What media interviews or first-person writings has Candace Owens published describing the Stamford voicemail incident?
Executive summary
Candace Owens has described the Stamford voicemail incident principally through a 2016 first‑person "open letter" published in the Stamford Advocate and in multiple local and national interviews and profiles in which she recounts the same series of racist and threatening voicemails from high‑school classmates; major local reporting in 2016 and later national coverage have repeatedly cited or quoted her own written account [1] [2] [3] [4]. Public records and local news contemporaneous to the episode document the police investigation and a 2008 settlement with the Stamford Board of Education, but Owens’s personal narrative is most directly available in her 2016 written piece and in subsequent interviews and profiles that quote or summarize that piece [5] [6] [7].
1. The core first‑person account: the 2016 “open letter” in the Stamford Advocate
Owens’s clearest first‑person publication describing the voicemail incident is an open letter she penned for the Stamford Advocate, headlined “An open letter from Candace Owens,” in which she recounts, in first person, that “one night as I sat watching a movie, a group of anonymous boys called my cell phone and left me a series of voicemails,” and describes how those messages affected her life and outlook [1]. That piece is the primary direct written source in the record provided here where Owens herself narrates the event, frames its emotional impact, and links it to later actions she took [1].
2. Local feature interviews and profiles that reproduce Owens’s account
In 2016 local outlets—the Stamford Advocate and the CT Post—ran feature profiles and interviews in which Owens retold the episode, elaborated on the messages (described in reporting as threatening and containing racial epithets), and connected the episode to the lawsuit and settlement her family pursued against the Stamford Board of Education [2] [3]. These 2016 profiles present her voice and quotes at length, and operate as interview‑based retellings rather than fresh, separate first‑person essays; they quote her versions of events and her reflections on how the incident shaped her views [2] [3].
3. National reporting and later quotations of her written account
National outlets have repeatedly cited Owens’s 2016 written account when covering later controversies involving her statements about race. For example, the Associated Press quoted sentences from her written recounting—again describing “a series of voicemails” and calling their content “the most horrific” she had heard—when reporting on backlash to her broader commentary in 2021, thereby republishing her first‑person wording for a national audience [4]. Encyclopedic profiles (Wikipedia and Britannica excerpts in the reporting set) likewise summarize and cite her published account and the resulting 2008 settlement, but do not add another separate first‑person piece beyond the 2016 letter [7] [8].
4. Contemporaneous records, settlement reporting, and limits of the public record
Contemporaneous local news from 2007–2008 documented the police investigation, arrests and a $37,500 settlement between Owens’s family and the Stamford Board of Education, providing corroborating public‑records context for the incident even where those pieces were not authored by Owens herself [5] [6]. Those records and the local crime coverage are not first‑person writings by Owens but are regularly paired by later profiles with her own 2016 letter; the available sources do not show additional standalone longform first‑person essays by Owens on the Stamford voicemails beyond the Stamford Advocate piece, nor a comprehensive catalog of every interview in which she has mentioned the episode [5] [6] [1].
5. Assessment, alternative perspectives and implicit agendas in the coverage
The pattern in the sources shows Owens’s direct voice primarily in the 2016 Stamford Advocate open letter and in interview quotes in local and national profiles that reuse or summarize that letter; coverage that emphasizes the settlement and the involvement of a mayor’s son draws attention to institutional responses and political implications that sometimes shape how the story is retold [1] [5] [4]. Skeptics and critics point to later public positions Owens has taken on race as a basis to reexamine or dispute framing, and some summaries adopt a framing that foregrounds political drama over the specific textual content of her original first‑person essay—an implicit agenda visible in national reaction pieces that juxtapose the 2007 incident and her later political statements [4] [8]. The sources provided do not offer a comprehensive list of every media appearance in which Owens mentioned the incident, so the record here names the substantive first‑person publication (the 2016 open letter) and the principal interviews/profiles that reproduce it (local Connecticut press and later national citations) rather than an exhaustive media chronology [1] [2] [3] [4].