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TONYA MOSLEY, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Tonya Mosley. And before we get started, a warning that on today's show, we will be talking about rape and sexual assault. Five years ago, if you Googled who invented the rape kit - that's a package of items that medical professionals use to gather evidence after a sexual assault - the name Louis Vitullo would come up first. He was a Chicago police sergeant who, in the '70s, was credited with creating what would go on to become the standard for investigating rape and sexual assault. And for a time, it was even called the Vitullo Evidence Collection Kit. But investigative reporter Pagan Kennedy's new book wants to set the story straight. While Vitullo, she writes, was instrumental in getting Chicago police to use the kits, it was a woman who volunteered at a crisis hotline for runaway kids that was the mastermind behind the idea. Her name was Marty Goddard, an activist who preferred to be in the background as she advocated for the young runaways, many of whom she discovered were sexual assault victims.

How and why did Vitullo, a sergeant from one of the nation's most corrupt police agencies at the time, a department under investigation for troubling patterns of violent behavior and excessive force, become the poster child for ushering in a new era of understanding of sexual assault and rape?

Pagan Kennedy's book, "The Secret History Of The Rape Kit: A True Crime Story," sheds light on Marty Goddard's contributions and explores the broader issue of gender discrimination and the treatment of sexual assault victims. Kennedy is the author of several books, and her writing has appeared in dozens of publications. And she's worked as a columnist for the New York Times magazine, the Boston Globe magazine and the Village Voice. Pagan Kennedy, welcome to FRESH AIR. And thank you for this book. It really is a fascinating read.

PAGAN KENNEDY: Oh, thank you so much for having me on.

MOSLEY: I want to know first how you came to learn about Marty Goddard.

KENNEDY: Well, that actually did begin with the backlogs because in 2018, when I fell down this rabbit hole, the rape kit backlog was very much in the news. There were, of course, almost half a million kits that hadn't been processed, and this had become a major scandal. And I suddenly - you know, I'd been hearing about the kit my whole adult life, I think. And just like everybody else, I was very aware of it. And I think, like everybody else or lots of other people, I couldn't really - I didn't know much about it. And the more I thought about it, the more kind of amazing it seemed to me because there are just so many things in this world that seem to be designed to allow sexual assault to happen - you know, more and more parts of the internet, unfortunately - but just so many things or date rape drugs or some - the way cars work and things like that. But I couldn't really think of a lot of things that had been designed or created to back up the story of a survivor and to actually prove that an assault had happened.

And so I really wondered, how did this come to be? And that sent me to Wikipedia, where, at that time, it said that Louis Vitullo was the inventor of this kit. But he had died. He was already dead and had been dead for a while. And as I kind of searched around a little more, I kept seeing the name Marty Goddard as somebody who had been involved or helped him or something. And so I originally became really interested in her because I just thought, well, it looks like she's still alive. I can't find an obituary. So I really need to speak to her 'cause I want to hear - if she's the one living person who can tell me that story, I want to hear it.

MOSLEY: Marty Goddard died in 2015, but she kind of stumbled upon this prevalence of rape through runaway culture back in the '70s. What was her job, and what did she report seeing with these runaway kids?

KENNEDY: Yeah, so I originally found out about this because in my search for her, I turned up two very long oral history interviews where she was telling her story. And she always began her - she began her story in a hotline for what they called runaway teenagers back in the 1970s. And she was volunteering at this place called Metro Help in Chicago, answering the phones. And as she answered the phones - I mean, the story kind of going then was kids were running away 'cause they wanted to be hippies, and they wanted excitement and adventure and all that.

MOSLEY: Right. This was, like, psychedelic culture that - yeah, these kids were going out for adventure.

KENNEDY: Right. And that was so the way people thought of it then. But as she heard the stories of these kids - they were running away from abuse. And then she would try to help them and find out they had been put in a juvenile hall or something, where they would then be vulnerable to further sexual assault. So she was very, very upset and - about that issue.

And it's interesting 'cause in the early '70s, people didn't distinguish the way we do now in the same way between - we think of child sexual abuse and adult sexual abuse. We kind of put them in - make them separate. But it was much more connected in people's minds then. And so she was just generally looking at, OK, if what I'm seeing is correct - I'm seeing this hidden epidemic of what she would call incest, of generally fathers or uncles abusing kids - there must be so many perpetrators out there. Why are we not catching them? What is going wrong? So that's what opened up the question for her.

MOSLEY: She was asking basic questions that - it's so obvious today - but questions like, what if sexual assault could be investigated and prosecuted like a murder or a robbery? Today, it's an obvious yes. But take us back to that time period. What were some of the antiquated definitions of rape back then?

KENNEDY: Yes, exactly. Well, first of all, marital rape was legal in all 50 states in the early 1970s. And, you know, it's so bizarre because I was a little kid back then, so I lived through this period. But as I looked through newspaper articles and videos and all sorts of archival material, I was just shocked again and again at how - the way sexual assault was talked about and the victim blaming. That was just crazy. I mean, there was an - I found a New York Times article from the early '70s, and the title was "Little Ladies Of The Night." And they - the reporter talked about the problem of these teenage, I mean, young 12-, 13-, 14-year-old, quote-unquote, "prostitutes" in Midtown Manhattan and how these children were the problem.

MOSLEY: Thinking about "Taxi Driver," the movie. I don't know. Yeah.

KENNEDY: It's exactly like that. And that character in "Taxi Driver," she's treated like - you know, they're - she's this canny, wise adult almost. And these are kids, and there's no sort of thought of, well, how did these kids get there? What happened? Who's profiting off of them? - you know, all of the questions we'd ask now. And policing then, you know - another shocking thing was I found quotes from a police handbook in Chicago in the early '70s. And it just - the instructions to police for when somebody accuses assault were that many women who accuse men of assault are lying. They're just trying to get revenge on a cheating boyfriend. So you don't really have to pay attention. And it was completely up to the discretion of the police officer or the people in the hospital whether they even listened to the accuser. So if somebody is, say, is a sex worker or just is disheveled or whatever for whatever reason, they could just completely write them off.

MOSLEY: Pagan, let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guest is journalist Pagan Kennedy. We're talking about her new book, "The Secret History Of The Rape Kit," which is about the untold story of Marty Goddard, the woman who created a way for law enforcement to investigate rape and sexual assault. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF SOLANGE SONG, "WEARY")

MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. And today, we're talking to investigative journalist Pagan Kennedy about her new book, "The Secret History Of The Rape Kit: A True Crime Story." It's the story of Marty Goddard, the woman credited with helping to develop a way for law enforcement to investigate rape and sexual assault. Kennedy, a sexual assault survivor herself, was fueled to examine the topic of rape kits.

So Marty Goddard worked with runaway youth. She discovered this issue of sexual abuse and assault and rape, many of the reasons why these young people were running away from their homes and their communities. You write about that, but you also write about Marty's life. She was a trailblazer but also defiant. You describe her as troubled and mysterious. Basically, she created this revolutionary forensic tool, and then she disappeared. She only showed up here and there at the turn of the century. And I want to get to what you discovered about her personal life in a little bit. But in 2003, she was interviewed for an oral history archive project out of California. And I want to play a bit of her talking about the onus being on the victim. She describes how hospitals back then didn't even have replacement clothing for rape victims after authorities would take their clothing as evidence. Let's listen.

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MARTY GODDARD: If you don't have replacement clothes and you're going to take the patient's underwear and jewelry and shoes, and nylons and slip and their dress, and their coat in the winter in Chicago - that's what happened - and put them in bags, turn them over to the crime lab, well, excuse me, but what is she supposed to go home in? And not everybody wanted to tell their mom or their husband or their roommate that they had just been raped, so a lot of people wouldn't call. And do you know - and I'm telling you for sure, not only did I see this, but I've heard too many horror stories around the country. Victims were sent home in those little paper slippers. And they were sent home with a paper or cloth - hopefully cloth gown, one in the front, facing front, and the other tying around the back. That's what they got sent home in. And they were put in marked cars, like the Chicago PD or the sheriff's department or whatever, and driven home. Now, how - gee, don't you think your neighbors are going to wonder why you're in a police car and why you're dressed in paper slippers and two surgical gowns? Well, of course.

MOSLEY: That was Marty Goddard, one of the creators of the rape kit, talking to an oral historian in 2003. And my guest today, Pagan Kennedy, has written a book about the secret history of the rape kit and Goddard's contribution to creating that kit. You know, Pagan, I can hear that Chicago accent in her voice. She also represents a particular type of feminist. As you write, she wasn't at the forefront of marching and demonstrating, but you describe her as this behind-the-scenes person. And I'm wondering, what did you learn about how she moved to get things done? She could see all of this stuff happening, the way that victims were being treated in hospitals and police stations. But how did she gain access to law enforcement in a way that they would listen to her talk about some of the ways that were wrong that they were conducting investigations.

KENNEDY: So, yeah, in the early '70s, she began interviewing. She was put on a rape task force. There was finally a recognition that there was a real problem in Chicago. So she was on the citizens committee in this rape task force. And that gave her entree to talk to anybody she wanted to talk to, as she tells it. So she went into the crime lab, she interviewed everybody there. She went to hospitals, she talked to administrators, nurses, everybody. And what she was trying to do was get so deep in the weeds that she understood the problem of evidence either not being collected or thrown out. So why were police or hospital workers not bothering to listen to somebody who accused rape?

But then this other problem that she noticed was that the people in the crime lab would just - they'd get the bag from the hospital after the victim was examined, and then they'd just throw it in the trash. Why were they doing that? Well, she found out that according to the people in the crime lab, the hospital workers didn't know what they were doing, and they collected the slides and the swabs the wrong way. And they, in their haste to treat the, you know, person who'd been attacked, they might rip open their clothes to help them. But then they were ruining all this evidence because the clothes themselves were evidence.

And so they felt that the people in the hospital had - they blamed it on the people in the hospital for contaminating all the evidence. So they'd throw it out. And it became pretty clear that what you needed to do was create kind of a universal language that was spoken by both the people in the hospital - the nurses who were examining the people who came in after a sexual assault, as well as the people in the crime labs and the police officers - so that they all had the same way of thinking about creating a chain of evidence and, you know, creating uncontaminated, good evidence. So that was where the idea of the rape kit came in.

MOSLEY: So this sergeant from Chicago PD, Louis Vitullo, he was involved in creating this kit, but he didn't have nearly as much involvement as Marty, if I understand that correctly. So how did his name get attached to it?

KENNEDY: So Marty Goddard was running this nonprofit. And she trademarked under her nonprofit, trademarked the kit as the Vitullo kit. And it became known as that for a long time.

KENNEDY: And, you know, I've talked to people who worked with her, and they - they're generally of the opinion that she had to do a lot to work with the police department and all the different men who were in charge of allowing this system to be built. And so she had to smooth a lot of feathers, and part of that would be putting, you know, that it would be very helpful to have this kit, known as the Vitullo kit, and look very much - have the imprimatur of the police department and have a man's name on it, essentially.

MOSLEY: I mean, this really speaks to the time period, too, right? She knew that to have a man's name on it would - may possibly bring a certain amount of credence, authenticity, like, people would take it seriously.

KENNEDY: Yes, absolutely. And she was - you know, I don't think she was interested in taking credit. She was just really interested in getting it done. But, you know, so much of the research I did when I looked at all the newspapers from the time, you know, all the reporters were going to Marty Goddard to talk about, oh, this new system. And as it began, it spread to New York, and it started to go nationally, and they would always get quotes from her. And she's very much the person - if you were a reporter - who knew what was going on and would give you a good salty quote, you know, about what was happening, but also she was very much - kind of had her hands in every piece of it from the funding to working with the hospitals and working with rape crisis centers and all of that.

MOSLEY: You know, part of what you're setting up here and laying out in this book is really how hard it was for women and people of color to hold on and build their intellectual property because the word technology in itself was essentially a synonym for stuff that men do.

KENNEDY: Yes, absolutely. You know, this was very much on my mind. I'm really interested in the politics of invention and design. I worked for a couple of years as what I called the "Who Made That?" guy at The New York Times Magazine, and I - my job was every week to tell the backstory of an ordinary object. So I was - spent so much time hunting down the people who had actually originated ideas. And what I learned from that was that the people who are at the forefront of the problem are often the ones who are best fit to solve it. So, you know, rock climbers invent really good rock climbing gear. People who - with, you know, low vision are really good at inventing things that are audio-based. You know, a lot of our audio technology was - came from people who had vision problems.

MOSLEY: It makes sense.

KENNEDY: Things like that. Yeah.

MOSLEY: Yeah.

KENNEDY: And I've always been obsessed with the wheelchair ramp because it's an invention. It's an idea that obviously makes buildings accessible to many more people. But it's also when you see - if you're able-bodied and you see a wheelchair ramp, it sends a message about who matters and who doesn't. You know, who matters, who's allowed to be in the building, who should be in the building, who's important. And I think that, you know, design and - the designs, the stuff all around us is always sending us those messages about who's important, who should matter, who could matter. And unfortunately, too often, I think they send the wrong messages.

But I was really interested in the rape kit because, you know, as a system, as a evidence collection method, it's really brilliant. But it's also - sends a signal that we can solve sexual assault cases, that there can be evidence, that it's not all just a he said, she said. And if, you know, if you're not able to get the evidence, maybe you're just not working hard enough.

MOSLEY: Our guest today is investigative journalist Pagan Kennedy. We're talking about her new book, "The Secret History Of The Rape Kit: A True Crime Story." We'll be right back. I'm Tonya Mosley, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF KENNY BARRON AND DAVE HOLLAND'S "DR DO RIGHT")

MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Tonya Mosley, and my guest today is journalist Pagan Kennedy. We're talking about her new book, "The Secret History Of The Rape Kit: A True Crime Story," which tells the story of Marty Goddard, a victim's advocate who helped develop the concept of a standardized rape kit to improve the chances of identifying and convicting offenders. Kennedy is the author of 11 books. Her writing has appeared in dozens of publications, and she has worked as a columnist for the New York Times magazine, the Boston Globe magazine and the Village Voice.

You mentioned some of the things that were in that kit. It's pretty simple - a cardboard box, some test tubes, swabs, glass slides, other stuff like that. How does that kit - that first kit that Marty Goddard and Vitullo put together, how does it compare to what rape kits have in them today?

KENNEDY: Yeah, it's really, really similar. It still looks a lot like that. But as I investigated and talked to people, I became a lot more aware of the problems that do need to be solved and the fact that, you know, this kit was designed in the '70s in a completely analog era when people were, you know, talking on rotary phones and DNA identification and the internet didn't exist. So I would love to see survivors and nurses and lawyers and technologists and everybody coming together to really talk about how we could make the kit now much more resilient, what we could do with all these new tools we have. There's so much evidence now that's digital. Like, how could that be brought together with the biological evidence? The interesting thing about the rape kit - as we talked about before, it's often sort of just not looked at, you know? And I just - if there's one thing I can do, I want readers to think about it and look at it and wonder how it could be better.

MOSLEY: One of the interesting things that you found was Hugh Hefner's Playboy empire - the foundation arm of Playboy - actually helped Marty with her efforts. Can you say more on how Playboy actually played a part in offering a system for dissemination of these kits?

KENNEDY: Sure. So Marty Goddard, in her various interviews, talks about how she went around to the usual sources of money, which would be, you know, the fancy funding groups, where people meet up in golf clubs, I suppose, or country clubs, and, you know, it's all very well-heeled. And, you know, back then, you did not say the word rape in polite society, and so none of those groups wanted anything to do with this. So she really had trouble finding a funder. And there was a woman she had met when she was volunteering at the hotline named Margaret Standish, who's now Margaret Pokorny. And Margaret was working for the Playboy Foundation then and so offered up the idea that you could - you should try to apply, see whether Hugh Hefner's foundation will fund you. Because oddly enough, Hefner was funding - he was, you know, very much about sexual liberation and even women's empowerment. And in the end, that's where she got her first funding from.

MOSLEY: Right. And that funding helped her launch this campaign pushing hospitals and police departments to collect evidence. So it was basically the dissemination of these rape kits. Hefner, as you mentioned, felt like these kits were about sexual freedom because if women felt safe, then they would be sexually liberated.

KENNEDY: Exactly. I mean, I think - you know, but to his credit, he was funding a lot of women's rights groups and pushing for women's health initiatives. But yes, it did very much fit into his soft-core porn empire to enable women to be, you know, sexually liberated and out there as swinging singles.

MOSLEY: How long did it take for these kits to get out into the world outside of Chicago? Chicago instituted the kits, and then the rest of the country followed suit.

KENNEDY: Yeah. So it was - you know, by the end of the '70s, the - there was a wide swath of hospitals that were offering these rape kits with the forensic exam. And then Marty Goddard began going to New York and helping the police department in New York to set up their own program. And then later in the '80s - and this is where I think she really began to burn out in a lot of ways - she was traveling all around the country, guiding people in best practices about how to set up really good evidence systems. So she was just all over the place, and I think that was sort of the beginning of the end for her.

MOSLEY: These kits really did bring legitimacy to the investigative process. You also write that they allowed for the theater of belief in the courtroom. Can you say more about that?

KENNEDY: Yeah, actually, it was Cynthia Gehrie, who was, you know, Marty's collaborator in the early days, who made me think about that first. And Cynthia pointed out that the whole point of this project was to have a survivor in the - you know, stand up and tell her story but be backed up in a courtroom and be believed. And she would be backed up by a person, a nurse or a doctor in a white lab coat, and a kit with seals on it that looked super official. And so there was a kind of theater element to showing the jury that you had collected evidence - could be semen or blood or pictures of the wounds - and you'd done it very, very carefully, and it couldn't be faked 'cause there was so much suspicion that the survivor would be lying. So it was very much about that, about sort of, you know, at a time when juries would be very oriented against an accuser, showing that there was a whole group of experts who were behind her.

MOSLEY: How was the evidence used before DNA evidence? How were they able to use the evidence from the kits to find the perpetrator?

KENNEDY: Yeah, so there were limited things you could do. You could look at somebody's blood type. Obviously, that would rule out some people, you know, but it wouldn't be very precise at all.

KENNEDY: There were sometimes some particular protein or something particular to one person that you might be able to really narrow down the field in terms of, you know, looking at semen or blood. But a lot of it would be looking at the survivor's body of, you know, what bruises did she have and her clothes. You know, they were collecting whatever they could off of her body that might connect it to a scene of the crime. And they were pretty much flying blind but trying to work with what they had.

MOSLEY: Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guest is journalist Pagan Kennedy. We're talking about her new book, "The Secret History Of The Rape Kit," which is about the untold story of Marty Goddard, the woman who created a way for law enforcement to investigate rape and sexual assault. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF JULIAN LAGE GROUP'S "IOWA TAKEN")

MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. Today, we're talking to investigative journalist Pagan Kennedy about her new book, "The Secret History Of The Rape Kit: A True Crime Story." Kennedy, a sexual assault survivor herself, was fueled to examine the topic of rape kits.

There's also this - I guess you could call it, like, socioracial justice element to the rape kit because - not just for the survivors, but for men who are wrongly convicted or accused of rape. What was Marty's role in bringing awareness to that? - in particular, Black and brown men and being unjustly accused of rape.

KENNEDY: She was - from Day 1, she was very clear that part of the point of this was to clear the names of men who were falsely accused. And in the '80s, when she was sort of beginning to leave the stage, that was something she was outspoken about. But I would say that, you know, this is something that I feel people aren't aware enough of, that one of the things that's really important about building and protecting a rape kit evidence system is the fact that so many exonerations can come from this system.

And I even found an interesting report recently showing that possibly the reason why false accusations against Black and brown men has plummeted recently is because of the use of rape kits, and especially because we've now processed so many of the backlogged kits. And so the point was made that, you know, even before the trial, if you have the DNA - if somebody is falsely accused, you can just overturn that very quickly if you have strong evidence or DNA evidence showing somebody else's DNA in the kit, so this is not even relevant, you know? So that's really important.

MOSLEY: I mean, the assumption that I think we've all had is that once DNA came on the scene, it would right the wrongs. It should have radically changed forensics and the ability to go back and test older kits and get dangerous people off the street and exonerate people who had been accused - wrongly accused. Do you have an understanding of how much that happened as we got into the '90s and the 2000s? I know we've seen a dip in the numbers of people being wrongly accused, but we also see this huge backlog.

KENNEDY: Yes. Well, I will say that thanks to wonderful groups like Joyful Heart that did the End The Backlog project and many survivors and prosecutors like Kym Worthy and all kinds of people who worked tirelessly to raise this issue of the backlogs, that problem, it's not solved, but it's a lot better. The - you know, through the last 10 or so years, there's been enormous funding to pay for the DNA and the kits to be processed, and it has really given us a lot of new data. So that's wonderful. I think there's - from the people I talked to and doing a lot of research, it's also really clear that we have a problem of access, that there's still just too few people who have been through something terrible, who feel like they can submit evidence. So I think that's something we really need to think about and work on.

MOSLEY: Why was there even a backlog to begin with? I think Detroit or Michigan was one of the first places we began to hear of thousands and thousands of rape kits that had yet to be tested.

KENNEDY: We became aware of - yes, exactly - of that backlog in Detroit in the 2010s because of amazing activists in that city who brought this to attention. And there were thousands of these kits that were warehoused in this structure that if you - I saw the video of them finding it, and it looks like a parking garage, and there was, like, pigeons flying around and stuff. But what's really depressing is that almost as soon as the rape kit system existed, there were backlogs, or I should say as soon as DNA identification became possible there were backlogs because it was expensive to do, especially in the early 1990s, you know, if you think about how expensive that would be.

And so almost immediately, it was in the news. I found the news stories, but it wasn't really on anybody's radar that immediately there were backlogged kits and untested kits. And people who were very upset about that - you know, often people who were detectives or worked in crime labs were trying to raise this issue, but it just didn't get any traction, I think, until Kym Worthy and other people in Detroit really made it an issue.

MOSLEY: Prosecutor Kym Worthy.

KENNEDY: Yes.

MOSLEY: Yeah. When you wrote the original piece that then became this book - you wrote a piece in 2020 for the New York Times - there was this one big thing that you struggled with, and that was your own experience with sexual assault. How did you decide to tell your story of what happened to you within this story?

KENNEDY: Yeah. So when I went back to write the book, I really was wrestling with whether I should talk about what had happened to me. And, you know, I was just in two separate incidents. When I was a child, I was molested. And I struggled with that because I felt like what happened to me was, like, the normal amount of sexual assault. I mean, it was like - what? - it wasn't extraordinary. And there are so many survivors who have been through so much worse. And I didn't even think of myself as a survivor, really. You know, it seemed to me like I was - you know, I didn't deserve that label. But as I thought more about it, as I was telling the story, I kept realizing that as I'm telling the story of Marty Goddard marching into the police department or whatever, I'm a little kid at that time and I'm grappling with what has happened to me and unable to tell the adults, because it's a time when it's very clear you can't tell. You shouldn't tell because what happened, even if the adults are trying their best, they're not going to be able to hear it.

So I thought that I would weave in my own story just a bit to just be another thread that really gets across what that time was like. And what's amazing looking back is I realize I don't think I really knew that sexual assault was a crime until I got to college in the 1980s, and we were all talking about it then. And so I think my experience stands in for the experience of so many other people who something happens to you when you're very young, and you think it's all your fault. But then as an adult you find out, oh, this was a crime. And that person was a criminal in the eyes of the law. And actually, I feel like that's so important. I mean, it's such a small thing to ask for, but it's so important.

MOSLEY: Going back to that story of Marty Goddard, Marty didn't feel like she needed to be the face of this. In fact, she didn't even like being in the forefront of most things that she did. Why do you think it's important that we know her name, know her contribution?

KENNEDY: I think one reason it's important is her story tells us a lot about how change can be made in difficult times. And, you know, she is a real case for getting into the weeds. I mean, she diagnosed the problem, specifically in Chicago, but the problem of sexual assault evidence, why it was being thrown out and so forth. She got in, she talked to everybody, she had this curiosity. And she was just very oriented towards what exactly is the problem, and how can we fix it? And I think she was working at this level as a designer and a creator that is very inspiring to me and I hope to other people because, you know, often, if you just simply dig in and kind of get in the weeds and figure out what a problem is and solve it quietly, you can actually make quite a significant change for the good.

MOSLEY: Pagan Kennedy, thank you so much for taking the time and for writing this book.

KENNEDY: Thank you so much.

MOSLEY: Pagan Kennedy's new book is "The Secret History Of The Rape Kit: A True Crime Story." Coming up, TV critic David Bianculli reviews a new Western miniseries on Netflix, which he calls both dark and very good. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF BRIAN ENO AND JOHN CALE SONG, "SPINNING AWAY")

MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. Netflix recently premiered all six episodes of a new Western miniseries set in the lawless Utah territory of 1857. It's a collaboration between writer Mark L. Smith, who wrote "The Revenant," and actor-director Peter Berg of "Friday Night Lights." TV critic David Bianculli has seen the entire series and says it's very dark, very unpredictable, but also very good. Here's his review.

DAVID BIANCULLI, BYLINE: If you saw the 2015 movie "The Revenant," cowritten by Mark L. Smith, you have some strong hints about what he's up to in his new Netflix miniseries," American Primeval." Both stories are set in the 19th century in isolated and rugged lands full of promise and danger. Both stories are about characters who face formidable obstacles and either fight back from the edge of death or just die, sometimes both. Smith wrote all six episodes of "American Primeval," and Peter Berg directed them all. This gives the drama an even, cohesive feel and flow.

Smith uses a few actual events and characters from the 1850s, including Brigham Young of the Mormons, as the launching point for his largely fictional narrative. Berg, of both the movie and TV versions of "Friday Night Lights," has a gift for making characters both credible and relatable, whether he's acting or directing, and he does it again here. "American Primeval" begins by following two sets of travelers making their way west. There's Sara Rowell, played by Betty Gilpin from "Glow," who's trying to arrange safe passage for her and her young son, Devin, to meet her husband in a town even farther west. And there's a newlywed couple, Jacob and Abish, part of a wagon train of pioneers hoping to settle in a nearby territory.

Along the way, there's hostile weather and even more hostile people, from the various Native tribes fighting to maintain their land to the pioneers, the American Army and even the armed Mormon militia, all claiming their rights to the same land. And in the middle of both the land and its conflicts is Jim Bridger, an early settler who built his own trading post and now finds himself surrounded by warring factions, and occasionally, visited by such travelers as Betty Gilpin's Sara, who barges into Bridger's office horrified by the violence she's just witnessed inside his fort. Bridger is played by Shea Whigham from "Boardwalk Empire" and "The Joker," who's a scene-stealing charmer here. With a full beard, twinkly eyes and a playful way with words, Bridger is fun to spend time with, as in this early scene when he's not thrown at all by Sara's attitude and demands.

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BETTY GILPIN: (As Sara Rowell) Quite an establishment you have here. I expected things to improve once we came across more people.

SHEA WHIGHAM: (As Jim Bridger) Civilization and civilized are two different words entirely, Ms. Rowell. I might suggest you head back to Boston, where you'll find more of each.

GILPIN: (As Sara Rowell) My husband is waiting for us at Crook Springs.

WHIGHAM: (As Jim Bridger) I suggest maybe you wait a little longer till early spring. Weather will have eased by then, and any luck, the tribes and Mormons will stop their ravaging.

GILPIN: (As Sara Rowell) I'm afraid waiting is not an option, Mr. Bridger.

WHIGHAM: (As Jim Bridger) I can't seem to make clear what you're asking for, Ms. Rowell.

GILPIN: (As Sara Rowell) I'm asking for a guide to Crook Springs.

BIANCULLI: Sara and her son end up hitching a ride in a wagon with a newlywed couple heading west. But it's not long before the pioneers are stopped in transit by James Wolsey, a leader of Brigham Young's Mormon militia. He's played by Joe Tippett. And in this scene, flanked by his men, Wolsey questions the man in charge of the travelers, who happens to be played by Peter Berg himself.

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JOE TIPPETT: (As James Wolsey) You possess a permit to be on these lands?

PETER BERG: (As Fancher) Permit?

TIPPETT: (As James Wolsey) By proclamation of Governor Brigham Young, no person shall be allowed to pass through this territory without a permit provided by a proper officer. If you don't have a permit, you and your party need to turn your wagons back east before nightfall. You're not going to keep on through here.

BERG: (As Fancher) Friends, you can assure Governor Young that we're going to be out of here first light. He'll never knew we were here.

TIPPETT: (As James Wolsey) I'm afraid it don't work like that.

DOMINIC BOGART: (As Frank Cook) Governor Young has declared martial law to protect his people due to you and your kind driving us out of our homes, killing our loved ones, telling us to find our own place to be.

TIPPETT: (As James Wolsey) Well, we found that place, and mister, you're standing on it.

BERG: (As Fancher) As I understand it, I'm standing on land owned by the United States government. I do not need permission.

BOGART: (As Frank Cook) A proclamation of Governor Brigham Young. No man shall be...

BERG: (As Fancher) You keep talking about your proclamation. I do hear you. I'm not deaf. Only problem is that we have our own proclamation, and that proclamation says that we take orders from no man.

BIANCULLI: After this point, the wagon train is targeted in what was a real-life event called the Mountain Meadows Massacre, which killed 120 westbound pioneers. There were few survivors, but those survivors in this TV miniseries are crucial to the rest of the story "American Primeval" has to tell. It's at this point when some of them team up with a frontiersman named Isaac Reed, played by Taylor Kitsch, who played the star football player in "Friday Night Lights" on Berg's TV version. Kitch and Betty Gilpin as Sara have the most chemistry and screen time here. But I also keep going back to savor scenes with Shea Whigham as Jim Bridger. He keeps resisting all offers to sell his fort, even when Governor Brigham Young, leader of the Mormons, eventually pays a personal visit. Kim Coates, from another excellent Netflix Western, "Godless," plays Brigham Young.

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KIM COATES: (As Brigham Young) Word was relayed to me that your earlier negotiations with Brother Hickman had unfortunately become strained.

WHIGHAM: (As Jim Bridger) Your boy Bill carries a tone that I'm not entirely fond of, makes it seem as if your people are ready to take what's not offered.

COATES: (As Brigham Young) Oh, I apologize. If that's the impression you took away, Mr. Bridger, I can assure you that is not my intent.

WHIGHAM: (As Jim Bridger) What is your intent, Governor?

COATES: (As Brigham Young) I want your fort.

WHIGHAM: (As Jim Bridger) Oh, I'm sure you do. And if the Army gets their hands on it, it's the end of you Mormons.

BIANCULLI: "American Primeval" is as gritty as HBO's "Deadwood" and as full of heart and of endearing characters as CBS' classic "Lonesome Dove." Be forewarned, some of the violence in "American Primeval" is as sudden, chaotic and disturbing as the opening scenes of "Saving Private Ryan." This new Netflix Western is not an easy watch, but the road west back then was not an easy path. You'll be rewarded for your efforts if you make it through with some sites and performances you'll not soon forget.

TONYA MOSLEY, HOST:

David Bianculli is a professor of television studies at Rowan University. He reviewed the new Netflix series, "American Primeval." If you'd like to catch up on our interviews or those that you missed, like our conversation with comedian Roy Wood Jr. or Pico Iyer, check out our podcast. You'll find lots of FRESH AIR interviews. And to find out what's happening behind the scenes of our show and get our producers' recommendations on what to watch, read and listen to, subscribe to our free newsletter at whyy.org/freshair.

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MOSLEY: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorrock, Anne Marie Baldonado, Sam Briger, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Susan Nyakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Thea Chaloner directed today's show. With Terry Gross, I'm Tonya Mosley.

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