'The Raven' podcast revisits NFL champ Ray Lewis and the Atlanta Super Bowl murders

Credit: Tenderfoot TV

It’s been 25 years since a deadly fight outside an Atlanta nightclub left two men stabbed to death just hours after the Super Bowl, and made national headlines when NFL star Ray Lewis was charged in connection with the crime.

Now, The Raven, a podcast from Tenderfoot TV hosted by Tim Livingston, revisits the unsolved double murder with new interviews, new evidence, and a sobering look at what power, fame, and money can cover up.

In an interview with GPB’s Pamela Kirkland, Livingston discusses what drew him to the story, why Lewis declined to participate, and what the case still reveals about justice, and its limits, more than two decades later.

TRANSCRIPT

Pamela Kirkland: It's Morning Edition, I'm Pamela Kirkland. It's one of the most notorious nights in Atlanta history: two men stabbed to death just hours after the Super Bowl and one of NFL's biggest stars at the time at the center of it all. The double murder in 2000 left a permanent mark on Atlanta's Buckhead neighborhood and made national headlines. Now, The Raven, a podcast from Tenderfoot TV, reexamines the case with fresh eyes and new evidence. Tim Livingston is the host. He joins me now to talk about revisiting a story that still casts a long shadow over Atlanta and the NFL. Tim, thanks for being here.

Tim Livingston: Thanks for having me.

Pamela Kirkland: Let's start with the night itself. So Jan. 31, 2000: for people who don't remember or maybe never knew about this, what exactly happened outside that Buckhead nightclub?

Tim Livingston: Yeah, well, that's the thing. Nobody knows what happened, right? So that's where we start from, where if you start Googling this crime, everybody knows about the crime itself, that a crime took place. It's infamous, but nobody knows what happened in that 30 seconds. When these two groups, one from Akron, Ohio, the other Ray Lewis's group, who was from all over the country, they got into a skirmish, two men ended up dead. What happened? And that, in the podcast, is what we're trying to uncover. And I, without giving anything away, very grateful that I was able to work with a lot of great detectives and a lot of really talented people at Tenderfoot TV. And by the end of the podcast, I think you have a pretty clear idea of who did what and why.

Pamela Kirkland: And what's very cool is you take listeners along on the journey and it feels like as you're uncovering new evidence and finding new facts that we're also learning at the same time. Was this a situation where you had reported most of this and then started building it or you were kind of building the bike as you were riding it?

Tim Livingston: That's a great question. So we did the same thing — Tenderfoot and I worked together on a podcast called Whistleblower, which was on the Tim Donaghy NBA betting scandal. And the way we produced The Raven was the same, which is we finished about three or four episodes before it was released. So we had a lot in the can. We had an idea of where we wanted the story to go. But one interesting thing with The Raven is that Ray Lewis was working with a producer in Hollywood — I will not name that person, but a very, very big sports documentary film producer. And I had set this whole thing up to where I wanted to uncover everything. And then at the end of the podcast, I wanted Ray Lewis to get on the phone. Just me call him. He picks up, says "hello," says whatever he says. And then we set up a documentary where he gets to tell his side of the story. That was the original vision. And to do that, you need to have the malleability within those Episodes 4 through 7 to pivot when necessary. So there was like the back half of the podcast. We had all the interviews lined up. We had an arc that we were planning on and then the arc ended up changing. We ended up inserting, like, my personal story: I had a friend who was killed a year after this under eerily similar circumstances and that's what attracted me to this story in the first place. We went back into that a little bit more and we kind of just really wanted to, with Ray — so Ray listened to it. This is not public. Ray did listen to — it's been reported, it's alleged, that Ray's listened to at least three episodes, did not love what he heard, and that's why we didn't end up getting him at the end of this podcast. But yeah, we ended up pivoting and focusing more on the human side, more on the victim side.

Pamela Kirkland: Talk about working on a project that involves someone like a Ray Lewis. I mean, NFL legend at the time, arguably one of the best players in the game. You have the very tough job of trying to figure out what happened on a night where there's not a lot of — to go on, in terms of figuring out what it is. And then you also have this element of celebrity that is also impeding your investigation.

Tim Livingston: Exactly, I mean Ray Lewis is such an interesting figure. The greatest middle linebacker in football history, but he's known for this. He's know for this incident. Anybody I — I believe, at least my friends, my brain — when you mention Ray Lewis you think about the murders before you think about the football exploits. And this guy is the best at what he did in the world ever. Best middle linebacker, the most important position on defense in football, the best ever —you think about the murders. And so for me I thought this was an opportunity for him, because without, again, giving too much away, he definitely played a role in this, but he did not, in my opinion, kill anybody. Again, based on my findings, there's no evidence that suggests that Ray committed the crime, the core crime at the center of this. So I thought that this was opportunity for his to listen 25 years later, come clean, and talk about what really happened. And unfortunately, he's obviously got a lot to balance with that celebrity and he's got a lot of people that I'm sure don't want him talking about this and he has pressures that I can't imagine and he decided not to — not to tell the story. And I know the documentary he wants to make is very much a fluff piece. I don't think it would be interesting. I don' think any of us would care. I think it would really gloss over all this in a way that wouldn't be interesting. And in the podcast, we — all we're trying to do is uncover the truth, and I think we're able to do that.

Pamela Kirkland: What do you think surprised you most in working on this project, without giving away too much?

Tim Livingston: What surprised me the most is that almost 25 years later, everybody was still trying to hide. Everybody that was involved in this fight from the Ray Lewis side, everybody was still trying hide, trying to cover up, trying to not take any accountability for what happened that night. In my experience, when you revisit these things so many years later you usually find one or two people who are willing to get it off their chest. Enough time has passed. Maybe somebody who was involved has passed and you know, those demons are ready to be exorcised. In this one, everybody was still silent and I really couldn't get much out of the people that were in Ray Lewis's limo that night and that was really surprising.

Pamela Kirkland: I've heard you say that this is more than just a true crime podcast. What do you think this podcast tells us about fame and accountability and celebrity culture?

Tim Livingston: It's a story about money. It's the story about what money can make go away and fame and celebrity can make it go away. Very powerful entities involved — way, way more powerful than Ray Lewis, we'll put it that way — at the high end of this thing. Who exactly they were, what exactly they were — what, what exactly they did, we can't be 100% sure. We can probably get to like 92% certainty. But yeah, it's a storey about money in America and what — what if you have those two things, with the fame, the fame and the celebrity of Ray Lewis, just that increased the stakes for the people that, I don't wanna say owned him, but that he worked for. And that is what drove a lot of this and why these two victims — and that's what we really tried to focus on, Richard Lawler and Jason Baker, these two men that were killed never received an ounce of justice. And I think if you look at this, there were certainly a lot of missteps by Paul Howard, the district attorney, and by the Atlanta police, but ultimately it was money and power that made this all go away.

Pamela Kirkland: 25 years later, still unanswered questions. Tim, thank you so much for joining me on Morning Edition.

Tim Livingston: Thanks for having me.

Pamela Kirkland: For listeners who want to check out The Raven, you can find it wherever you get your podcasts.