Small Town Mysteries

Send us Fan Mail Today we are traveling to Minneapolis to talk about the 1993 murder of Jeanne Childs, more frequently known as “Jeanie.” Jeanie was a sex worker who was brutally stabbed in her apartment at the age of 35 years. Sadly, it took 27 years for Jeanie to get the justice she deserved. Sources:  1) https://www.oxygen.com/crime-news/jerry-westrom-guilty-jeanne-childs-1993-cold-case-murder...

Send us Fan Mail In 1977, Yale students Terri Jentz and Avra Goldman were cycling across the United States when they stopped to camp at a park in Oregon. While they slept, a man drove his truck over their tent and proceeded to attack both women with an axe. Though both women miraculously survived the brutal assault, the attacker was never identified, and the case remains unsolved.  Sources:  1) ht...

Send us Fan Mail The case of Girly Chew Hossencofft  is a study in how “weirdness” can become a weapon. And I truly mean weird. Con men, fashion designers, UFO’s, and conspiracy theories about otherworldly aliens that secretly rule the Earth are just a few things that surround this case. Unfortunately, the case was so saturated with sci-fi lies and cult-like conspiracies, that the world almost los...

Send us Fan Mail In July 2005, 41-year-old Barbara Keim was killed in her own home in an act of violence orchestrated by her daughter. Investigators eventually uncovered a planned conspiracy involving the daughter, her boyfriend, and an accomplice.  Sources: 1) https://www.oxygen.com/snapped/crime-time/hannah-stone-sentenced-100-years-murder 2) https://law.justia.com/cases/indiana/court-of-appeals...

Send us Fan Mail We've all heard the expression "fake it till you make it", right? Well, Jean-Claude Romand did just that for 18 years, but never truly made it. Instead, he chose to murder his entire family rather than face his own shame and lies head on. Sources:  1) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48790276 2) https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2001/jan/13/weekend7.weeke...

Send us Fan Mail It was November 1961. The waters in the Bahamas were as blue and beautiful as ever. But for Nicolaos Spachidakis, a second officer on a Greek freighter called Captain Theo, something seemed off. As he looked into the distance, he could make out a tiny white speck, bobbing alongside the waves. It was too large to be trash, but much too small to be a boat.  As they pulled alongside...

Send us Fan Mail Today we are talking about Virginia Hall, an American Spy who was able to completely evade the Gestapo during WWII. The Gestapo labeled her as “The enemy’s most dangerous spy.” During WWII, Virginia organized agent networks, helped those who managed to escape being prisoners of war, and recruited both French men and women to run safe houses.  Sources:  1) https://www.cia.gov/stori...

Send us Fan Mail Today we’re talking about Josephine Baker, the remarkable entertainer who took France by storm and used her unsuspecting identity for subterfuge in World War II - truly a badass woman! Sources:  1) https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/15/josephine-baker-was-the-star-france-wanted-and-the-spy-it-needed-damien-lewis-agent-josephine 2) https://nmaahc.si.edu/josephine-baker 3) h...

Send us Fan Mail In honor of Women's History Month, this week we are talking about Elizebeth Smith Friedman, a woman who turned her love for decrypting Shakespeare’s plays into cracking codes and ciphers during major moments in American history, all while using only pencil and paper. Elizebeth set the standard for modern codebreaking - and then watched as powerful men took all the credit. Ahh...

Send us Fan Mail In 1992, a Wyoming man opened a padlocked military footlocker left in his shed by a neighbor six years earlier. Inside, he found the skeletal remains of a man shot in the head, wrapped in a grocery bag. It would take decades to pass and a DNA breakthrough to reveal that the 'man in the box' was Joseph Mulvaney—a father who had been murdered. Sources:  1) https://www.kulr...

Send us Fan Mail In 1999, Paul Warner Powell, a 20-year-old white supremacist, murdered 16-year-old Stacie Reed and brutally assaulted her 14-year-old sister, Kristie, in a racially motivated attack after learning Stacie had a Black boyfriend. After his initial death sentence was vacated due to a legal technicality regarding capital murder requirements, Powell taunted prosecutors in a letter, beli...

Send us Fan Mail On the morning of March 26, 1997, Deborah was at home, getting ready for school. Her eleven-year-old cousin stopped by to walk her to class, but she wasn’t quite ready yet. The last words ever known to be spoken by Deborah were: “I’ll be right there. Go on ahead”. She never made it to school that day, and for the next twenty-nine years, her small hometown has been haunted by the q...

Send us Fan Mail Take a listen to Part 1 from last week if you want all the background info on this case! Before Cindy died, she reported about 100 incidents of various kinds of harassment/stalking to police...but police could never find any evidence of it. Cindy first reported instances of harassment/stalking in 1982. In the 7 years leading up to her death, Cindy reported about 100 incidents whic...

Send us Fan Mail Before Cindy died, she reported about 100 incidents of various kinds of harassment/stalking to police...but police could never find any evidence of it. Cindy first reported instances of harassment/stalking in 1982. In the 7 years leading up to her death, Cindy reported about 100 incidents which consisted of harassment, stalking, vandalism, home invasions, and physical attacks. Cin...

Send us Fan Mail When Bobby Jo Manley arrived at her sister’s home on April 22, 2016 in Sunfish Township, Ohio, she expected to go in, feed the pets, give them some love, and then leave – probably see her sister, as well. Socialize a bit. What Bobby Jo found would change the trajectory of her life forever – and the lives of dozens of others. Bobby Jo first found two bodies inside the home, immedia...

Send us Fan Mail When a 92-year-old with dementia disappears, all clues point to her granddaughter and her granddaughter's husband. Without a body though, the case grows cold. Until, that is, an unlikely detective waddles by... Sources:  1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candler,_North_Carolina 2) https://disability-memorial.org/nellie-sullivan  3) https://people.com/crime/pet-duck-helps-polic...

Send us Fan Mail When one man bullies an entire town into turning a blind eye to his numerous crimes over several decades, what else can a town do but finally enact some good old vigilante justice? Sources:  1) https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/us/16bully.html 2) https://www.nwmissourinews.com/news/article_ff2ddc1c-b317-11ef-ac2c-d706c09832af.html 3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_McElroy 4) h...

Send us Fan Mail Today we are traveling to Tennessee, specifically to the unincorporated community of Drummonds, Tennessee. Here, the brutal murder of 36-year-old Starr Harris shook the small, tight-knit community.  Sources: 1) https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/spr-crt-ten-at-jac/1748758.html 2) https://www.actionnews5.com/story/17296068/jury-deliberating-in-starr-harris-murder-trial/ 3) https://s...

Send us Fan Mail Today we're going to be talking about the murder of Shirley Ann Duguay, who went missing in 1994 and was later found dead in a shallow grave.  Shirley Ann Duguay was from Canada and a 32-year-old mother of five. Most reports don’t go into any sort of detail about who she was as a person or really anything about her personal life, mostly due to the nature of her death and the...

Send us Fan Mail On the morning of November 15, 2004, Peter Porco woke up as usual and carried out his typical morning routine: he packed a lunch, he filled the dishwasher, and he wrote and signed a check to his son Christopher. He even locked himself out of the house, found his spare key, and let himself back in.  And then, Peter Porco fell over and died. It would seem so random – he had a comple...

Send us Fan Mail On September 7, 1978, Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian defector living in London, was on his way to work. He left his car and crossed the Waterloo Bridge, which was part of his everyday routine. While waiting for the bus, Markov felt a stinging sensation in his right thigh. When he turned around, he saw a man picking up an umbrella from off the ground and running away. Not feeling well,...

Send us Fan Mail Today, we’re going to Norway! We’ve got another international case on our hands this week, with some parallels to The Somerton Man, which was recently covered. This one goes back to the autumn of 1970, to a place nicknamed “The Ice Valley”. It is the story of the (still unidentified) Isdal Woman -- a woman with no name, two suitcases, and perhaps a secret. Sources:  1) https://en....

Send us Fan Mail Did this famous Brazilian television presenter and politician really murder for more views? Let's talk about it on this new episode of Small Town Mysteries. Sources:  1) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-10785494 2) https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna32377654 3) https://www.mamamia.com.au/wallace-souza/ 4) https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna32573467 5) https://medium.com/l...

Send us Fan Mail The murder of teenager D'Andre Green remains unsolved - and someone knows who his killer is.  Sources:  1) https://www.wdel.com/news/video-7-years-on-family-of-teen-killed-in-brookside-community-center-shooting-still-seeking/article_9f234312-3f20-11eb-a652-6b6d733d7c1c.html 2) https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/12/31/delaware-teen-killed-seeking-community-help/42...

Send us Fan Mail Today we're talking about The Somerton Man - a case that reads like a novel and frustrated investigators for over seventy years. Sources: 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerton_Man  2) https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jul/27/somerton-man-mystery-identity-solved-identified-australia 3) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-enduring-mystery-somerton-man-o...