True crime fanatics find community at library podcast club
By Dylan Mcginty
The Middlebury Campus
November 13, 2025
If you stop by the Ilsley Public Library’s temporary location in the National Bank of Middlebury on the first Thursday of each month and overhear a group of about 10 of your neighbors talking about a serial killing or a kidnapping streak, know that you can probably still sleep peacefully. They’re not planning a murder, nor recounting what they saw in their backyard last night. They are the library’s true crime podcast club, and anyone can join them.
Renee Ursitti, the librarian behind the club, leads the group’s discussions, using each rotating podcast as an opportunity to dissect the raw facts behind a case. This month, they dished on the first season of “The Clearing,” a 2019 podcast following the investigations of April Balascio, who unraveled the truth about her serial killer father, Ed Wayne Edwards.