Bless This Mess: A Southern True Crime Podcast

In February 1673, 73-year-old widow Rebecca Cornell was found dead on her bedroom floor in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. An initial coroner’s jury ruled it an accident, but a report of an apparition and bitter family disputes led to an exhumation, a murder trial, and an execution on the gallows. Find us on the webs! Follow us on Instagram Like us on Facebook TikTok - @blessthismesspodcast Support us o...

In August 1990, the return of students to the University of Florida in Gainesville turned into a nightmare. Over a terrifying four-day span, drifter and serial killer Danny Rolling murdered five college students in their off-campus apartments, leaving the community paralyzed by fear. Find us on the webs! Follow us on Instagram Like us on Facebook TikTok - @blessthismesspodcast Support us on Patreo...

When Rebekah Gay didn’t arrive at work on Halloween in 2012, a coworker went to her Michigan home to check on her. Cara follows the search, the investigation, and the confession that resolved the case. Find us on the webs! Follow us on Instagram Like us on Facebook TikTok - @blessthismesspodcast Support us on Patreon  - for early access, ad-free, and Porch Crew perks! Buy us a Coffee!  - one time...

On a bitterly cold January morning in 1987, thirty-five-year-old Lita McClinton was inside her Buckhead townhouse in Atlanta, getting dressed for a critical eleven o'clock court hearing to challenge a prenuptial agreement with her estranged husband, multimillionaire beverage heir James Sullivan. When her doorbell rang, an apparent deliveryman handed her a long white floral box tied with a pink rib...

When a friend went to check on Ellen Sherman in 1985, the discovery inside her Connecticut home launched a years-long murder investigation. Cara follows the disputed timeline and unexpected testimony that helped bring the case to trial.  Find us on the webs! Follow us on Instagram Like us on Facebook TikTok - @blessthismesspodcast Support us on Patreon  - for early access, ad-free, and Porch Crew...

In January 2001, firefighters responding to an off-campus house fire on Fawn Drive in Athens, Georgia, discovered the body of twenty-three-year-old UGA law student Tara Louise Baker . When investigators determined the fire had been deliberately set to cover up a violent homicide, it launched a twenty-three-year search for answers. Find us on the webs! Follow us on Instagram Like us on Facebook Tik...

In December 1900, three lighthouse keepers vanished from a remote island off the coast of Scotland. When the relief crew arrived at Eilean Mòr, the lighthouse was empty, the fire was cold, the beds were unmade, and one raincoat still hung by the door. This week on A Little Less Mess, Cara heads across the ocean to explore the eerie disappearance at the Flannan Isles Lighthouse—and the ghost storie...

Grab your mason jars and pull up a rocker as Cara and Stew head to South Florida to unpack the wild true story behind the 1997 movie Mother Knows Best. When Lauderhill retiree Lee Goldsmith secretly placed a classified ad to find her daughter a wealthy bachelor, she never imagined her daughter would fall for David Brownstein, a hardworking, blue-collar air-conditioning repairman. Consumed by spite...

On a freezing December evening in 1957, seven-year-old Maria Ridulph was playing under the streetlights of Sycamore, Illinois, when a friendly young man offering piggyback rides vanished with her into the winter dark. The disappearance triggered an unprecedented nationwide manhunt that drew personal attention from J. Edgar Hoover and President Dwight D. Eisenhower, only to end months later when Ma...

Grab your mason jars and pull up a rocker as Cara and Stew unpack one of the most chilling multi-generational tragedies in Southern history. What began as a contentious custody battle between a prominent Winston-Salem socialite and her dentist ex-husband spiraled into an apocalyptic nightmare when she fell under the spell of her first cousin—a survivalist masquerading as a CIA operative and medica...

Grab your mason jars and pull up a rocker as Cara steps outside the South for a solo trip back to the autumn of 1922. In an overgrown lovers’ lane outside New Brunswick, New Jersey, the bodies of an aristocratic Episcopal priest and his married choir leader were found staged beneath a crabapple tree, surrounded by their torn-up secret love letters and a grotesque calling card. What followed became...

In July 2018, prominent 58-year-old corporate attorney Gary Farris vanished from his family’s ten-acre farm on Purcell Lane in Cherokee County, Georgia. Days later, his charred remains were discovered in an outdoor burn pile near the house. While initial explanations suggested Gary had suffered a dizzy spell and accidentally collapsed into the flames, the case turned into a homicide investigation...

Beginning in 1977, anonymous letters terrorized Circleville, Ohio, accusing residents of affairs, crimes, and private secrets. School-bus driver Mary Gillispie and her family became the main targets. After her husband died in a mysterious crash, the threats escalated—and a booby-trapped sign with a loaded gun led to her brother-in-law’s conviction. But the letters continued after he went to prison...

In August 1998, beloved teacher Charlotte Waites was found brutally murdered inside her Lanett, Alabama home, with the crime scene staged to look like a robbery gone wrong. Her husband, the town’s interim mayor, claimed to be devastated—but behind closed doors lay a dark trail of secret debts, control, and betrayal. Nearly a decade passed before the couple’s own daughters came forward to help fina...

In this week's Monday minisode of A Little Less Mess , Cara travels outside the South to the upscale community of Shaker Heights, Ohio. In September 1990, sixteen-year-old Lisa Pruett left home to meet her boyfriend in Shaker Heights, Ohio. Minutes later, she was attacked and killed in a yard just steps from his house. A classmate, Kevin Young, was charged after two people said he confessed while...

Grab your mason jar and pull up a rocking chair—this week on Bless This Mess , Cara and Stew are heading down to Katy, Texas.  On a January evening in 1999, thirty-year-old special education teacher Belinda Temple—eight months pregnant with her second child—was found shot execution-style inside her master bedroom closet. Her husband, David Temple, a prominent local high school football coach and h...

In this week's Monday minisode of A Little Less Mess , Cara travels outside the South to the coastal city of Richmond, British Columbia, Canada. Over a seven-year span in the 1980s, 44 year old pediatric nurse Cindy James reported nearly 100 separate incidents of terror: sinister phone calls, slashed tires, dead cats hanging in her yard, arson, and violent physical assaults. But as months turned i...

Grab your mason jar and pull up a rocking chair—this week on Bless This Mess, Cara and Stew are heading to Louisville, Kentucky! On a September morning in 1988, 36-year-old Brenda Sue Schaefer’s car was found abandoned on the shoulder of Interstate 64 with a flat tire. What initially looked like a random roadside breakdown soon unraveled into a calculated plot orchestrated by her wealthy ex-fiancé...

In this week's Monday minisode of A Little Less Mess , Cara travels outside the South to the picturesque suburb of Westfield, New Jersey.  In June 2014, Derek and Maria Broaddus purchased their dream 1.3-million-dollar historic home at 657 Boulevard. But just days after closing—before they even finished moving their three young children in—they found a chilling letter in the mailbox from an anonym...

A beloved NBA star. A chilling midnight 911 call with eleven gunshots . A murder weapon hidden at the bottom of a Mississippi lake . This week, Cara and Stew take you to Memphis, Tennessee, to unravel the 2010 murder of Lorenzen Wright . Tune in as we dissect the greed, the botched dispatch records, and the seven-year investigation that exposed a deadly conspiracy orchestrated by his ex-wife, Sher...

A Yale-educated diplomat. Five murdered family members. A fifty-year international manhunt. This week on A Little Less Mess, Cara dives into the chilling 1976 Bradford Bishop murders in Bethesda, Maryland, exploring how a high-society government official orchestrated one of the most calculated family annihilations in American history and completely disappeared. Support the show Listen to our Monda...

A missing father. A body in the Little Pee Dee River. A secret affair with a deputy coroner. This week, we are breaking down the 2020 murder of Gregory Rice in Horry County, South Carolina. Tune in as we discuss how a web of anonymous text messages and surveillance footage unraveled a deadly conspiracy between Meagan Jackson and her lover, Christopher Dontell, leading up to the dramatic verdicts h...

In this mini-episode of A Little Less Mess , we’re venturing outside the South to cover one of the most brutal and bizarre crimes in recent history: The 2011 Lululemon Murder. When a store manager in Bethesda, Maryland opened the doors to a gruesome, bloody crime scene, one employee was dead and another was found bound in the back room, claiming masked men had attacked them. But the evidence told...

In 1948, Mary Virginia “Jimmie” Carpenter arrived in Denton for summer classes—and vanished between the train station and her dorm. We walk through the cab driver’s changing story, possible ties to the Texarkana Phantom Killer, and a haunting cold case that still has no answers. Support the show Listen to our Monday minisode A Little Less Mess right here on the main feed.    Hang out with us on Pa...

The most successful serial killers are the ones you’ve never heard of.   Welcome to this week’s Monday minisode of A Little Less Mess! Today we are looking at the terrifying, unsolved case of the West Mesa Bone Collector. Between 2003 and 2005, a serial killer in Albuquerque, New Mexico, buried 11 women in the desert—and got away with it because he knew exactly who to target so that no one would c...