A Heavy Weight

In 1993, Lola Fry went to a party in Indianapolis and never came home. The people who were with her told police a story — but it’s one that has never fully made sense. Lola disappeared along with her car. Neither have ever been found.

In October 1995, Wilma Cheek was found shot to death in her car at Willow Grove Cemetery in Fountain City, Indiana. It was late morning. Daylight. A place that should have felt quiet, familiar, safe. Thirty years later, her case remains unsolved. https://www.in.gov/isp/crime-reporting/cold-case-investigations/cold-cases-by-county/pendleton-district-investigations/wilma-cheek-10301995/

A new case in Bloomington, Indiana. An arrest tied to alleged child sexual abuse material. In part 1, we slow down the headline and walk through what’s been publicly reported so far, how these cases often start, what digital evidence can and can’t prove at this stage, and what research says about who gets caught with csam and how often this behavior happens in secrecy. This episode avoids graphic...

We're sharing our coverage of the waverly two case again as Terence and Ferrone work towards their deserved full exoneration after their release. In 1998, Terence Richardson and Ferrone Claiborne of Waverly, Virginia, were sentenced to life for a murder they were acquitted of, exposing systemic flaws like withheld evidence and a judge’s power to override a jury’s verdict. In this episode, we e...

In Bloomington, two rape charges against a former Indiana University student ended without a trial. The charges were dismissed, a plea to battery remained, and the sentence was one year of probation. This episode follows the gap between what the public thinks the system does and what the rules of proof allow it to do.

This episode tells the story of Lisa M. Wallace, a 25 year old woman from Cadiz, Kentucky, found behind a truck stop near Interstate 70 in eastern Indiana on May 19, 1992. https://www.in.gov/isp/crime-reporting/cold-case-investigations/cold-cases-by-county/pendleton-district-investigations/lisa-m-wallace-05191992/

A Stillwater teen pleaded no contest to 11 rape related charges and walked out of court with a fully suspended 78 year sentence under Oklahoma’s youthful offender law. This episode follows the case of Jesse Butler, the outrage it sparked, and what it reveals about race, power, and who the system believes deserves another chance.

Theresa “Terry” Rideout was 36 when she vanished over Labor Day weekend in 1994. She finished a shift at Burger King in Evansville, made the night deposit, and never came back to her home in Chandler, Indiana. A week later, her fiancé, Jack Barnett, died by suicide in a Mount Vernon motel room, leaving behind a note that never mentioned Terry. With her paycheck still unclaimed, and her belongings...

A Heavy Weight is re-releasing our coverage of Wilma June Nissen, a young mother of three whose homicide remains unsolved nearly five decades later. On October 4, 1978, Wilma’s body was found along Highway 182 in Lyon County, Iowa, near Rock Rapids, by a utility worker laying cable. With little usable evidence at the scene, investigators could not identify her at the time, and she was listed as a...

In November nineteen sixty nine, twelve year old Nora Kathylene “Kathy” Jones left her house in South Nashville with her roller skates over her shoulder, headed for the roller dome on Thompson Lane. She never made it home. Two days later, searchers found her in a vacant lot. More than fifty years later, her murder is still unsolved. https://nashvillecoldcase.gov/1969-124859-nora-kathylene-jones/

Halloween night, 1981. Sixteen year old Debra Mae “Debbie” Fulton leaves her house in Hammond, Indiana, with a little cash and a simple plan: walk to the Roller Dome, skate with friends, come home. She never makes it. The next day, a boy playing under the Calumet Avenue bridge spots a body in the Grand Calumet River. Debbie has been killed by a blow to the head. Within weeks, her case is being use...

In 1974, a young woman was found shot and hidden beneath a mattress off a rural road in South Bend. It took six months before anyone knew her name: Victoria Lynne McDonough. No arrests were ever made. This episode revisits Victoria’s life, the investigation that failed her, and the questions that still haven’t been answered. https://www.in.gov/isp/crime-reporting/cold-case-investigations/cold-case...

Episode 10 brings together the most unsettling pieces of Joseph Smedley’s case — the late-night messages, the odd cell phone pings, the missing belongings — and confronts the gaps that remain. This episode is a call for truth, transparency, and for anyone holding a piece of the story to finally come forward.

For Joseph’s family, this is year ten. Ten years of rereading the same note. Ten years of asking for his case files. Ten years of watching other IU students’ cases become national stories while his slips out of view. Coverage sits inside that imbalance. We talk about media bias and what it means to keep showing up for a family long after everyone else has moved on. Thank you for listening, sharing...

In this episode we return to the death of Indiana University student Joseph Smedley, whose body was found in Griffy Lake with a backpack weighed down with rocks. Drawing on a twenty year study of suicide by drowning and the insight of forensic pathologist Dr Darin Wolfe and forensic aquatic death investigator Andrea Zaferes, we ask how likely it really is that Joseph died by suicide in the way his...

Joseph Smedley’s death was ruled a suicide by drowning, with alcohol and cannabinoids listed as contributing factors. In this episode, we slow down and examine that conclusion through the lens of Joseph’s autopsy and toxicology reports. Forensic pathologist Dr. Darrin Wolfe and drowning expert Andrea Zaferes walk us through what those reports can and can’t tell us in a decomposed body recovered fr...

Joseph Smedley vanished from Indiana University on September 27, 2015. Five days later, he was found in shallow water at Griffy Lake with a backpack full of rocks strapped to his chest. Police pointed to suicide. His family, and many friends, do not agree. In this episode, we revisit the early investigation handoff from IUPD to BPD, the decision to route updates through Joseph’s father, the autops...

Episode 5 rebuilds Joseph Smedley’s final hours: 11:30 p.m. last seen, 4:15  a.m. text to his sister, a note found later, and a phone path toward Old State Hwy 37.

A recovered group chat, a shifting timeline, and a discovery at Griffy Lake reframe Joseph Smedley’s final week. In Episode 4, we examine digital evidence recovered from Joseph’s laptop: a fraternity group chat from the days he was missing. The conversation’s tone and priorities raise hard questions about what people knew—and when. We then trace the search to Griffy Lake, where Joseph was found wi...

In this episode, we step deeper into the growing confusion surrounding Joseph’s disappearance, the conflicting stories, the strange notes, and the data that didn’t add up. Detectives traced Joseph’s last cell-phone pings to two vastly different locations: one in the center of Bloomington’s busy nightlife district at 7th and Walnut, and another miles away on Old State Road 37, near the woods surrou...

The morning after Joseph Smedley vanished, his sister received a text message from his phone: “Viv, I’m sorry. I have to leave the country…” Hours later, police discovered a handwritten note in his room, signed Smedley and dated a day after he disappeared. In this episode, we follow the first week of the investigation: the confusion, the missteps, and the rumors that began inside Joseph’s fraterni...

On the tenth anniversary of Joseph Smedley’s disappearance, we return to Bloomington, Indiana, to re-examine the night it all began. Under the eerie glow of a rare Blood Moon, Joseph left his off-campus house and vanished. Five days later, his body was discovered in Griffy Lake, weighed down by rocks. In this first episode, we hear a never-before-released 911 call, revisit Joseph’s last known hour...

On June 12, 1994, twenty-year-old Delmar Wilson was found shot in his car on Radcliff Road in Washington County, Indiana. The engine was still running. The headlights still on. His foot still pressed on the brake. Police believe Delmar knew his killer. But in the three decades since, the case has passed from detective to detective, with no arrests and no answers.

On December 27, 2004, 37-year-old Michelle Asher was last seen walking along Route 33 out of Russellville, Illinois, heading toward Vincennes, Indiana. Two weeks passed before she was reported missing. By then, police and volunteers searched the countryside, but no clues turned up. Five months later, fishermen on the Wabash River made a discovery: Michelle’s body tangled along the riverbank. The o...

July 2007. A Nashville truck stop. Police approach a mustard-yellow cab and arrest a long-haul trucker suspected in murders across multiple states. But this isn’t a story about him. It’s about the women. We investigate the unsolved 1997 murder of Andrea Michelle Hendrix-Steinert in Gibson County, Indiana, and ask: when predators use the highway, who is left behind?