INTERVIEW: Joe Kenda opens up about ‘Homicide Hunter’ series finale

Photo: Homicide Hunter finishes its series run on Investigation Discovery Jan. 29. Photo courtesy of Investigation Discovery / Kim Cook / Provided by press site with permission.

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Homicide Hunter, the hugely successful true-crime series on Investigation Discovery, is about to retire from television screens for good. Host Lt. Joe Kenda, a retired homicide detective from the Colorado Springs Police Department, has been sharing his case files with legions of fans for the past 11 seasons, and now he sees the end in sight. The series finale of Homicide Hunter airs Wednesday, Jan. 29 at 9 p.m. on the network.

Over the years, Kenda has become a bonafide reality TV star — someone known for his straightforward retelling of murder cases with an even-keel rhythm that has won over many fans. On the program, he seems cool as a cucumber, and yet the topics he discussed over the years were gruesome and deadly. He is a just-the-facts kind of guy who has many catch phrases and interesting viewpoints on crime and criminals.

Before Kenda said goodbye to his beloved and enormous fanbase, he jumped on the phone with Hollywood Soapbox for a sweeping and revealing interview. Here’s what he had to say …

On his thoughts of ending Homicide Hunter …

“It’s been an interesting run. It’s been my honor to entertain people. It’s been my honor to be on television for that long. The credit for the success goes to everyone else involved in it, not me, which is Jupiter Entertainment and all the other people that are connected with the program. That’s where the credit lies in terms of how it’s presented. I was quite surprised at its success, and it remains a surprise to me. But it’s a very successful thing, and everybody seems to really like it. That’s good.”

On whether he has any plans for watching the series finale …

“There won’t be any parties. Every day, things start and things stop. That’s how it goes. I stopped this because I called Discovery a few months back and said, ‘Hey, I’m out of supply of tellable stories.’ What I had remaining were either too simple (we came, we saw, we arrested) or too disgusting (children and babies), and I won’t do those. And they won’t either. So I said, ‘I’m done. I want to go out at the top of my game. I don’t want to be the guy who remained on the stage and lost his voice, a singer, or an athlete who played one season too long. I wanted to go out at the top of my game, and that’s what this is.’

“It’s good right up until the end, and the finale is quite good. And I think it will leave people with a positive feeling as opposed to some other shows that have ended badly and made their fans angry. They had kind of a bad episode or whatever; that’s not the case with this one. I think it’s a fitting farwell, I think.”

On what fans can expect on the last episode …

“We thought about it. One of the things that fascinated the people at the network was that I have recurring nightmares from various cases. We never talked about that before, and that’s what this one is about. So it’s quite interesting. It’s just quite interesting. You’ll see when you watch it, as they say.”

On whether he was aware of his public image amongst fans …

“I don’t pay any attention to that, to be quite honest. I don’t know what people think of me. The only thing I’ve always said to myself, the only person I care what they think of me is me. If I look in the mirror, and I still like that guy I see in the mirror, then I’m good. Other people can think and believe whatever they like. I’m a human being, and you cannot do this work as a human being and not suffer from it. I think that’s what this finale presents is the fact that I am human, and I do suffer from it and I will until the day I die. But I also know that it was worth it because I put a lot of people in a cage who belonged in one, and that’s OK with me.”

On whether he worked off scripts or went back to the old case files …

“Most of it’s memory because the work is very intense. It’s something you don’t forget. You wouldn’t forget it either if you did it. I would go back to the file only to remember middle names or confirm that my memory was accurate, but I would just scan it. I wouldn’t read it. I’d just scan it. OK, we’re good. I never had a script during any of these episodes. I repeated the story as I recalled it, and it came right out of the case report because I either wrote the case report or reviewed it if it was written by others. So it’s all part of your work memory, and I’m either blessed or cursed with a good memory. Sometimes it’s a curse; sometimes it’s a blessing because you remember the bad as well as the good.

On whether he believes there is true evil in the world …

“I believe there is. I think it’s relatively rare. I think it’s rare, but there are people who kill for sport. There’s not many of them, but there are some. The rest of it is loss of self-control. Your emotions overcome your judgment. You do something incredibly stupid. You take the life of someone, and you’re truly sorry that you did that. But society won’t accept your apology. They want to lock you up or kill you for having done so, so that’s where it’s at. There are those people who kill because they like it, and those are rare. I only encountered one, and he’s locked up forever as a result.”

On whether victims and suspects often knew each other …

“It could be a romantic involvement. It could be a casual acquaintance. It could be a coworker, a business partner, even an illegal business partnership, any number of reasons, but for the majority of the cases, it varies by years, but somewhere between 95 and 97 percent are known to each other by some method or means. Maybe not well, maybe not intimately, but they know each other. Only 3 to 5 percent of homicides are stranger killings, and they comprise either wrong place, wrong time; caught in a crossfire, passing between two people shooting each other, and you get shot; and the occasional evil person who just decides to take a life because he thinks it’s going to be fun. They’re a relatively small number. They’re very, very difficult to resolve because there’s no connection between the victim and the suspect. There’s no motive that you can determine at least upfront. What the hell happened here? Why this person? There may not be a why.”

On what he will miss most about Homicide Hunter …

“I’m not going to miss it, I don’t think. I think what I will miss is the therapy it provided me. I think it was healthy for me. I feel better nine years later than I did nine years ago about talking about my experiences. I do feel better. I don’t feel great emotionally, but I feel better. Better to talk about it then to hold it inside of you, but I got quite a bit of it out. And I’m grateful about that, and that was a positive thing for me. It wasn’t of interest to me to be on television, to be famous, to be recognized and all that business. What was important to me, what motivated me to do it in the first place was therapy. I’ve never said more to that camera than I ever said to my wife about what I did for a living, and it was a for of release to me to rid myself of some of those emotions. So that part I’ll miss.”

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

Homicide Hunter with Lt. Joe Kenda will air its series finale Wednesday, Jan. 29 at 9 p.m. on Investigation Discovery. Click here for more information.