Investigation: Homicide

Amanda Johansson and Nicole Woods sit down with Sandy Middleton, executive director of the Center for Violence Prevention, to talk about what it takes to protect special victims and fight domestic violence in Mississippi. The numbers are hard to ignore. One media outlet tracked around 80 domestic violence incidents in 2024 that left at least 100 people dead, some of them children and some law enfo...

For a good officer, training doesn’t end at graduation. The skills learned in the classroom, and kept sharp throughout a career, shape how an officer handles a traffic stop, a crisis call, or a homicide scene.   Therese Apel and Sara Perkins-Ricks sit down with Tony Carleton, executive director of the Mississippi Law Enforcement Officers Training Academy, to talk about why training and education t...

In April 2023, Byram officers responded to a house fire on Gary Drive and found people badly burned and a home fully engulfed. What looked like a tragedy turned out to be something else entirely. It became Detective Judson Magloire’s first homicide case as an investigator.   Magloire sits down with Amanda Johansson and Therese Apel to talk about that case and what it taught him. He also tells the...

Allegations of gang rape at Cornell have been headlining news outlets lately, and meanwhile Law & Order: SVU remains one of the most beloved shows on television.    But what is the reality of being the person who works sex crimes at an agency? It's not wrapped up in an hour, and the cases rarely come with a tidy confession.   This week, Madison County Sheriff's Office Investigator William Hort...

In September 2022, Jaylen Lewis, 25, was shot and killed during a Capitol Police stop at West and Mayes streets in Jackson. Two officers fired that night: Steven Frederick Jr. and Michael Rhinewalt. Both were charged with manslaughter, and the case drew strong reactions from every direction, about the shooting itself and about the two men on trial.   After almost a week in Judge Faye Peterson's co...

August 1990. A young mother working the late shift at the Western Sizzlin in Flowood stops at a Brandon Texaco for cinnamon rolls for her kids' breakfast. She's inside for only a few minutes. Half a mile from home, a man rises from the back of her van with a knife to her throat. Thirty days later, a nurse leaving a Memphis hospital lives through the same nightmare. The attacker made both women the...

Twenty-five years after 9/11, the toll of a quarter-century spent on high alert is written into the bodies of the people who answered the call. This week, Sara Perkins-Ricks and Therese Apel sit down with Sgt. Jordan Jones to talk about what constant high-intensity service does to those who serve, and how they recover. Jordan is the founder and CEO of Holos, a performance optimization and wellness...

There are many voices around Mississippi speaking on behalf of first responders in the field of mental health. One of the more prominent currently is Kevin Whitsell, a 20-year veteran paramedic and firefighter and the founder and host of “A Silent War Within,” a podcast dedicated to confronting and destigmatizing mental health challenges among first responders and healthcare professionals. A Missi...

In April 1996, a spring afternoon in South Jackson turned into a scene of terror the metro area has never forgotten. This week, Therese Apel and Sara Perkins-Ricks sit down with Charlie Smith, a former Jackson Police Department Crime Scene Investigator, who walks them through one of the most harrowing cases of his career, from the inside. On April 12, 1996, Larry Wayne Shoemake barricaded himself...

Some of the people who change our lives never know they did it. Capt. Barbara Folsom-McNeal was eleven years old when a police officer walked into the worst night of her childhood and carried her out. She'd been whipped with an extension cord, and to a terrified kid, he was a promise that someone would come through when it mattered most.  She didn't learn his name that night, but because of him, s...

Jackson has held the highest homicide rate per capita in the nation for five years running. Behind every one of those numbers is a name, a family, and a death someone has to answer for. In Hinds County, that responsibility runs through Jeramiah Howard.   As County Coroner, Howard oversees an office that investigates them all: every scene, every call in the middle of the night, every hardest conver...

From Olivia Benson to Dana Scully to Ziva David, we’ve all got a TV idea of what it looks like to be a female cop. Spoiler alert: you can’t actually run in those heels, and the cases don’t wrap up in 42 minutes. Tonight, Therese and Amanda sit down with Warren County Sheriff’s Office Lieutenant Stacy Rollison, and her story is the real thing. She started as a part-time jailer while raising three k...

George David Herrin spent a decade as a fixture at the Canton Estates Apartments. The 85-year-old security guard mowed lawns, helped residents with small tasks, and was a grandfather figure to the kids in the neighborhood.   Then, one Sunday night just after 11:20 p.m., deputies responded to gunshots and found him shot multiple times as he sat in his vehicle outside the complex. The Madison County...

In October 2004, Janell Hatton, a 63-year-old real estate agent from the Bunker Hill community in Marion County, was shot during a robbery at her home. Her body was found buried in a barn near Kokomo. Before it was over, five people would be arrested, and the brutality of the crime would make it one of the most talked-about murders in recent Mississippi history. This week, Sara Perkins-Ricks and T...

Sometimes the best conversations are the unplanned ones. Our guest for tonight was under the weather this week, so hosts Therese Apel and Amanda Johansson are flipping the script and opening the floor. Episode 68, "You're the guest," is exactly what it sounds like. No case file, no set agenda, just the two of us talking with you about the stories that pull us in and keep us coming back. We are pul...

Some stories don't start in a courtroom or a case file. They start at a kitchen table, in a grandmother's voice, in a story carried quietly across generations because the truth was too heavy and too dangerous to say out loud.   In 1937, Roosevelt "Red" Townes and Robert "Bootjack" McDaniels were lynched in Duck Hill, Mississippi. It became one of the most photographed lynchings in American history...

This week on Investigation: Homicide:   An 18-year-old from West Memphis tells his mom he’s heading to the movies. Three days later he’s found in the Holly Springs National Forest. He’s 80 miles from home, shot multiple times, just yards off a remote county road.   Fredarrious Wilson was months from graduating. He wanted to be an architect. Instead he was lured across a state line into the woods b...

Tonight on Investigation: Homicide, Therese Apel and Sara Perkins Ricks sit down with author Charlie Spillers — a man whose life reads like the books he writes. Before he was a bestselling author, Spillers was an ex-Marine, an undercover agent, and a federal prosecutor, and he’s spent his career on both sides of the most dangerous corners of the law.   We’ll talk about Confessions of an Undercover...

First responders already know what it means to be strangers in a strange land — set apart by what they’ve seen, rewired by what they’ve carried. For those who also hold a faith life, there’s a second kind of strangeness layered on top of the first. In this episode, hosts Therese Apel and Amanda Johansson sit down with Clint Hatch, author of Keeping the Peace Within, to talk about what happens when...

They run toward the worst moments of our lives and then they go home and carry it alone. On the next Investigation: Homicide, Therese Apel and Sara Perkins sit down with Kristy Daniels, who knows that weight personally.   After losing her husband to suicide, Kristy didn't just grieve, she built something that would start to address the devastating and fatal metal health crises that first responder...

She was about eleven, washing dishes with fresh gashes up her arms and praying to die, when three officers answered a call for help. Two got pulled into an argument at the door. The third — a tall veteran officer whose name she never learned — knelt down and took her hands. That moment is the reason Jackson Police Department Capt. Barbara Folsom-McNeal wears a badge today.   Now, more than forty y...

Every courtroom tells a story, but rarely do we hear it straight from the bench.   This week, Nicole Kral and Therese Apel sit down with Justice Court Judge Marsha Weems Stacey for a candid conversation about what it really looks like to dispense justice at the community level. Judge Stacey pulls back the curtain on cases that have moved through her courtroom: the ones that stay with you, the ones...

 On April 24, 1996, an ordinary shift at Jackson Fire Department headquarters turned into one of the deadliest days in the department's history. Firefighter Kenneth Tornes walked the halls of the station he knew well, moving from office to office with deadly intent — targeting the men who wore the same uniform he did, the supervisors who had dedicated their lives to protecting others. When it was...

When a defense attorney steps into a case that has captured national attention, the stakes couldn’t be higher. On this episode of Investigation: Homicide, Jackson-based attorney Aafram Sellers joins Therese Apel and Nicole Kral for an in-depth conversation about representing Brett McAlpin, the alleged ringleader in Mississippi’s infamous “Goon Squad” case. Sellers offers a rare look at the legal s...

Tonight on Investigation: Homicide, we revisit the case of Alex Easterling, a missing man from Pickens whose disappearance continues to raise questions for his family and community.   Joining us is his mother, Ashley Martin, who shares the latest developments in her son’s case and the ongoing search for answers. She also discusses new efforts she’s leading to support other families facing the hear...