Southern Fried True Crime

This week, we’re sharing an episode of Alphabet Boys. Alphabet Boys takes you inside secret investigations that the FBI, DEA, CIA, and other alphabet agencies never wanted the public to know about. These cases are both dangerous and absurd … and they raise a troubling question: Are America’s top cops catching criminals -- or creating them? In this episode, you’ll hear real audio from an illegal ar...

28-year-old Avis Banks was five months pregnant and exhausted. On the evening of Wednesday, November 29th of 2006, Avis was driving home after a long day at work. All she wanted to do was go home, kick off her shoes, and relax. But Avis would never see the inside of her home again. The moment Avis exited her car after parking it in her garage, she was brutally attacked. Hosted and produced by Eric...

Bonnie and Lieth Von Stein went to bed on a Sunday night in July 1988 content and looking forward to a new future. Hours later, Bonnie would wake to the sound of her husband’s screams and an intruder standing at the foot of her bed. She barely survived the attack herself and after a year of investigation, she would live through another horror when she learned who was responsible for destroying her...

On a hot Friday the 13th in June of 1980, Allan Gore was worried. He couldn't get a hold of his wife, Betty. For hours, he'd called her over and over. No answer. Betty always answered. She didn’t get out by herself, especially not with their two small daughters. She hated when he traveled--scared of being alone, so Allan was trying to check in to reassure her. Now he was starting to panic. He fina...

For the Alday family, May 14th of 1973 started like any other day. The Alday men woke up before sunrise to tend to their family farm, and the Alday women began working on their chores. They plowed the field, planted corn, and ate lunch. Little did they know that, by the end of that afternoon, their lives would be irreparably changed forever. Six members of the Alday family dead. Their farm decimat...

In August of 1952, 43-year-old Ruby McCollum, a black woman, was two months pregnant. The father was a 48-year-old white politician named Dr. Clifford Leroy Adams, Jr. For seven years, Dr. Adams had manipulated, bullied, and raped Ruby. He forced her to bear one of his children already, and this unborn child would be the second. On Sunday, August 3rd, Ruby entered Dr. Adams’ medical practice for h...

On a Friday afternoon, Dr. Rick Lohstroh parked in his ex-wife Deborah Geisler’s driveway waiting to pick up his two sons. It had been a nasty custody battle and their ten year old son, Aaron, had turned completely against his father. Every pickup day was drama. This day it was worse, Deborah and the boys were running late after having to get her car towed and everyone was in a foul mood. While De...

In March 2007, 41-year-old Theresa spent the day moving boxes from her old house to her new apartment. The LaFayette, Georgia 911 dispatcher was leaving her husband. That evening, after seeing her sister, Theresa disappeared without a trace. And local law enforcement kept coming back to the same person: Theresa’s estranged husband, 52-year-old Sergeant Sam Parker of the LaFayette PD. Sam vehementl...

Just because the police can’t solve a murder doesn’t mean other people won’t find someone to blame. In season 4 of Witnessed: Devil in the Ditch, journalist Larrison Campbell returns to her Mississippi hometown to reexamine one of its most notorious unsolved cold cases – the murder of her grandmother, Presh. What happens when a family and a community suspect one of their own? Subscribe to The Bing...

The pop culture of the Michael Peterson case is fascinating. There are many infamous true crime cases that create their own universe. The Peterson case was always going to be famous. But when Netflix bought the rights to Jean-Xavier de Lestrade’s docu-series, The Staircase, Michael Peterson and his family were launched into the stratosphere. There were already books…but after Netflix reopened the...

For over two decades, Kathleen Peterson’s mysterious death has captivated America. After the most complex court proceeding in Durham, North Carolina’s history, Michael was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, without the possibility of parole. This episode covers the infamous trial, Michael’s appeals and the overturning of his original verdict after he served over eight years in prison. Stud...

In December of 2001, the seemingly accidental death of 48-year-old Kathleen Peterson made headlines in Durham, North Carolina. A beloved community figure, enjoying a night of celebration with some champagne, had lost her balance and tragically fallen down the stairs. But when 58-year-old Michael Peterson, Kathleen’s husband, was indicted for first-degree murder eleven days later, news outlets acro...

Hosted by Ash Kelley and Alaina Urquhart from the hit show Morbid. When 90-year-old Laurence Pilgeram drops dead on the sidewalk outside his condo, you might think that’s the end of his story. But, really, it’s just the beginning. Because Laurence and others like him have signed up to be frozen and brought back to life in the future. And that belief will pull multiple generations of the Pilgeram f...

December 9th, 2001 was an unseasonably warm night in Durham, North Carolina. At 2:40 a.m., a novelist named Michael Peterson called 911. He was frantic. He said his wife Kathleen had an accident. She had fallen down some stairs. Within 10 minutes, paramedics, police and the fire team swarmed the house. They were all startled by the amount of blood. Kathleen’s blood was everywhere. It covered her b...

On Friday, October 12th, 2012, Shayna Hubers called 911. She explained to the emergency operator that she killed her boyfriend, Ryan Poston, in self-defense. When the police investigated the crime scene, they quickly realized that Shayna’s version of events didn’t align with reality. Hosted and produced by Erica Kelley Researched and written by Andrea Marshbank and Erica Kelley Case suggested by A...

For more than three and a half decades, the disappearance of 12-year-old Jonelle Matthews was a mystery – a riddle neither authorities nor her family members could solve. The residents of her cloistered Colorado hometown had scoured every inch of prairie. Jonelle’s face had been on milk cartons nationwide. Even the President of the United States had appealed to the public for help. Still, every le...

On a cool March evening of 2008, motorists on Highway 147 in Auburn, Alabama were startled to see a young girl in the road. She was naked, crying, covered in road rash and waving her arms desperately for help. Despite everyone’s best efforts, 18 year old Lauren Burk did not survive her ordeal. She had been shot and and bled out within 2 to 3 minutes after jumping from a moving car. The Auburn Univ...

In January 2003, police arrived at an unassuming house in Northwest Houston, Texas after receiving a vague message from a local lawyer about a potential crime scene. In the backyard, they discovered the mutilated body of Jeff Wright. The master bedroom was a blood-splattered nightmare. Susan Wright, Jeff’s wife of five years, confessed to his shocking murder. At her trial, Susan claimed she killed...

When a shocking crime occurs, former FBI Profiler Candice DeLong will have a lot to say about it. On KILLER PSYCHE DAILY, Candice digs into the motivations and behaviors of the criminal masterminds and killers who are dominating the headlines. For 10 minutes, five days a week, she draws on her years of experience to break down complex criminal cases, look back at the historic crimes that still hau...

Zebb Quinn was only 18 years old when he went missing on January 2, 2000. Authorities had their suspicions that foul play was involved, but it would take 15 years and two other disappearances for anyone to find out what happened to Zebb. Hosted and produced by Erica Kelley Researched by Haley Gray Written by Erica Kelley Original Graphic Art by Coley Horner Original Music by Rob Harrison of Gamma...

Nothing is as terrifying as the sounds we hear in the dark. The slow creak of a door opening late at night... or a whisper in a room when you thought you were alone... or a distant scream in the wind. One noise at the wrong time or place can scare us for days. Each episode of I HEAR FEAR plunges the listener into a tale inspired by real events, from a deadly dance party to a cursed film set. Join...

In April 1951, a young black woman was closing up a roadhouse tavern and getting ready to sleep there for the night. Hattie Lee Barnes worked as a maid at Lee’s Place and in recent weeks had started sleeping there as caretaker, to watch over the bar after hours. She had a gun to protect herself and the tavern. When she heard a window opening near her bed, she fired the gun at the figure in the win...

Sheree Warren left her job in Salt Lake City on a mild October evening in 1985. She told a coworker she was headed to meet her estranged husband, Charles Warren, at a car dealership. But she never made it, Sheree vanished. When her car mysteriously surfaced weeks later, hundreds of miles away in Las Vegas, no one could say how it got there. When a young mother disappears under unexplained circumst...

Hosted and produced by Erica Kelley Researched by Haley Gray Written by Erica Kelley Original Graphic Art by Coley Horner Original Music by Rob Harrison of Gamma Radio Edited & Mixed by Erica Kelley Dr. Fred Jablin, a highly regarded professor of communication, was a dedicated husband to his wife, Piper Rountree. For years, he did everything in his power to make her happy, but nothing he did w...

From 1992-1994, a serial killer stalked young black women in Charlotte, North Carolina. Police came under fire from families and the media once the killer was unmasked. They blamed being understaffed during a crack epidemic, insisting that most of their murder victims were black and they had a good solve rate. As these were young college students, some young mothers and not really involved in the...