NYT Freelance Journalist Sean Keenan on Interviewing New Orleans Massacre Suspect Back in 2015: ‘I’m Still Processing It All’

EXCERPT:

KEENAN: “An ‘Atlanta Journal-Constitution’ Reporter Jozsef Papp reached out to me on Twitter and said, did you write this story in 2015? I said, sure. Why? What does it matter? He said that that could be the suspect, and my head was spinning. And I, you know, what little I remember about that interview was a very cool, calm and collected guy. Like he -- nothing about his character threw any red flags, which I think is reflective of what a lot of us are hearing while we're covering this story. I mean, a lot of my colleagues at ‘The New York Times’ talked to family and friends, and they're telling you, this was a wild 180. So no, what I remember about the interview with him was his pretty reserved demeanor. He was a little bit distant in the way that, you know, you sometimes see from veterans who, you know, have had difficult deployments. And I, interestingly enough, remember his eyes, which is actually how we confirmed the story, confirmed that this was the same guy after the FBI published the photograph of him. I realized, like, yes, that's the guy I sat down with. And I've been getting a lot of calls from family and friends today asking like, you know, how does it feel? And frankly, I'm still processing it all. It's been a whirlwind of a day.”