In this deeply moving episode, veteran CBS News correspondent and newly minted Oscar winner Steve Hartman joins Jane Clayson Johnson to discuss his landmark documentary, “All the Empty Rooms.”
For seven years, Hartman and photographer Lou Bopp chronicled the untouched bedrooms of children lost to school shootings — spaces Hartman describes as “sacred.”
Hartman reveals why he kept the project a secret for years, the profound impact of sitting with grieving parents, and his hope that by standing in these rooms, America can find a way to replace numbness with empathy.
Subscribe to “Deseret Voices” on YouTube, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Note: Transcript edited by Steven Watkins
Jane Clayson Johnson: For decades, veteran CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman has told stories of kindness, resilience, and quiet goodness in the world. For the last seven years, Steve and photographer Lou Bopp have been working on something quite different. They reached out to families whose children were killed in school shootings, asking if they could photograph the bedrooms of their children — sacred spaces left behind, often still untouched by grieving families. The documentary, called “All the Empty Rooms,” is now on Netflix. The film is resonating across the country and has just received an Academy Award. Steve Hartman and I worked together at CBS News years ago, and so it’s such a pleasure to have Steve with us here today. Congratulations on the Oscar! Incredible.
Steve Hartman: Thank you. It’s surreal. Winning an Oscar was certainly never on my journalism awards bucket list.
JCJ: Yeah, so what were your thoughts as you stood on the stage to accept that award?
SH: You know, for the longest time, you know, I thought I wanted this film to win an Academy Award because it would amplify the message. But in the end, there were four families that were part of the documentary, eight parents total — and we invited them to the Oscars. And we said something to one of them in advance, you know, “I hope, you know, you’re not disappointed, you know, if we don’t win.” And, you know, when we did win, all I wanted to do was hug all of them. And, you know, after we come down off the stage and all the parents are there and they’ve obviously suffered so much, but it was joy. They heard their kid’s name echo on that stage for a billion people to hear. And really, all they want is for their child to not be forgotten. And, you know, the fact that the film accomplished that, if nothing else, was reward enough for me.
JCJ: You worked on this project for seven years. Here’s a clip from the film of you talking about why you did this.
(Documentary clip) SH: I’ve been typecast as, you know, the feel-good, happy news kind of guy. I’m the guy that they bring in at the end to, like, restore people’s faith in humanity. News Anchor: We had planned to end the week with one of those wonderful stories from Steve Hartman. Steve has some thoughts tonight about this tragedy. SH: And what I’d been doing is just whitewashing the whole thing. Imagine that — trying to find good news in a school shooting. In a lot of mass shootings, that’s been my job. At the end of the week, remind us that, you know, life is still worth living. I’m not going to look at a school shooting and try to find some kind of positive angle to that — not anymore.
JCJ: I’ve known you for 25 years. I can hear the resolve in your voice, even a determination to do something about this.
SH: Yeah, I haven’t really felt that before since, you know. I guess I just got to a breaking point on this one particular issue. And I’m glad I hit that breaking point. It felt like I was kind of glossing over the seriousness of it, and I was a little embarrassed. And at the same time, I felt like I was kind of growing numb to the school shooting epidemic. I felt like America was growing numb to it. There were just so many, and they would, you know, one would blend into the next, and we’d forget the name of the school, and we’d certainly forget the name of the victims. And it just — it wasn’t sitting right with me. So, I started to think, well, you know, what could I do to possibly shake myself and the nation out of that? And that’s when I started thinking about the bedrooms. And I thought about what it would be like after losing a child in such a traumatic way to return to that room that night and be in that space. And I thought, what if all of America could stand in that space? Might that shake us out of the numbness and restore some empathy? So, that’s where the idea came from. And, you know, so I wrote letters to pretty much everybody that had lost somebody in a school shooting since Sandy Hook, asking for permission to enter that sacred space.
JCJ: And talk about that process of writing letters to parents whose children had been murdered. I mean, what was that process like, and what was your request specifically?
SH: So, I knew it was a huge ask because these bedrooms — sometimes the doors are locked, even close friends and family are not allowed in the rooms. And so, I wasn’t expecting many yeses, if any. But I just wrote a letter, and I explained who I was and what my mission was about restoring empathy. And I said it would be a minimal footprint, you know — I don’t even need to come, just a still photographer with no tripod, no lights, just to capture that — that room. And of course, most parents, you know, did not respond. Some responded and said they’d repurposed the rooms, but in the end, eight families agreed to let us come there. And, you know, I would say some had an agenda, but it wasn’t always the same agenda, other than the fact that they just wanted people to remember their child. And, you know, hear the stories of their child — the sad stories and the fun stories. I mean, when you enter these spaces and you start going around with the parents and they talk about the different things in the room, there’s a lot of laughs, too. I mean, just funny stories that you learn about the kids. And, so that’s the process of how we went about it.
JCJ: A child’s bedroom really captures who they are, right? Their personality. What struck you when you walked into these rooms?
SH: Another producer at CBS News, after watching the film, told me, you know, “You show me the picture of a child who was killed in a school shooting, and it’s somebody else’s kid. But you show me the bedroom of that child, and all of a sudden, it becomes my child.”
Because you look around that room and you see your child in that room. Sometimes they’re collecting the very same things — the same shells, you know, that little metal bank that every kid has, you know — you see that in there. And you see just how quickly the life was cut short because these kids left these rooms that morning thinking for sure they would return, and there are many tasks left undone in those rooms.
And the photographer, Lou Bopp, did an amazing job of capturing those little things — little tasks left undone. Like, there’s a photograph of a toothpaste tube with the cap off. And, you know, that kid was just racing to school that day; putting the cap back on the toothpaste tube is something you can save for a later date. But that date never came. Sometimes there was homework strewn on the floor, even in one case a bed unmade, years after the tragedy.
So, again, my theory was that if America could stand in those rooms, we’d be a different America, and I think I still believe that. Winning the Oscar shines a bright spotlight on that, and I know more and more people are watching the film, despite the fact that they think, “Oh, I can’t handle that.” I’m surprised at the number of people who can just turn a blind eye to it and say, “Oh, I don’t want to watch that.” But more and more people are, and we’re going to screen it for Congress, and, you know, hopefully a hundred or so of them show up, because I do think that, you know, everyone needs to take a moment and be in that space.
JCJ: I want to play a clip from the film. Here’s a scene when you visit Hallie Scruggs — her room — in Nashville, Tennessee. Hallie was 9 years old when she was killed in the Covenant School shooting in 2023.
(Documentary clip) Hallie’s mom: Sometimes I’ll just go and look around and look at all her little trinkets and stuffed animals and shells that she collected and, um, go and just, like, smell her blankie, um, that she slept with every night. And I feel like a lot of crying happens in that room.
JCJ: Mm. Just the grief of these parents ... you know, so many years later, it is still so raw.
SH: Yeah. That pain never goes away, but it definitely ebbs and flows. They go into the rooms to cry sometimes, and they go in the room to laugh sometimes. And that’s one of the things that kind of struck me after visiting several of these bedrooms was, you know, there are moments of pain, but it’s not constant sorrow. And I think when you lose a child in this way, you know, you just need to accept that ebb and flow. And I actually found comfort in that, you know, if something like this ever happened to me or one of my children, all these parents — they still found joy, you know, at times. And life does go on, and it’s not that you ever forget, but you do find moments of happiness afterward. I’m sure in the beginning it seems like there’s no way there’d be another happy day in your life and maybe you don’t want to go on. But, you know, eventually those moments return, and I was really glad to share some of those moments with the families. And now when we talk, it’s mostly just laughs and fun and, you know, and sometimes we talk about, you know, their child, but not always. So it gave — the whole experience gave me a lot of hope in that way, and just an insight into the resilience that people have and what we’re able to — not completely bounce back from, but still have some bounce in our step.
JCJ: Here’s another clip from “All the Empty Rooms.” This is Jackie Cazares’ room. She was 9 years old when she was killed in the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022.
(Documentary clip) Jackie’s mom: Her room had played a very big role in her life. You know, that was her safe place. (Singing plays). Jackie’s dad: I go in there every day. That’s why I have that chair right next to the bed. So it brings me some comfort to go in there just to chat sometimes.
JCJ: Sitting in the chair and talking to his daughter, it just breaks your heart. And Jackie had strung lights — neon lights — in the ceiling of her room, and they’ve never turned those lights off, have they?
SH: They’ve never turned those lights off. And it’s just — it’s overpowering, the role that the room continues to play in their lives all these years later, you know, still visiting. One family, you know, the mom still goes in every morning and says good morning to her daughter and every night says goodnight and turns off the light. There’s definitely — the rooms are a blessing in some way because they keep the child alive in their hearts, help with remembering the sights and the smells even — like the dirty laundry sometimes is still just as it was.
But it’s a double-edged sword, and there’s a lot of pain that goes along with holding onto that room. And I almost look at it as another stage of grief that these families have to go through. You know, there’s all the stages of grief, but in this case, you know, you have to at some point box up those things. And I just think in some ways it’s the hardest stage of grief because it is a final, final, final goodbye when you take all these precious items and you load them in a box and either give it away or put it somewhere. It’s just, you know, I’ve certainly have great — gained a huge amount of insight into the grief process through all this.
JCJ: Right, because after these school shootings, the country often moves on, but these families never move on.
SH: That’s right. The story’s never over for them. And it’s interesting because as journalists sometimes, you know, we’re pounding on the door the day of the shooting and asking, “You know, if we have a statement or whatever?” And no family wants to talk to the media in that moment. But months later, you know, years later, they’re craving that chance to be able to talk about their child ... because they haven’t moved on like the country has moved on. And that was a small gift that this project was able to bring to them too because, you know, we wanted to be able to tell the story, but they also wanted to be able to tell the story.
JCJ: Do you remember the first school shooting you covered 29 years ago for CBS News?
SH: I do. It was a shooting in Pearl, Mississippi, which probably nobody remembers. Sadly, I remember the shooter’s name, which I’m not going to say, but I don’t remember the victims. And that’s part of the problem, especially with our early coverage of these shootings — that so often we focused on the shooter: what the motive was, you know, what his family life was like, and we said the name over and over, and the victims were just a casual mention. Maybe a photo, age, one thing they were interested in, and that’s it. And I personally believe that some of the early coverage — Pearl, Mississippi; Columbine — all that intense focus on the shooter helped perpetuate some of the stuff that came after. And I wonder sometimes if we had nipped that in the bud early on, if maybe we wouldn’t have the scale of the epidemic that we have now. Now news organizations do a lot better job now of not mentioning the shooter except for maybe Day 1, but you know, I wish I could turn back the clock and change the way I covered and the way we covered those early shootings.
JCJ: So, there’s a question in your mind as to whether the media perhaps inadvertently contributed to some of this in some way?
SH: Yeah, it’s a debate in my profession. I personally believe we did contribute somewhat to it, but I also believe we’re doing a much better job. I would like to still see us change some ways that we cover school shootings. I wish, you know, I wish CBS News would have a policy where we do not bother family members for at least a week afterward. And just say that in our coverage, you know, that day: “You will not hear from any parents through the course of this newscast because it is CBS News policy that, you know, we do not approach family members in the immediate aftermath of a school shooting.” I don’t think they’ll do that, but I think that would be the next good step.
JCJ: Since those early years — in your film actually — you state that school shootings have increased from 17 a year to 132 school shootings a year. It’s almost unfathomable.
SH: It is. And, you know, guns are the No. 1 cause of death in children now. Not all — I would say a fraction of them are school shootings; it happens in many other ways. But, you know, our film is just a small little microcosm of a much larger problem in America. That said, the film never mentions guns. It’s not proposing any kind of solution, and we don’t believe we know what the solution is. That was not the goal of myself or the filmmakers. We just really wanted to sort of come up with a place to start again ... sort of a place of empathy where we could begin to talk about solutions because I don’t — as a journalist, it’s not my job to, you know, push or promote any particular way — policy or something that could be done, but I do feel it is my place to get people to care about solving the issue again.
JCJ: Right. The film doesn’t have an agenda in any way. I mean, as a journalist, that is your role, but it doesn’t mention guns or politics at all.
SH: No. By design. I mean, I just — there were times when, you know, the filmmaker, even if it’s just, like, trying to promote the film or different elements we could have included and I, you know, we were pretty much aligned, but I really was firm in my belief that as soon as you start going political, you lose half the audience anyway. And if we’re to make any impact at all, we can’t go into this with some preconceived idea of what the solution needs to be. We need to get people from both sides. And I mentioned earlier hoping that we can get Congress to come together. There are good ideas and solutions on both sides of the aisle, and I think if we’re to make any progress, they need to come together, you know, feel what probably I’m guessing you felt at the end of that film and that silence that just hangs in the room. Even in a large theater, it’s just — there’s no applause, it’s just silence. I’m hoping that lawmakers can sit in that silence and then look across to a fellow congressman on the opposite side of the aisle, look them in the eye and just say, “We should get together and talk.”
JCJ: There are a lot of parents who will relate to this film on many levels — many parents who’ve lost a child, perhaps not in a school shooting, but a lot of families have empty rooms. I have an empty room now. So, it just resonates on so many levels.
SH: Yeah. I know. The film focuses on school shootings, but it could have focused on any number of places. As I said, you know, more kids are dying from guns than anything else, and there’s just so many tragedies. And, you know, in the end, they’re all — you know, it happens in different ways, but there’s always a room. There’s always that room there. And I think whether we step in those individual rooms or not, it’s good to imagine it. Because it does put you in a place of tremendous empathy when you can step inside another parent’s empty bedroom and it helps you feel what they’re going through, and that just makes us a better nation.
JCJ: Let me play one more clip. This is Gracie Muehlberger. She was 15 when she died in the Saugus High School shooting. We’ll see her in this clip leaving her house the morning of the shooting and then her empty room.
(Documentary clip) Gracie’s dad: It was a sunny Thursday morning. She was planning to buy her ticket for her first high school dance and then she had plans to get her dress on Friday. Unfortunately, she didn’t get to do either one of those two things. That’s the outfit she had out. SH: And this is what she was going to wear on Friday? Gracie’s mom: Well, she was either going to wear this outfit or this — this dress. Gracie’s dad: Yeah, she had, like, two set out. SH: Did she do this often — prepare the next day’s clothes? Gracie’s mom: Yeah, Monday through Friday. Gracie’s dad: Yeah.
JCJ: Every parent relates to that in some way. And Gracie never got to go to that dance.
SH: Never went to the dance, no. Yeah. An interesting thing about the Muehlbergers is, in talking to Brian — the dad — he said that, you know, I think he reflects what we all kind of feel like, “This’ll never happen to us.” You know, I think that’s been part of the problem is that we always look at it as somebody else’s child and it’s not going to happen in my school. And Brian Muehlberger felt the same way. Even after he heard word that there was a shooting at his daughter’s school, he’s, “It’s not my child.” Even after he saw his daughter’s cellphone pinging at the hospital, he thought, “It can’t be that she’s gone.” He said he was in denial all the way up until the moment when the surgeon came out and told him Gracie was gone, did he finally believe that it could happen to him. And as you said, over a hundred school shootings a year now, I think it can happen to anyone, and we need to understand that it can happen to anyone. And it can happen multiple times. There are some — there was one of the kids that was shot at Gracie’s school in Saugus, California, was at Brown University when there was a shooting there. That’s just how far this has gone.
JCJ: At the end of the film, you’re coming home to your beautiful daughter. And you also say, you know, “If every American could come into these rooms for just a few minutes, we’d be different.” And I juxtaposed your daughter on that thought and that idea about what could be was very powerful.
SH: Yeah, again, that’s the filmmaker. You know, just a beautiful storyteller, and he was able to capture that message perfectly well. But it’s not just about, you know, making a great film or certainly not about the award; it’s about what you’re talking about — that being able to place yourself in the room. If the film doesn’t accomplish that, you know, then it’s fallen short.
JCJ: This film is so moving, and these pictures are hard to look at, but I kept thinking, “We need to see these. We need to see them.”
SH: Yeah, we really do. Yeah, there’s 10,000 photographs and, you know, the film has just a fraction of them. We’ve done a photo exhibit, you know, touring around the country, and they’re available online for people to see, and at CBS News we have an interactive where you can sort of go through the rooms and look at the pictures. And they are hard to look at. I can see why that would be. But yeah, just as a responsible citizen, I think there are just certain things that, you know, you need to look at. They’re not crime scene photos; they’re just photos of the room and the things that were left behind in the room. So they’re not shocking in that way, but they do cut deep into your soul, which is a place we need to be sometimes. And I thank those who have gone out and watched the film — some of them going, “I’m not sure I can watch this,” but nobody at the end says, “I wish I hadn’t watched that.” I’ll tell you that. Nobody’s come up to me and said any such thing. So, you know, I’m very grateful for those who’ve jumped into this project with me and given it the 30 minutes it takes to watch.
JCJ: Before the photographer, Lou, walked into each room, he took off his shoes. Tell us about his approach to this project.
SH: The rest of us, like, the parents would say, “You don’t have to take off your shoes,” but he insisted every time. And I started to figure out why after a while, because, you know, he really felt an immense privilege to be able to enter this — almost it felt like a church to him, I think. And it was just — he would not deviate from that. He also would not touch anything in the room. And again, it was just this solemn approach that really all of us had. He maybe to a different degree where we just were being gifted something, you know? We were — it was such a privilege; we were gifted such trust. And I think a lot of us kind of started to follow his lead, especially once the documentary crew joined. Because at first it was just Lou or just Lou and me, in the end we have, you know, another cameraman and we have, you know, producers and things like that. But we all kind of followed Lou’s lead in that way. And I’m glad that he set the example because, even those images of him taking the shoes off just shows you the reverence we had for the room, certainly the parents have for the rooms, and what the country needs to have for these rooms.
JCJ: But there is a sacredness that you feel — that you both approached this with. These are sacred spaces for these parents, for these families.
SH: Definitely. And just, you know, people say, “Did you cry a lot, you know, in the making of this?” And no, as a journalist in the moment, you know, I don’t. Because sometimes after I watch the footage or certainly after I watch the film, it’s very emotional for me, but in that moment, you know, it’s kind of my job. The one time when I did get really emotional was when it was clear that the parents were trusting us. There’s just something about when somebody trusts you with something — especially, you know, whether it’s a deep, dark secret or something like these empty rooms. It becomes overwhelming, and it becomes more than a job. It becomes something almost religious in a way, like “sacred” is probably the best word for it, and, you know, we all definitely felt that.
JCJ: And so, how did this change you?
SH: Well, there will never be another school shooting where I just — that I just dismiss. There’ll never be another school shooting where I won’t take a moment to, you know, pretend in my head to imagine, you know, what it will be like for the parents that night to return to that space. I’ve seen enough of these empty rooms — I know what’s there; I know what’s on all four walls; I know the memories that are packed in there; I know the dreams that are there. I know that every shell they collect and I know every little trinket they have and I can imagine it perfectly. And so, I’m forever changed, and hopefully the rest of America will be forever changed.
JCJ: Well, everyone would be better for watching this film. Steve Hartman, you are the best storyteller in the business, and I’ve said it before: truly, you’re a national treasure. So, thank you for telling this story.
SH: Thank you, Jane. Thanks for having me.