Take Good Notes: A True Crime Podcast by Tonya Branch

He calls 911 within minutes, says he thinks she has a knife, and waits outside for police. Then the headlines land, the tape goes up, and a mother is left trying to reconstruct the truth from whatever scraps the system will actually show her.  We sit down with Tonya Branch to follow her firsthand timeline after her son is accused of being a murderer, aggressor, and abuser. We revisit the 911 call...

A mother watches the story about her son get twisted in real time and she realizes one thing too late: the truth doesn't speak for itself, records do. Tonya Branch and Carissa Fox continue Tonya's firsthand account of Sawyer's relationship spiral, from the moment a video reveals marks on his body to the fragile relief of a new girlfriend, Dallas, who briefly brings normalcy back to...

A family can be doing everything right and still get blindsided. We’re talking with Tonya Branch about the life she fought to build: six kids under one roof, a leap of faith into opening an auto repair shop, and a hard-earned sense that things are finally steady. Then her son Sawyer starts dating Amber, and what looks like teenage drama at first reveals something darker: humiliation, control, and...

A 15-year prison sentence can turn a family into a headline, but it can also force one question that never stops burning: what if the story everyone believes is incomplete? We’re Tonya Branch and Carissa Fox, and we walk through the lived context behind Tonya’s book, Take Good Notes, beginning with the uncomfortable parts Tonya owns about herself and ending with the life-altering consequences that...