up to July 13, 1997 – the day 33-yearold Denise Johnson was discovered by emergency responders inside her burning Kill Devil Hills home. The crime remains unsolved, but Delia hopes her reporting will eventually help uncover the end to one of the most important stories she’s ever told in her life.

Delia was four years old when her family moved to Roanoke Island in 1997 – the same year that Denise was killed.

But it wasn’t until Delia began researching unsolved murders in January 2018 that she stumbled upon the crime that took place in her seemingly idyllic hometown.

“I literally Googled unsolved crimes and the area, thinking that nothing would pop up because I figured I would already know about it – and then, bam, there it was,” Delia explains. “I went to the Kill Devil Hills police site and there was a whole page dedicated to Denise. That’s when I thought, ‘Alright, here we go.’”

At that point, Delia had moved to Fort Myers, Florida, for a job as a fulltime reporter with NBC, so she not only had to overcome the challenge of working remotely, but she also had to grapple with a case that had remained largely untouched for more than two decades. With this stagnation came long winding searches for lost or misplaced records and days spent tracking down sources who hadn’t spoken about the case in years…or never at all.

For many key players in the case – such a police officers, family members or close friends of Denise – Delia arranged phone calls in advance, informing the sources that they would be recorded and potentially featured in the podcast.

But for a number of others – such as those who had been tied to Denise but never vocal about the case, or even those who were still potential persons of interest – Delia tried to first establish a relationship of trust. She hoped those relationships, which she started by making off-record phone calls, would help glean the most accurate and useful information.

“I wanted to touch base with people and introduce myself as a local,” she says. “It was an important part of working up to really having those conversations.”

A photo of Denise Johnson, whose unsolved murder rocked the Outer Banks in 1997.

Using this technique, Delia was able to speak to sources such as Denise’s roommate at the time, who initially appeared to disappear shortly after the murder.

In addition to establishing trust with sources she thought may be hesitant to speak on record, Delia was also strategic about the way shereleased new episodes. In an attempt to draw more people in who could potentially provide valuable information, she released podcast episodes as she went along – nearly in real-time with her reporting.

“I knew the importance of getting some of that information out there so that people could contact me about the story,” Delia says. “Those were leads I had to follow up on, but I also needed to be consistent so that I didn’t stall out the narrative.”

Shortly after the podcast was published in August 2018, and hundreds of thousands of downloads were secured, Delia was approached by Ashley Flowers – the host of the mega-popular podcast, Crime Junkies – about partnering with her network company, Audiochuck, in order to reach a wider audience.

Over the next year, Delia worked with Ashley’s Audiochuck team to revamp and relaunch the first season of CounterClock. The second reveal also allowed Delia the opportunity to track down a number of new sources and follow up with those she had already spoken to the year prior.

On January 16, 2020, CounterClock saw the start of its new launch. Within seven days, the first episode had more than one million combined downloads and the podcast found itself at number one on the U.S. Apple charts for more than a week.

While plans for a second season of CounterClock aren’t quite on the table at the moment, Delia is looking into the possibility of working on another true crime podcast. But no matter what she tackles next, one thing’s for sure: Delia will never give up on the Denise Johnson case.

“The relationship I’ve developed with members of the Johnson family and members of the community who knew Denise, is really validating,” she explains. “And that’s what really matters because it’s not my story, it’s theirs. I’m just here to help tell it.”