Kentucky Case Files

In any homicide investigation, the physical evidence doesn't take sides. It can contradict. It can clarify. And sometimes, it raises questions that the official record leaves unanswered. In Part 2 of Kentucky Case Files' four-part investigation into the death of Joseph Smith, hosts Marcus Roland and Emily Steele turn to the forensic record — the state medical examiner's autopsy, the toxicology fin...

Season 2 of Kentucky Case Files begins with a case that state authorities consider closed — but Joseph Smith's family does not. On the night of March 5, 2021, 25-year-old Joseph Smith was fatally shot in the parking lot of a small grocery store in Upton, Ky. The man who shot him admitted to it, claiming self-defense. No one was ever arrested. No one was ever charged. Hosts Marcus Roland and Emily...

On March 5, 2021, a 25-year-old man named Joseph Smith was shot and killed in a grocery store parking lot in Upton, Kentucky. The man who shot him claimed self-defense. No arrest was ever made. No charges were ever filed. His family was told he "made bad choices." They have never accepted that answer. For Season 2, Kentucky Case Files spent months conducting original reporting — obtaining Kentucky...

Some stories live on through investigation — others through art. In the season one finale of Kentucky Case Files, Marcus Roland and Emily Steele sit down with Louisville author Ellen Birkett Morris, whose short story "Lost Girls" was inspired by Ann Gotlib’s disappearance. Growing up near the mall where Ann was last seen, Morris transformed a city’s grief into a powerful meditation on loss, fear a...

What did it mean to search for a missing child in 1983 — and how has that changed today? In The Ann Gotlib Case, Pt. 2: How We Find Missing Kids, Then and Now, hosts Marcus Roland and Emily Steele examine the evolution of missing child investigations, from analog flyers and phone trees to digital databases, Amber Alerts, and social media. They uncover how Ann’s case helped spur reforms, leading to...

June 1, 1983 — a summer day in Louisville turns into every parent’s nightmare. Twelve-year-old Ann Gotlib rides her red bicycle to the mall and never comes home. What follows is one of Kentucky’s most haunting mysteries: a desperate search, countless leads, and decades of unanswered questions. In this first of a three-part season 1 finale, hosts Marcus Roland and Emily Steele retrace the day Ann d...

When Eric C. Conn fell, thousands of his clients fell with him. The U.S. Social Security Administration cut off benefits for nearly 4,000 disabled Appalachians, demanding they re-prove their cases years later — or pay back money they no longer had. Families lost homes, lives were upended, and some clients died waiting for help. Attorney Ned Pillersdorf and hundreds of volunteer lawyers waged a yea...

By 2017, Eric C. Conn’s empire was collapsing. Facing a prison sentence for bribery and fraud, he cut off his ankle monitor and vanished — kicking off one of the most audacious escapes in Kentucky history. From cryptically emailing a reporter, to taunting the FBI, to hiding out in a Honduran beach town, Conn lived as a fugitive until a Pizza Hut dinner finally brought him down. In the third episod...

How did Eric C. Conn win nearly every case he touched? The answer: crooked judges, compliant doctors, and a bureaucracy that valued speed over scrutiny. With Judge David Daugherty pocketing bribes and doctors signing off on sham medical files, Conn’s fraud machine churned out approvals by the thousands. But then came whistleblowers Jennifer Griffith and Sarah Carver. In the second episode of The E...

He called himself “Mr. Social Security,” a small-town lawyer who turned double-wide trailers into a legal empire in Eastern Kentucky. Eric C. Conn built his fortune on outlandish marketing, luxury cars and roadside monuments to himself. But behind the spectacle was something darker: the largest Social Security fraud in U.S. history. In the first episode of The Eric C. Conn Case, hosts Marcus Rolan...

The murder of Amanda Ross sent shockwaves through Kentucky and beyond. In The Steve Nunn Case, Pt. 3: Amanda Ross, Her Law and the Limits of Justice, the final installment of our three-part series, we look beyond the crime itself and examine the lasting impact of Ross’s death — and the fight for change that followed. Ross's mother turned grief into advocacy, pushing for stronger protections for vi...

By noon Sept. 11, 2009, police had tracked former legislator Steve Nunn — accused of killing his ex-fiancée, Amanda Ross — to a rural Kentucky cemetery. What followed was a tense armed confrontation, a mounting pile of damning circumstantial evidence, and a legal case shaped by the very laws Nunn helped pass. In The Steve Nunn Case, Pt. 2: From the Statehouse to the Jailhouse, hosts Emily Steele a...

In this gripping first episode of a three-part chapter, Kentucky Case Files unpacks The Steve Nunn Case. In Part 1, The Governor’s Son, His Obsession and Her Fear, we meet Amanda Ross — a bright, beloved young woman gunned down outside her Lexington home in September 2009. Her killer? Steve Nunn, a former state legislator and the son of a powerful Kentucky governor. Hosts Emily Steele and Marcus R...

In The Clay Shrout Case's final episode, Pt. 4: That Was How, This Is Why, hosts Marcus Roland and Emily Steele explore the deeper psychological and emotional factors behind one of Kentucky’s most shocking family murders. Through discussion, parole hearing audio, and expert analysis from psychologist Dr. Peter Langman, this episode examines Clay Shrout’s conflicting motives — from claims of parent...

IIn The Clay Shrout Case, Pt. 3: Inside the Mind of a Psychopath, Kentucky Case Files hosts Marcus Roland and Emily Steele speak with Dr. Peter Langman, a psychologist and leading expert on school shooters, to delve into the psychological profile of Clay Shrout. Langman examines possible motivations behind Shrout’s 1994 familicide, discusses the traits of psychopathy, and questions the credibility...

In the premiere episode of Kentucky Case Files , hosts Marcus Roland and Emily Beaulieu Steele examine The Clay Shrout Case, the shocking 1994 story of a high-achieving high school senior from Florence, Kentucky, who murdered his parents and two younger sisters before heading to school armed with a gun. With firsthand insights and local context, Pt. 1 explores Clay’s descent into darkness, marked...

In The Clay Shrout Case, Pt. 2: Guilty but Mentally Ill, hosts Marcus Roland and Emily Steele follow the aftermath of Shrout’s horrific 1994 familicide, tracing his legal journey from juvenile hearings to a plea of “guilty but mentally ill.” The episode explores the courtroom decisions that spared him the death penalty, his turbulent years in Kentucky’s prison system marked by violence, escape att...

Coming soon to wherever you get your podcasts, Kentucky Case Files, where we dive into the true crime stories that showcase why the Bluegrass State was once called "the dark and bloody ground."