Speaker 1: Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence, and is
Speaker 1: not intended for all audiences.
Speaker 2: Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 3: I remember her saying that she has a little boy,
Speaker 3: and she just kept saying Zion, but they didn't let
Speaker 3: her up.
Speaker 1: Welcome to episode three hundred and thirty two of Sword
Speaker 1: and the Scale Show that reveals that the worst monsters
Speaker 1: are real. The final episode of this season was written
Speaker 1: and produced by Elena Thomas, one of our senior producers.
Speaker 1: As this year comes to a close, you'd like to
Speaker 1: say thank you to our retire staff, including producers Evan Siegelman,
Speaker 1: Valerie Vernon, Michael Stabile, Mish Barbara Way. Also our engineers
Speaker 1: Rob Ravelli and John McMichael Gerdy, who works our customer service.
Speaker 1: Whenever you have a problem with your app, but you
Speaker 1: can download By the Way right now in the Google
Speaker 1: Play Store or the Apple App Store. I know we've
Speaker 1: been losing a few of you the last year or so,
Speaker 1: and we'll try to get you back so a guy
Speaker 1: can't even have a multiple breakdown. In early August of
Speaker 1: the year two thousand, just before the new school year
Speaker 1: was about to begin, the heat sat heavy over Mayfield, Kentucky,
Speaker 1: It was still early in the morning, and everything was
Speaker 1: quiet and still. The only sounds were the occasional bird
Speaker 1: chirping on the rooftop of Mayfield Middle School and the
Speaker 1: floor waxing machines humming inside the building. Out behind the school,
Speaker 1: a teacher spotted an unusual dark shape in the grass.
Speaker 4: I talked an environmental science class, and this was a
Speaker 4: memorial to a teacher that had died at our school.
Speaker 4: And we always kept fresh flowers and kept it playing.
Speaker 4: We did and stuff. I that I went out the door,
Speaker 4: and I just I still had my hand on the door.
Speaker 4: I remember, because if I had closed it, it would
Speaker 4: have locked. And I saw this sandal lane right by
Speaker 4: the the door. There's a little concrete path there, and
Speaker 4: I saw the sandal laying there, and I just thought,
Speaker 4: you know, I wonder what that sandal's doing there. And
Speaker 4: when I looked over to the left is when I
Speaker 4: saw the body.
Speaker 1: It was hard to tell it was a human body,
Speaker 1: though the corpse was burned to a crisp.
Speaker 4: It just took me a few seconds to try to
Speaker 4: figure out, you know, that it was a body.
Speaker 5: And I.
Speaker 4: Just I was still holding on through the door, and
Speaker 4: I just turned around, you know, I said to myself,
Speaker 4: I believe that's a body. And I went back in
Speaker 4: the building to find mister Almond, my principal, to tell him,
Speaker 4: and I told him, I said, mister Almond, I think
Speaker 4: there's a dead body out back, and he immediately just started,
Speaker 4: you know, running down the hall and we went back
Speaker 4: out there, and sure enough.
Speaker 1: The next day, Argus second officials used dental records to
Speaker 1: make an identification. The charred woman was confirmed to be
Speaker 1: eighteen year old Jessica Curran. The autopsy offered few answers.
Speaker 1: It looked like she'd been badly beaten in the head
Speaker 1: and face, but a segment of a black braided leather
Speaker 1: belt found beside her body is what took center stage.
Speaker 1: Based on that, the medical examiner determined that she must
Speaker 1: have been strangled because the top half of her body
Speaker 1: was so badly burned. The usual indicators of strangulation weren't there,
Speaker 1: but the belt was enough just the same. There weren't
Speaker 1: any physical signs of sexual assault, but detectives had found
Speaker 1: Jessica's ripped underwear near her body, so the assumption was
Speaker 1: made over By the glass doors of the school, they
Speaker 1: found a clump of Jessica's hair and some suspicious smudging
Speaker 1: near the door handle. Jessica hadn't gone down without a fight.
Speaker 1: Here are a couple of detectives from the Mayfield Police Department.
Speaker 6: It's obvious even that part. You can tell that they're
Speaker 6: saying the sponges could have been from anything. But I mean,
Speaker 6: you look like hands had been you know, like this
Speaker 6: smudged over there. So with the clump of hair there,
Speaker 6: it certainly appeared to have been some type of struggle,
Speaker 6: perhaps somebody trying to get in or the door open.
Speaker 7: Uh you figure.
Speaker 5: What that kind of violence.
Speaker 6: I mean, the big smashed back her head, her nose
Speaker 6: is driven up into I mean, this part is driven.
Speaker 5: Up into the essentially, I mean, she shit pretty hard.
Speaker 5: She she was tagged hard. They're painful, had to be.
Speaker 5: So you figured blood spattering somewhere, so it probably did.
Speaker 6: But with all the rain it washed its way and
Speaker 6: then and then they found later that there was still
Speaker 6: on flood there and it drained there, So most of
Speaker 6: it happened pretty close to there. And definitely the burning
Speaker 6: happened there because the grass is firn.
Speaker 1: The grass around her body was scorched. Detectives took that
Speaker 1: to mean she was set on fire right there in
Speaker 1: that spot, not burned elsewhere, and moved. This was assumed
Speaker 1: to be a violent, bloody struggle, but there was no
Speaker 1: blood evidence found at the scene. After all, Jessica had
Speaker 1: been laying in this spot behind the middle school for
Speaker 1: two days or more because of the environmental damage. The
Speaker 1: medical examiner was limited and what he could say for sure.
Speaker 1: He listed strangulation as the cause of death. The rest
Speaker 1: possible head and facial injuries couldn't be pinned down with certainty.
Speaker 1: In truth, there wasn't much left to go on. What
Speaker 1: everyone hoped, though, is that Jessica died before she was
Speaker 1: set on fire.
Speaker 8: From what we gathered, it was from the out tops
Speaker 8: for Ford. We don't know for sure.
Speaker 6: There's no way to kill perfectly other than there's no
Speaker 6: soot in there to where she would have breathed an.
Speaker 5: Any soot at that point, So obviously we're hoping she
Speaker 5: was dead before she was certified.
Speaker 1: BOK evidence can give you an approximate time of death
Speaker 1: and tell you how someone was killed, but it can't
Speaker 1: tell you who a person truly was. Eighteen year old
Speaker 1: Jessica Currn came from a notable local family. Her dad,
Speaker 1: Joe Curran, was the definition of Mayfield High School football,
Speaker 1: church on Sundays, small business, and eventually captain of the
Speaker 1: fire department. Can you picture it? Typical Americana stereotype. The
Speaker 1: dark irony of the situation was not lost on anyone.
Speaker 1: When his daughter was killed, Joe believed his town would
Speaker 1: rally and discover the truth years later, though he would
Speaker 1: still be asking for it.
Speaker 9: She was pretty tiny. I think she was about seven
Speaker 9: pounds or so when she was born the lover. After
Speaker 9: she grew up, she was more like five nine or so,
Speaker 9: long legs tall. A Nick's son came three years later.
Speaker 9: She was pretty much a mother for him. She packed
Speaker 9: him around all the time. She recorded this football game,
Speaker 9: she recorded his basketball games, and we could tell most
Speaker 9: of the time when she did recording. Most of the
Speaker 9: time recording was only on him. It wasn't on the team.
Speaker 9: It's just on him. I thought that was so funny.
Speaker 9: I'm like, who's scoring the points and who else is
Speaker 9: playing on this team. She's had everything on Josh. She
Speaker 9: showed everything on him. She said, act like nobody else
Speaker 9: was on the team. You could hear a hollering form,
Speaker 9: Go Josh, Go Josh.
Speaker 7: She read it loved their brothers, and she read it
Speaker 7: loved their family.
Speaker 1: But soon Jessica grew up. She wasn't a little girl
Speaker 1: anymore caring for her brothers. She was a young woman
Speaker 1: who had just entered adulthood and found herself unexpectedly pregnant.
Speaker 9: It wasn't a happy time. I wasn't ready for that
Speaker 9: at that time, but she was all and I know
Speaker 9: she would have been seeing a few guys, and I
Speaker 9: knew it was a possibility.
Speaker 1: Now, this was a community where word got around. People
Speaker 1: were talking about who the father of Jessica's son, Zion,
Speaker 1: might be, and why he might have wanted Jessica dead.
Speaker 1: Within two months, two local men were under the microscope
Speaker 1: at the time of a murder. Baby Zion was only
Speaker 1: seven months old when she first had him. She thought
Speaker 1: Zion's father was a guy she really liked, someone named Marcus.
Speaker 1: But there was a possibility that it was another man,
Speaker 1: someone Jessica really didn't like.
Speaker 10: Do you know Jessica Kerr?
Speaker 11: Yes? I do.
Speaker 7: How did you know Jessica?
Speaker 10: I met her at Grace County High School. We went
Speaker 10: to school together. We had a math class together, and
Speaker 10: we just started interacting with one another and started hanging
Speaker 10: out and became pretty good friends. Considered her one of
Speaker 10: my best friends. Well, that night had to have been
Speaker 10: the night she got pregnant, so she probably conceived that
Speaker 10: night because the person she was seeing on the regular,
Speaker 10: her sexual partner, was Marcus Morris, and she swore that
Speaker 10: to the baby. She just knew that the baby's daddy
Speaker 10: was because, I mean, for real, it was one time
Speaker 10: with Jeremy, you know, and she we didn't even think
Speaker 10: about that night because we hadn't even seen the dude
Speaker 10: since then, you know. And so when the baby was born,
Speaker 10: she was trying to get child sport ordered for Marcus
Speaker 10: or whatever, and they'd done a DNA test that it
Speaker 10: came back negative or however they come back it wasn't his,
Speaker 10: And so she called me and she told me, and
Speaker 10: she's like, Jessica, the only other person that could be
Speaker 10: is Jeremy Adams.
Speaker 1: Wording to her best friend, Jessica was devastated, and for
Speaker 1: good reason.
Speaker 10: When we were hanging out and we first started hanging out,
Speaker 10: she wasn't really dating anyone, and there was a few,
Speaker 10: I mean, we just hung out with people. We didn't
Speaker 10: really date. We would go to football games and you know,
Speaker 10: just things like that with our friends. And then she
Speaker 10: did start seeing Jeremy Adams, but it wasn't a date thing.
Speaker 10: It was a hangout thing, like so we all went
Speaker 10: back to my house and we hang.
Speaker 12: Out or whatever.
Speaker 10: And that night he kind of forces lee took her
Speaker 10: around the building and had said they had sex. It
Speaker 10: was like two seconds they were around there and came
Speaker 10: back and he walked off and that was that. And
Speaker 10: then we didn't really see him again. We didn't really
Speaker 10: hang out with him again or anything because she felt
Speaker 10: uncomfortable about that.
Speaker 7: Okay, Field, He never interviewed to State police, is never contact.
Speaker 8: No.
Speaker 1: Rumors that Jeremy was the father of Jessica's baby gave
Speaker 1: rise to theories this was only fueled by the indicators
Speaker 1: that there had been a struggle at the middle school,
Speaker 1: the clump of Jessica's hair, the smudges on the glass doors,
Speaker 1: and a baby that might not be his. All this
Speaker 1: put him right there in the crosshairs of the investigation.
Speaker 1: The circle soon widened to include Carlos Saxton, who moved
Speaker 1: in Jeremy's orbit and, according to Mayfield Police, was with
Speaker 1: him the night they went looking for Jessica. They would
Speaker 1: both face indictment, Jeremy with murder and Carlos as an
Speaker 1: accomplice to murder. The audio you're about to hear is
Speaker 1: from the grand jury proceeding.
Speaker 8: Would you state your name for the record, protective partner,
Speaker 8: jam And how are you imployant? I'm employed by the
Speaker 8: City of Mayfield at the police detective So.
Speaker 6: If you were, let's celebrand jury, what happened in how
Speaker 6: you got involved investigation and who we are.
Speaker 1: Apparently, Jeremy Adams had a cell mate at the county
Speaker 1: jail named Jesse. Well, Jesse desperately wanted to tell authorities
Speaker 1: what Jeremy had shared with him. Well, they were locked
Speaker 1: up together.
Speaker 8: Jesse is very distraught crime said that this has bothered him.
Speaker 8: That's the reason he wanted to talk to us. He'd
Speaker 8: never mentioned anything about any money, any crime stoppers. Nothing.
Speaker 8: Was very distraught about this.
Speaker 1: Jesse seemed genuinely terrified at the prospect of sharing a
Speaker 1: cell with a murderer, so scared, in fact, that he
Speaker 1: requested a different cell mate. Eventually, he even requested to
Speaker 1: be transferred to a different facility. Here's Jesse's statement.
Speaker 8: On January the fifteenth yearm and came to my sale
Speaker 8: while me and two other inmates were there and started
Speaker 8: talking about Jessica's case again and made a statement to
Speaker 8: THEE been seeing Jessica and that she had messed around
Speaker 8: with someone. Then he was talking about an argument and
Speaker 8: held onion out of her brown sandal and been getting
Speaker 8: head so hard that her tongue was in and out.
Speaker 8: Then he made a statement that her little wife, Hannies,
Speaker 8: had been tore off and throug beside her, and that
Speaker 8: she had been killed in one spot and drove to another.
Speaker 8: He also at one time said something about after she
Speaker 8: was done and turned over about the Brady hair being
Speaker 8: stuck to the ground, and said something about not wanting
Speaker 8: his girlfriend finding out about the baby they had to
Speaker 8: get her.
Speaker 1: These are a lot of details that as far as
Speaker 1: I know, weren't public knowledge at the time, And if
Speaker 1: Jeremy had a girlfriend, that's another possible motive. Jeremy stated
Speaker 1: that he didn't want his girlfriend to find out that
Speaker 1: he had a baby with another woman. Based on all
Speaker 1: of this, grand jury returned indictments for both Jeremy and Carlos.
Speaker 1: The cases were slowly headed towards trial. Jeremy was set
Speaker 1: for February of two thousand and three, but less than
Speaker 1: week before the start, data judge dismissed the case entirely
Speaker 1: the reason Mayfield police had failed to turn over audio
Speaker 1: and video evidence. They had, you know, fucked up a
Speaker 1: procedural thing, some paperwork, some nonsense, and that was that
Speaker 1: Jessica's family felt they knew who had done this. Jeremy
Speaker 1: sellmate was certain he was the one who had killed Jessica.
Speaker 1: But now Jeremy was walking free. Here's Jessica's dad.
Speaker 7: I wasn't really happy about that at all.
Speaker 9: I felt like they finally got somebody, and now they're
Speaker 9: releasing him. I remember the first time that I after
Speaker 9: the case had went they had released the first three
Speaker 9: and me and.
Speaker 7: My wife went to Walmart.
Speaker 9: And I know a lot of people have been around
Speaker 9: this area on my entire life, and I went in
Speaker 9: Walmart and I would see somebody that I knew and
Speaker 9: I was friends with, and I always speak to talk
Speaker 9: to or shake hands with, and they would turn away,
Speaker 9: and some of them wouldn't know what to say, and
Speaker 9: some of them would just turn and go a different
Speaker 9: direction to avoid me, and that night I realized what
Speaker 9: an impact it had on the community, the people here.
Speaker 9: So I went back to the car. I told my wife,
Speaker 9: I know, I'm not going to put those people through that.
Speaker 9: They really didn't know what to say to me. What
Speaker 9: do you say to a person who's lost their daughter?
Speaker 9: And then they released the people. They really didn't know
Speaker 9: what to say. What do you say?
Speaker 1: For years, Jessica's murder sat unsolved. But sometimes the person
Speaker 1: who breaks a case doesn't carry a badge and Kentucky,
Speaker 1: a homemaker named Susan Gallbreath decides Jessica's murder shouldn't fade
Speaker 1: into the shadows. If you've spent any time at all
Speaker 1: in the Facebook community, especially the true crime community, you'll
Speaker 1: know that there's a whole lot of these people out there.
Speaker 1: They call themselves I guess web sleuths, or armchair detectives,
Speaker 1: or I don't know any number of things, but they
Speaker 1: got a whole lot of time on their hands, and
Speaker 1: they spend it trying to solve cold cases, often to
Speaker 1: the detriment of the official investigation. Anyway, Susan Golbrith was
Speaker 1: one of these people, and she says she was at
Speaker 1: the crime scene that day, and when she saw Jessica's body,
Speaker 1: she knew she had to help. So she starts small
Speaker 1: with a phone, a list of names and the patients
Speaker 1: to call. Dozens of people. She keeps notes about things
Speaker 1: that don't sit right with her. She shows up with
Speaker 1: questions and lets people talk. Tips all start landing in
Speaker 1: one place, Susan's notebook. Bit by bit, doors that stayed
Speaker 1: closed for law enforcement open for her. Officials learn her name.
Speaker 1: Reporters do also, and for the first time in a
Speaker 1: long time, this case feels like it might actually be
Speaker 1: solvable by a determined woman with a stubborn streak. This
Speaker 1: is the part that really makes you want to believe
Speaker 1: in humanity, at least a little bit, the crazy and
Speaker 1: hopeful idea that an armchair detective can do what the
Speaker 1: system can't or won't, because it looks like, maybe, just maybe,
Speaker 1: Susan would be the one to solve the murder of
Speaker 1: Jessica Curran. In August of the year two thousand, the
Speaker 1: charred body of eighteen year old Jessica Kurran was found
Speaker 1: behind a middle school in Mayfield, Kentucky. The autopsy leaned
Speaker 1: on a piece of braided belt that was found nearby,
Speaker 1: so the medical examiner deduced that the cause of death
Speaker 1: was strangulation. The early case zeroed in on a man
Speaker 1: named Jeremy Adams and his friend Carlos Saxton. They were
Speaker 1: both indicted, but in two thousand and three the cases
Speaker 1: were dismissed after discovery violations. Years passed without answers until
Speaker 1: two thousand and four, when a Kentucky homemaker and self
Speaker 1: proclaimed citizen sleuth put the case back up on the map.
Speaker 1: Susan Galbreath had no law enforcement an experience and had
Speaker 1: never done any real detective work, but sitting alone at home,
Speaker 1: she started investigating, when you.
Speaker 7: Said you became interestood in this case? Oh, so did
Speaker 7: ay Jessica's body was though? And did you have contact
Speaker 7: with the currents? No?
Speaker 9: I knew following in the paper.
Speaker 13: Yes, said that you were when you employed.
Speaker 7: At that time.
Speaker 14: No, I have been heard of my job in ninety eight,
Speaker 14: so I hadn't had you know a job since it so.
Speaker 1: And this new job that had fallen into her lap
Speaker 1: was the one she knew she couldn't do alone. So,
Speaker 1: shooting for the moon, she started reaching out to celebrities
Speaker 1: like Oprah Winfrey and Julia Roberts most never wrote back,
Speaker 1: of course. I mean, I doubt they even see their
Speaker 1: own fan mail. But one person did, not any of
Speaker 1: the A listers, but a guy named Tom Mangold, a
Speaker 1: veteran BBC journalist in London. Susan, it seems, had cast
Speaker 1: a very wide net. Her matter of fact, email landed
Speaker 1: in Tom's inboxing. He answered it in quick succession. He
Speaker 1: shelled out his own cash, bought a plane ticket, and
Speaker 1: flew to Kentucky.
Speaker 15: I don't think Susan herself is quite sure what it
Speaker 15: was that that particularly grabbed her about the Jessica Couren case.
Speaker 15: If I had to hazard a guess, and I've never
Speaker 15: really done more than guess about it, I think she
Speaker 15: has a kind of theirn Brockovich dimension which came out
Speaker 15: at that particular time, and I think it's still there,
Speaker 15: and I think it could come out again tomorrow. You're
Speaker 15: asking me why did I sense the story one just does?
Speaker 15: I mean, it seemed to me that here was he
Speaker 15: was a very interesting situation where you have murder world.
Speaker 15: Murder's pretty commonplace everywhere in the Western world, but you
Speaker 15: had somebody who was absolutely dedicated to finding who the
Speaker 15: culprits were didn't quite know why she was so dedicated
Speaker 15: and was up against what was effectively a corrupt police
Speaker 15: force totally failed a series of investigations that just plowed
Speaker 15: on and on without any particular benefit to herself.
Speaker 1: By the spring of two thousand and four, Tom Mangold
Speaker 1: was on the ground reporting with Susan. He once was
Speaker 1: a journalist reporting on wars, organized crime, and UK politics.
Speaker 1: Now he was in Mayfield, Kentucky, reporting on a young
Speaker 1: woman's murder. Susan opened doors and Tom put a spotlight
Speaker 1: on what they were hearing. In the fall of the
Speaker 1: same year, Tom put the case under the microscope with
Speaker 1: an article called Murder in a Small Town. Around the
Speaker 1: same time, the state's investigative arm, the newly built Kentucky
Speaker 1: Bureau of Investigation. In two thousand and five, two women
Speaker 1: who had already been interviewed years earlier, Victoria Caldwell and
Speaker 1: Venetia Stubblefield, changed their stories. Those new statements taken by
Speaker 1: state investigators now pointed to an entirely different suspect.
Speaker 7: Wow did they ask you to?
Speaker 16: Maybe said that's because through where I need to life
Speaker 16: life or fency cross.
Speaker 1: These reinterviews were done in a hotel conference room. For
Speaker 1: some reason, people who had told one story the first
Speaker 1: time around were now telling an entirely different story. But
Speaker 1: KBI ate up every bit of it. Susan Gobbreath was
Speaker 1: happy to see her cunning detective work finally paying off.
Speaker 10: You're fully confident in the results that you've.
Speaker 7: Got, Obviously I am.
Speaker 17: Yes.
Speaker 1: I interviewed Quincy Cross.
Speaker 17: I spent about an hour and a half long interview
Speaker 17: with him, and in that interview, Tom told me don't
Speaker 17: expect the confession, and so I didn't. But the truth
Speaker 17: never changes, but lies do. In that interview, he gave
Speaker 17: me some telling information that I knew had never been
Speaker 17: made public. I remember at the time screaming pretty much
Speaker 17: to the Douga State Police, did you know this is
Speaker 17: enough to arrest him on right here? Did it happen?
Speaker 11: No?
Speaker 17: But I definitely believe they've got the right colprit with
Speaker 17: Quincy Cross.
Speaker 1: Quincy Cross was Victoria's cousin's boyfriend. Victoria tells KBI that
Speaker 1: somehow everyone involved knew they were going to be interviewed
Speaker 1: by the Mayfield Police, and fifteen year old Victorious as
Speaker 1: she was told to lie to divert attention away from Quincy.
Speaker 1: She says she obeyed.
Speaker 7: Did she come up on your information that she knew about?
Speaker 14: What told me?
Speaker 7: How did you? How did you know your information?
Speaker 16: Because my pason speaking about it and I heard them
Speaker 16: say some things.
Speaker 7: Okay, you talk to us.
Speaker 11: If we had no knowledge of the case of Victoria.
Speaker 11: How did you use names? Because you know you knew
Speaker 11: all the people that you're talking about.
Speaker 7: We need to know.
Speaker 1: Victoria's first statements to KBI were cautious. She says she
Speaker 1: just overheard her cousin talking to Quincy Cross about the
Speaker 1: case and that's where she was getting her information. But
Speaker 1: after numerous follow up interviews that summer, her story crystallized.
Speaker 1: Victoria's statements would implicate six people in total, including herself.
Speaker 1: By the time she took the stand in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, her story had become sharper, more linear, and
Speaker 1: much more disturbing.
Speaker 3: That's when Quincy and Tamra and this white guy ms
Speaker 3: Vain But they.
Speaker 16: Had pulled up to my house.
Speaker 7: You remember his first night.
Speaker 16: Yeah, it was Jeffrey.
Speaker 3: My cousin asked us that I wanted to take a
Speaker 3: ride with them, and I was like yeah, because she's
Speaker 3: older than me, you know, so it's cloding out older people.
Speaker 3: So then I get into the car with them, which
Speaker 3: I got into the back seat. They picked up Anisia.
Speaker 3: Vanisha had mentioned that Jessica had need to arrive for
Speaker 3: the party, and I guess nobody wanted to get a ride.
Speaker 3: So I don't remember what said, but Quincy and tamahad
Speaker 3: went for something to each other and they were like, okay,
Speaker 3: then local pick her up. Jessica gets into the car.
Speaker 3: When we got into the white guy's house, they had
Speaker 3: gotten out. We all had gotten out, but they had
Speaker 3: pulled Jessica to get out the car with them, kind
Speaker 3: of like forcing her to get out the car, and
Speaker 3: they go inside and then they go into this letter.
Speaker 3: The white guy had left me and went into the
Speaker 3: room with them, and they came right back out. But
Speaker 3: then I heard yelling and excuse me, So I was
Speaker 3: wondering what the hell was going on, and so I
Speaker 3: opened the door, and that's when I had to see
Speaker 3: Tamra colding Jessica down and Quincy over her with the
Speaker 3: belt around her neck, and Quincy was kind of over her,
Speaker 3: like kind of like over her stomach up high on
Speaker 3: her stomach area, and he had a belt that he
Speaker 3: had gotten from his pants.
Speaker 16: And had put it around her neck, and she was
Speaker 16: just I.
Speaker 3: Remember her saying that she had she has a little boy,
Speaker 3: and she just kept saying Zion. But they didn't let
Speaker 3: her up, and I just went back out over her
Speaker 3: real quick, and I had just sat down on that
Speaker 3: couch and then I just went back in there again,
Speaker 3: and that's when I was.
Speaker 16: Like, she's not breathing.
Speaker 5: So I touched her.
Speaker 7: Neck and I told him much she was dead.
Speaker 1: Victoria says her cousin Tamra took some photos of Quincy
Speaker 1: with Jessica's body. These photos were never found.
Speaker 3: From the pictures that I saw, Tamarhus take a couple
Speaker 3: of those pictures because she like got his private area
Speaker 3: out and I was like kind of torched her lips, lips.
Speaker 11: And this.
Speaker 7: Was this before after she was murdered.
Speaker 3: That's what I mean by they were getting off on it.
Speaker 1: Victoria says. They wrapped Jessica's body in a blanket and
Speaker 1: threw her into the trunk of the car. They drove
Speaker 1: around for a while and eventually ended up in the
Speaker 1: Mayfield Middle School.
Speaker 7: Okay, so they stopped at the school. Who gets the
Speaker 7: body out of the trunk? First?
Speaker 3: Quincy and the why guy try to lift the body
Speaker 3: of the truck, but they couldn't, so Tanner went to
Speaker 3: the back and helped them let the body out.
Speaker 9: Okay.
Speaker 7: And what do they do with the body?
Speaker 16: They they lay it in the flower bed area. What
Speaker 16: the flower bed is?
Speaker 7: Okay?
Speaker 3: And then what happens they I don't remember if they
Speaker 3: took the bank off, I don't remember. They Quincy for
Speaker 3: the gas on her and Venicia had through the match
Speaker 3: the gas.
Speaker 7: Joy had the gas powed on. I believe it was
Speaker 7: her face.
Speaker 16: I'm not really sure.
Speaker 7: Okay, so he pours the gas. What does he do
Speaker 7: with the cup?
Speaker 3: I don't remember what he did with the cup because
Speaker 3: after he poured the gas, and they should do the
Speaker 3: match byron.
Speaker 2: Okay, so Quincy, everybody gets the story again, Jeremy Adams
Speaker 2: is gonna be follow that. Was there any discussion why
Speaker 2: how did Jeremy Adams's name come into Whose idea was that?
Speaker 5: Because?
Speaker 3: I guess Jeremy owe him to the money?
Speaker 7: Okay? Was there a mansion?
Speaker 2: Was there any mention about did anybody know that Jeremy
Speaker 2: ever had a relationship with Jessica.
Speaker 7: How does she know that.
Speaker 11: O.
Speaker 16: Tallman has known JUSTI for a long time?
Speaker 7: I understanding.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't just Victoria Caldwell who had changed her
Speaker 1: story and agreed to testify. Venetia Stubblefield wasn't a primary witness,
Speaker 1: but she corroborated pieces of Victoria's story. This included the
Speaker 1: others that were implicated in Victoria's version of events, a
Speaker 1: man named Jeff Burton, the owner of the house. She
Speaker 1: testified that the murder happened in her cousin Tamara Caldwell,
Speaker 1: and a guy named Austin Leach, and someone named Isaac Benjamin.
Speaker 1: All this testimony gave the jury a cohesive change from
Speaker 1: the house to the car, to the middle school. Victoria
Speaker 1: also testified that after that day, Quincy calder, claiming the
Speaker 1: belt used to kill Jessica was his, and offered Victoria
Speaker 1: money to keep quiet. The Commonwealth put all of this
Speaker 1: in front of a jury. There were no dramatic forensics,
Speaker 1: there was no hard physical evidence and no confession from Quincy.
Speaker 1: It was all a narrative built from testimony, with Victoria
Speaker 1: Caldwell at the center of it all, and it worked. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: the jury decided this group of people were guilty and
Speaker 1: that Quincy Cross was the ringleader. After being found guilty
Speaker 1: on charges of murder, first degree, rape, first degree sodomy,
Speaker 1: abuse of a corpse, and tampering with evidence, Quincy was
Speaker 1: sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Speaker 1: After the trial, guilty verdict, and sentencing, numerous questions still
Speaker 1: hung in the air. When a case leans this heart
Speaker 1: on human stories, some of them changing over time. How
Speaker 1: should we weigh them? What's the standard? People forget things
Speaker 1: and get things wrong all of the time. We know
Speaker 1: that we've seen it. So what do you do with
Speaker 1: human testimony?
Speaker 18: As you can imagine, I get presented with cases many
Speaker 18: times a day, all day. I mean, you know, that's
Speaker 18: one of the things about being known in this space,
Speaker 18: right A lot of people need help, and if they're
Speaker 18: smart and you know, and they have the ability, they're
Speaker 18: going to reach out.
Speaker 1: So this is Jason Flahm. He's a veteran record executive
Speaker 1: termed innocence advocate. Whether you think you're the next big
Speaker 1: pop star or you're wrongfully convicted, he's the guy to call.
Speaker 18: When I first heard about this case from a guy
Speaker 18: in prison in Mississippi, who I've been trying to help
Speaker 18: for some time now. His name is Sharon Edwards, but
Speaker 18: he calls himself Sherlock.
Speaker 7: Home.
Speaker 18: He's a great guy. He's not an innocent guy, but
Speaker 18: it's a complicated case. But anyway, Sharon Sherlock enjoys researching
Speaker 18: cases around the country and bringing them to me when
Speaker 18: he finds cases of actual innocence. So he spends his
Speaker 18: time in the law library. And he brought me the
Speaker 18: case of Quincy Cross. And when I heard about it,
Speaker 18: I just was flown away. I mean, I hear so
Speaker 18: many crazy cases, but the deeper you get into this one,
Speaker 18: it's like layers of a rotten onion. You just keep
Speaker 18: healing them and it just keeps smelling worse and worse,
Speaker 18: and you go, wow, how could this be? And then
Speaker 18: I came to find out. Sorry for my rant here,
Speaker 18: but I came to find out that the two dads,
Speaker 18: Quincy Cross's dad and Jessica Kurrn's dad, have been aligned
Speaker 18: for many, many years now working together to try to
Speaker 18: get justice. David Cross wants justice for his son who's
Speaker 18: wrong convicted, and mister Kurran believes wants justice for his
Speaker 18: daughter and he has he's unequivocal, and that he doesn't
Speaker 18: believe they got the right person. And so it's so
Speaker 18: such an unusual and powerful alignment to have the two
Speaker 18: dads working together when one would think that they would
Speaker 18: be mortal enemies.
Speaker 1: If the people who lived this case, se Quincy isn't
Speaker 1: the killer, what do they know that the jury didn't.
Speaker 18: One of the things that makes this case so maddening
Speaker 18: is the idea that first thing they did was they
Speaker 18: assigned a rookie cop, well a rookie, a guy who
Speaker 18: had just been promoted to detective. He was a patrolman
Speaker 18: up until you know, I don't know, days or weeks
Speaker 18: before this happened in a place that has hadn't had
Speaker 18: a murder in over a year, and they assigned this guy,
Speaker 18: Tim Fortner, who has said that he thinks that they
Speaker 18: were setting him up to fail. He didn't know anything.
Speaker 18: He didn't even know to secure the crime scene, they
Speaker 18: threw out evidence, like lots of evidence. They threw out
Speaker 18: the maggots that were on the body. Sorry for that detail,
Speaker 18: because she had been dead for some time, which would
Speaker 18: have helped to determine how long she had been there for.
Speaker 18: They threw out all sorts of other evidence, and they
Speaker 18: allowed people to sort of trape through the crime scene,
Speaker 18: which is, you know, again, give me your random, you know,
Speaker 18: teenager and they would know from watching crime shows on
Speaker 18: their laptop that or their iPad that you don't do that, right.
Speaker 7: But Tim.
Speaker 18: Was way over his head. But there was a lot
Speaker 18: of stuff going on. I mean, the Mayfield Police Department
Speaker 18: was hopelessly corrupt and that's not speculation, right, That's been proven.
Speaker 18: The head guy there, Ronnie Lear, was almost comically corrupt
Speaker 18: and was you know, indicted and charged unconvicted of all
Speaker 18: sorts of you know, all sorts of crimes.
Speaker 10: You know.
Speaker 18: When he cleared out, when he was fired from the
Speaker 18: police department, they cleared out his desk. They found, as
Speaker 18: his successor said, they found enough drugs for half of
Speaker 18: Mayfield in his desk, and they found guns that weren't
Speaker 18: his police weapon and they weren't registered to him and
Speaker 18: they don't know who it belonged to. He was he
Speaker 18: was caught stealing from the evidence room and selling various items.
Speaker 18: I mean, he was, he was.
Speaker 1: He was a character and into this mess center. Susan Galberth,
Speaker 1: the professional armchair detective.
Speaker 7: You know Susan gale Bra, Yes, sir, I do.
Speaker 19: And she was involved in the investigations of this case,
Speaker 19: which is not yes, sir, she has nothing to do
Speaker 19: with law enforcement because she.
Speaker 10: No, sir.
Speaker 7: Yeah, she was actually.
Speaker 19: Involved in president during official questioning of witnesses.
Speaker 1: Was she not official questioning of witnesses?
Speaker 19: In other words, we look at transcripts where they say
Speaker 19: persons present and will see you and y z'neil gallery,
Speaker 19: so and so social gallery.
Speaker 7: She was at any interview that's possible.
Speaker 18: She was, you know, bizarrely, almost anointed deputized someone who
Speaker 18: had no experience, no background in law enforcement or any
Speaker 18: investigative experience or anything. She wasn't a journalist. She was
Speaker 18: just a homemaker who they allowed to run roughshot over
Speaker 18: this case. And she was given full access to everything.
Speaker 18: And sure enough she got her way and she got
Speaker 18: some awards, and she's not around anymore. But she she
Speaker 18: died relatively young, I guess, but she left a trail
Speaker 18: of bodies in her way.
Speaker 7: That is really.
Speaker 18: It's really uh extraordinary.
Speaker 7: Did you have an interest in through a ball in general?
Speaker 13: Well, when I was a child, I either wanted to
Speaker 13: be a comedian, or a police officer. So I mean neither,
Speaker 13: of course, But so I've just always had a fascination
Speaker 13: with the law and things like that.
Speaker 7: Had you taken an interest in other pases.
Speaker 13: Prior to this one, Yeah, I like followed courts, TV
Speaker 13: stuff like that, And so I of course was at
Speaker 13: the time there were so many murders in Mayfield going
Speaker 13: on that it I was I was just you know,
Speaker 13: dumbfounded by it. It was just you know, and here
Speaker 13: was another one in it. Just all of them kind
Speaker 13: of captured interested me, you know. So a detective Steaker
Speaker 13: and I, through.
Speaker 14: Detected Mills became acquainted, and so I started anytime and
Speaker 14: he had anything that I could give him, I would
Speaker 14: call him then, you.
Speaker 1: Know, just a reminder, this was quite literally a random
Speaker 1: unemployed woman calling to interview people, taking notes and reporting
Speaker 1: back to authorities, and they were taking her seriously. They
Speaker 1: should tell you something about the state and effectiveness of
Speaker 1: government more than anything. That is, if you're smart enough
Speaker 1: to pay attention. The audio you've been hearing, by the way,
Speaker 1: is from her testimony at Quincy Cross's trial. That's how
Speaker 1: deeply he was integrated into this case.
Speaker 18: She was definitely a key piece of it. They really
Speaker 18: didn't have much else. They had some circumstantial evidence that
Speaker 18: even after it was disproven, they clung to and they
Speaker 18: kept reinforcing it and hitting the jury over the head
Speaker 18: with it figuratively, you know. But there's so much to
Speaker 18: process because it's such a crazy web of lies and corruption,
Speaker 18: and you know, and nine people arrested for this crime
Speaker 18: under these whacked out theories, and you know, several of
Speaker 18: whom ended up in prison, and Quincy's the only one
Speaker 18: who's still in prison, but some of them, you know,
Speaker 18: there were people who were forced to testify in a
Speaker 18: certain way and then recanted. All the witnesses is recanted,
Speaker 18: and there's no physical evidence of any kind all these
Speaker 18: years later, as we know now, there's none. There's zero
Speaker 18: evidence connecting any of the people who eventually were targeted
Speaker 18: and I believe framed for this horrible crime to the
Speaker 18: crime itself or to Jessica. And what we know now
Speaker 18: is that most of them didn't even know each other
Speaker 18: at the time that they supposedly committed this crime together.
Speaker 18: Things that make you go hmmm, right that that pointed
Speaker 18: towards you know, some of the people who ended up
Speaker 18: in the crosshairs of the of law enforcement. But how
Speaker 18: those things unravel is breathtaking.
Speaker 1: When eighteen year old Jessica Currn's body was found behind
Speaker 1: a Mayfield middle school in two thousand, the crime scene
Speaker 1: was handled sloppily, to say the least, evidence went missing.
Speaker 1: The Mayfield Police department was corrupt and as a result,
Speaker 1: they dropped the ball, and the ball fell through the
Speaker 1: grate and into the sewer. Their original suspect, Jeremy Adams,
Speaker 1: slipped through their incompetent fingers. Then, after a year of stagnation,
Speaker 1: a new storyline formed around Susan Golbrith, the local sleuth.
Speaker 1: Suddenly memory started to change. With Susan's help, Victoria Caldwell
Speaker 1: and a few others came forward to law enforcement with
Speaker 1: their new story that Quincy Cross had killed Jessica Current.
Speaker 1: But there are glaring issues with this second attempt at justice.
Speaker 1: We know the justice system is flawed, but digging into
Speaker 1: the intricacies of a case like this reveals just how
Speaker 1: deep the roots of corruption can grow. This is a
Speaker 1: complicated story, but if you've been listening to our show
Speaker 1: for many years, you'll keep up just fine.
Speaker 18: You're not a sword and scale regular listener, and you
Speaker 18: don't know what you're doing right. I mean, that doesn't
Speaker 18: make you. I mean you're gonna be right all the time,
Speaker 18: But you're more informed than ninety nine percent of the
Speaker 18: general public if you're listening to Sword and Scale a
Speaker 18: regular basis. So I'm a podcast fan and I true
Speaker 18: crime podcasts are my jam. And maybe that sounds terrible,
Speaker 18: but it's true. But this one, I believe is as
Speaker 18: good as any that you've ever heard that I've ever heard.
Speaker 1: Jason Flahm isn't just a huge name in the music industry.
Speaker 1: He's one of the founding members of the Innocence Project.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've heard of it. And I'm not just
Speaker 1: being nice to him because he's kissing my ass.
Speaker 18: My origin story goes back to nineteen ninety three when
Speaker 18: I randomly picked up a newspaper on my way in
Speaker 18: a taxi to go somewhere, and there was a story
Speaker 18: about a kid named Stephen Lennon who was serving fifteen
Speaker 18: to life on a nonviolent first defense cocaine possession charge
Speaker 18: in a maximum security prison in New York State. And
Speaker 18: it was in the paper because his mother, who was
Speaker 18: just a mother who wanted her son back right. She
Speaker 18: wasn't like any influential person, had no particular means. She
Speaker 18: was just a regular, everyday person from Rome, New York.
Speaker 18: And she had been petitioning for clemency for her son.
Speaker 18: He had already been in for eight years. He was
Speaker 18: thirty two. I was thirty two at this point. I
Speaker 18: had been sober almost eight years, and I was like,
Speaker 18: this is too close for comfort. That could have been me. Right.
Speaker 18: I'm not a religious guy, but there before the grace
Speaker 18: of whatever you believe in goes I right. So, a
Speaker 18: major political figure at the time had asked the governor
Speaker 18: to grant clemency to her son, and he had refused,
Speaker 18: which is why it was in the newspaper. So I
Speaker 18: just thought, this is insane. I didn't know that we
Speaker 18: put people in prison for fifteen years to life for
Speaker 18: a non violent burst defense cocaine possession charge.
Speaker 7: Like ah, I was like, this is you know.
Speaker 18: It freaked me out, and I decided I had to
Speaker 18: try to do something. Knowing nothing at all, I'm a
Speaker 18: thirty two year old and our guy aspiring to make
Speaker 18: my way into music industry. And I called the mother
Speaker 18: on the phone. Her name was Shirley, her number was
Speaker 18: in the phone book. Luckily, I offered to send some
Speaker 18: money to get a new lawyer. She said they'd exhausted
Speaker 18: all their appeals and was hopeless. And one thing led
Speaker 18: to another. I called up the only criminal defense latter
Speaker 18: I knew at the time, a guy named Bob Kleena.
Speaker 18: He represented Stone Tuble Pilots in skid Row and they
Speaker 18: were getting arrested weekly. Back then, those are your listeners
Speaker 18: who are old enough to remember would remember. That got
Speaker 18: him to agree. He agreed to take the case pro bono.
Speaker 18: He said it was hopeless, but he was going to try.
Speaker 18: And six months later we ended up in a courtroom
Speaker 18: in Malone, New York, and I sat there holding Missus
Speaker 18: Lennon's hand, her husband's Stan was on the other side.
Speaker 18: Stephen was there in shackles as if he was some
Speaker 18: you know, serial killer or something right, and it's a
Speaker 18: non violent for his defender, and the judge was this
Speaker 18: old guy with white hair, and I was like, this
Speaker 18: is not going to go well, but it did, and
Speaker 18: he banged that gavel down and since Stephen home, and
Speaker 18: that was my moment. I said, this is I didn't
Speaker 18: know I had a superpower, but if I do. This
Speaker 18: is it, and I'm going to use it as much
Speaker 18: as i can for as long as I can. And
Speaker 18: I've never looked back. I've never stopped. That's literally half
Speaker 18: a lifetime ago from me. So from there I learned
Speaker 18: about organization called Families Against Mandatory Minimums now called FAMM.
Speaker 18: I became their first board member, and soon after that
Speaker 18: I learned about the work of the Innocence Project. Barry
Speaker 18: Schek and Peter Neufeldt had started the Innocence Project in
Speaker 18: the early nineties. And what I saw on TV was
Speaker 18: even another level of insanity, which was a case where
Speaker 18: this guy had been scheduled to be executed, and these guys,
Speaker 18: these two geniuses, had come along with their law books
Speaker 18: and their microscopes and their knowledge of science, and they
Speaker 18: found the DNA and they identified it and they proved
Speaker 18: that he could not have been the person that committed
Speaker 18: this crime. And he was not only not executed, he
Speaker 18: was freed. And I said, that's the craziest thing I've
Speaker 18: ever heard. And I rushed down to their office and
Speaker 18: I walked in and I said, I don't know what
Speaker 18: you guys need me to do, but I'll do it.
Speaker 18: And I'll do more. And so myself and a guy
Speaker 18: named Jack Taylor became the first two board members of
Speaker 18: the Innisons Project, so founding board member, not the founders,
Speaker 18: because the founders are Barry and Peter, but you know
Speaker 18: who are heroes of mine. And so I've been, you know,
Speaker 18: working on these issues ever since, and I'll never stop
Speaker 18: as long as I'm breathing.
Speaker 1: Jason's decades of experience have helped him and his team
Speaker 1: to suss out false claims of innocence. Sometimes a guy
Speaker 1: saying he's been wrongfully convicted really did commit the crime.
Speaker 1: In fact, that's often the case, but Jason is confident
Speaker 1: that this isn't what happened with Quincy Cross.
Speaker 18: I'm so glad I get the effort to tell you
Speaker 18: the story. So after I heard about the case from
Speaker 18: Sherlock Homeboy, there's an another case, another Kentucky case I've
Speaker 18: been working on for some time of a guy named
Speaker 18: James Mallory and he's been in prison, oh my god,
Speaker 18: for I mean pretty much since he was eleven. I've
Speaker 18: been working on trying to help free him. And I
Speaker 18: happened to be on the phone with him not too
Speaker 18: long after I first heard about this crazy case. And
Speaker 18: I said to him, James, you're not gonna believe this.
Speaker 18: I just got involved in another Kentucky case. It's this
Speaker 18: horrible case where this poor girl was eighteen years old
Speaker 18: and you know, just a beautiful young girl starting her life,
Speaker 18: and you know, was set on fire behind the middle school.
Speaker 18: And he goes, oh, you're talking about Quincy Cross case.
Speaker 18: I'm like, yeah, Cross. He goes, oh, Man, he goes,
Speaker 18: that motherfucker's innocent. I'm like, I go, well, he goes, oh, yeah.
Speaker 18: He says he's definitely I know he's in this. I go,
Speaker 18: how do you know he's in it? And he goes, man,
Speaker 18: I was in jail with him. He says, he's a
Speaker 18: good dude. He goes, I read his transcripts. I know
Speaker 18: the case inside and out. That guy's definitely innocent. I go,
Speaker 18: he's definitely this and he goes, no, I'm telling you
Speaker 18: he's really really innocent. I go, how you say he's
Speaker 18: really really really inno? City said, well, because dude, he goes,
Speaker 18: the actual killer was my cellmate. He goes look it
Speaker 18: up and the doc records and he confessed to me
Speaker 18: and everybody else in the jail and he goes, I
Speaker 18: know every detail of the case. He told it all
Speaker 18: to me. And he goes, and I'm from that area,
Speaker 18: so I recognize I know some of the people.
Speaker 1: The cellmate this guy said had confessed to the murder
Speaker 1: was Jeremy Adams.
Speaker 18: I was like, oh my god, what are the odds
Speaker 18: of this? And you know, the first thing I did
Speaker 18: was called actually called Barry Shack at the Ennis's Project.
Speaker 18: I said, Barry, is this hearsay? He goes, no, that's
Speaker 18: a statement against interest if he actually And I said
Speaker 18: to James, I don't want to put you in a
Speaker 18: bad way, like if you're you know, I don't want
Speaker 18: you to be labeled as somebody who told on somebody
Speaker 18: who confessed. You said no, no. On this case, it
Speaker 18: doesn't matter because he confessed to so many people, and
Speaker 18: everybody here knows that Quincy ain't the guy. So he goes,
Speaker 18: I'll sign Affidavid's I'll do whatever you want. I don't
Speaker 18: know the exact number, but there could be as many
Speaker 18: as fifteen people who have come forward, either with affidavids
Speaker 18: or with statements that Jeremy confessed to them.
Speaker 1: And let's not forget that Jessica's best friend, someone who
Speaker 1: hasn't changed her story over the years, told police that
Speaker 1: Jessica knew her baby's father had to be one of
Speaker 1: two men. She had a paternity test done and it
Speaker 1: came back negative for the first guy. So, you know,
Speaker 1: but let's now take a moment and revisit people who
Speaker 1: did change their stories, because that's the crooks of the case.
Speaker 18: There were witnesses who have come forward and talked about
Speaker 18: how the Kentucky Brea of Investigation State police threatened them
Speaker 18: with really terrible things, taking their children away, sending them
Speaker 18: to prison for the rest of their life, jabbing them
Speaker 18: with a needle. They conducted these very unorthodox interrogations in
Speaker 18: a hotel instead of at the police station. You know,
Speaker 18: the whole thing is really pretty grotesque. And when you hear,
Speaker 18: which you will hear, these people come forward and tell
Speaker 18: their truth, the pain is palpable as they talk about
Speaker 18: how they were made to lie under these threats. And
Speaker 18: they were kids, you know, so they were kids. Some
Speaker 18: of them were troubled when was a crack, you know,
Speaker 18: was addicted to crack, and that's how you end up
Speaker 18: in this situation.
Speaker 1: Jason hosts his own podcast called Wrongful conviction. He's the
Speaker 1: founder of the parent company Lava for Good, a media
Speaker 1: company that partners with the Innocence Project. His team spent
Speaker 1: several years digging into the case, and the result was
Speaker 1: a full season of their show Bone Valley. Check it
Speaker 1: out on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. At first, when the
Speaker 1: team reached out to interview Victoria Caldwell, she seemed almost
Speaker 1: afraid to talk about the case.
Speaker 4: I don't know, I'm not allowed to talk about I
Speaker 4: don't want to get these people off.
Speaker 3: And they're very powerful.
Speaker 7: So that's some awful what kind of word?
Speaker 11: What should be powerful?
Speaker 5: You're making me nervous.
Speaker 1: Maybe I should rethink having this conversation very powerful people.
Speaker 1: Eventually they coaxed Victoria and others to talk.
Speaker 10: I really feel like my.
Speaker 12: I guess my statement that I gave the video would
Speaker 12: stopped lots of times, and I was told what to.
Speaker 10: Say and people could see these.
Speaker 4: Who was telling you?
Speaker 16: From wanting here to the KBI.
Speaker 20: How did they get you to say what they got
Speaker 20: you to say?
Speaker 4: What happened?
Speaker 8: They told me Dale stick a needle in my arm
Speaker 8: on the elevator.
Speaker 14: History was called Jury and Paducah, Kentucky.
Speaker 1: In case you couldn't understand what she was saying in context.
Speaker 1: Victoria says they threatened to do all this at the
Speaker 1: Drury Inn in Paducah, Kentucky. That's the hotel KBI conducted
Speaker 1: the interviews at Venetia Stubblefield. The peripheral witness who corroborated
Speaker 1: parts of Victoria's second version of events, signed an affid David,
Speaker 1: admitting that she gave false testimony at the behest of
Speaker 1: law enforcement. Another witness admitted that she had been willing
Speaker 1: to testify for money, and said that officers threatened to
Speaker 1: put her in jail or take her kids away if
Speaker 1: she didn't keep lying. And remember, all of these people
Speaker 1: were implicated by the story. They served their short sentences
Speaker 1: and years later they've recanted. Sounds like a bunch of
Speaker 1: shitty police work if you ask me, But hey, what
Speaker 1: am I other than an Internet sleuth.
Speaker 18: They took plea deals because Quincy went to trial first,
Speaker 18: and he when he was convicted and sentenced to life.
Speaker 18: You know, for the other people, they were looking at
Speaker 18: a similar fate, and if they were when they were
Speaker 18: offered a deal, it's a sophie's choice. But you can't
Speaker 18: blame them for taking it. This is some this is
Speaker 18: some small town stuff. And you know, if you're if
Speaker 18: you're looking at you know, basically a living death sentence, right,
Speaker 18: and the prosecutors only in Princey's case, asked for him
Speaker 18: to get the death penalty. Then, I you know, that's
Speaker 18: that's a that's a choice that you can I hope
Speaker 18: nobody that's listening ever has to make that choice, but
Speaker 18: you can you can understand how that choice could have
Speaker 18: been made by people who were actually innocent. It happens
Speaker 18: all the time. Well, and surprisingly the lowest sentences were
Speaker 18: the ones who testified for the government, two of them.
Speaker 18: And there's so many people there were nine, right, and
Speaker 18: I can't even keep them all straight in my head.
Speaker 18: But when you hear the podcast, you'll know. Because that's
Speaker 18: the awesome power of the government, right they can they
Speaker 18: can say to you, you know, you give us information
Speaker 18: on so and so, and you know we're gonna we're
Speaker 18: going to make sure things go well for you. So
Speaker 18: the sentences were I mean almost ceremonial in those cases, right,
Speaker 18: because if that's the right word.
Speaker 1: And the power of the government doesn't stop there. In
Speaker 1: this case, Jason's team at Lava for Good and the
Speaker 1: Kentucky Innocence Projects separately uncovered evidence that Victoria Caldwell had
Speaker 1: been paid by the state and was essentially put in
Speaker 1: their witness protection program, relocating her to North Carolina and
Speaker 1: funding her entire lifestyle while the case was being built.
Speaker 1: Records show that the Attorney General's Office and Kentucky State
Speaker 1: Police were reimbursing her from February two thousand and seven
Speaker 1: through January of two thousand and eight, almost a year.
Speaker 1: They paid for rent, utilities, groceries, restaurants, gas, car repairs, clothing,
Speaker 1: phone cards, and even purchases from places like sex shops.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's where your taxes are going. Believe it or not.
Speaker 4: I read an article from some time ago.
Speaker 13: Did there was a rumor at some cop named O'Neil
Speaker 13: and na?
Speaker 10: Was there ever any monetary exchange between your head?
Speaker 7: What do you mean monetary money?
Speaker 8: Did he send you money at all?
Speaker 10: He's always giving me money, Okay, when you save money?
Speaker 7: What kind of money?
Speaker 5: Like we're talking like a couple of hundred bucks just
Speaker 5: to get by, or we're talking like a couple of
Speaker 5: grand to help more than a couple of grand. But
Speaker 5: he's always taking care of me.
Speaker 12: Is it cash?
Speaker 10: Check? Little cash?
Speaker 3: Always cash?
Speaker 1: You meet in public places or he comes to you?
Speaker 5: How does that work?
Speaker 17: No, he comes to my house.
Speaker 1: That trial, when the defense asked about this, KBI downplayed it,
Speaker 1: acting as if they'd only paid for rent and utilities.
Speaker 1: This wasn't an isolated incident either. Another state witness said
Speaker 1: officers paid her one hundred dollars to make controlled calls
Speaker 1: cash for cooperation, all while she was in the grips
Speaker 1: of drug addiction. But all of this is just the
Speaker 1: tip of the iceberg. Let's get back to Susan Gowbreeth
Speaker 1: and Tom Mangold for the moment. Susan was actually the
Speaker 1: very first person to put Victoria Caldwell in touch with
Speaker 1: the Kentucky Bureau of Investigation for a second round of questioning.
Speaker 1: She steered the narrative prosecutors eventually ran with, and she
Speaker 1: had a motive much deeper than just a cursory interest
Speaker 1: in this case.
Speaker 18: She was in a relationship with the mother of the
Speaker 18: obvious suspect, Jeremy Adams, and it seems like she found
Speaker 18: something to do. I think she was born and she
Speaker 18: found this opportunity to become famous important. Whatever was she
Speaker 18: was after, and at the same time helped to steer
Speaker 18: the cops away from the son of her partner of
Speaker 18: relationship whatever they want to call that, to her lover.
Speaker 18: And then, of course, in order to finish that job,
Speaker 18: she had depended on somebody else.
Speaker 1: And to think that this woman was allowed behind the
Speaker 1: crime scene tape, she was given backstage access to the
Speaker 1: evidence rooms, told authorities who to interview, sat in those
Speaker 1: very same police interviews, discussed her theories with the Kentucky
Speaker 1: State Police, and even testified at Quincy's trial. She inserted
Speaker 1: herself into this crime to a degree that is unprecedented.
Speaker 18: I don't think we'll ever know all of it, because
Speaker 18: there weren't records made of all the conversations. But what
Speaker 18: we do know is that she was given a level
Speaker 18: of access that is is confounding, to say the least,
Speaker 18: and not just access, but influence. She was allowed to
Speaker 18: steer the investigation as if she was some senior official
Speaker 18: empowered to run roughshod over this whole this whole thing.
Speaker 18: And you know, all those years later, she starts building
Speaker 18: this case based entirely on circumstantial evidence and rumors and innuendo,
Speaker 18: and then that takes on a life of its own
Speaker 18: when the authorities get involved and start getting these people
Speaker 18: in a room again, a room in a hotel. It
Speaker 18: is a hotel, but it's something I don't want to
Speaker 18: conjure up, something fancy. It certainly wasn't anything fancy. But
Speaker 18: why why why why? I mean, wouldn't you want to
Speaker 18: I mean, how basic is it to take someone to
Speaker 18: the police station and do it there?
Speaker 1: But hotel interviews are really at the bottom of the
Speaker 1: list when it comes to the issues with this case.
Speaker 18: It's really heartbreaking, not just because of what happened to Quincy,
Speaker 18: who got the worst of it, because he got life
Speaker 18: without parole and he's been in for almost a quarter
Speaker 18: of a century, but what happened to these other people,
Speaker 18: you know, the ones who were forced to testify, or
Speaker 18: the ones who just got caught up in it because
Speaker 18: of Susan. I mean, Jeff Burton, you know who's a
Speaker 18: white kid who got caught.
Speaker 7: Up in this.
Speaker 18: He never met Quincy. You know, he doesn't know anything
Speaker 18: about this. He didn't you know, he wasn't a troubled kid.
Speaker 7: He was a good kid.
Speaker 18: He was a young father making his way. But when
Speaker 18: when Susan became convinced that there was a couple of
Speaker 18: white people involved. Just went searching for some white people
Speaker 18: that she could sort of rope into this thing, and
Speaker 18: she found out that there was a couple of parties
Speaker 18: in Mayfield. One of the knights in question, she found
Speaker 18: out he was at one of the parties, and that
Speaker 18: was good enough. And so literally he knows nothing about this,
Speaker 18: and he ended up serving, you know, many years in
Speaker 18: prison and still suffering to this day. And the ripple
Speaker 18: effect of all of this, how it hurts the community
Speaker 18: taking him, just to take Jeffrey alone, leaving aside, you know,
Speaker 18: so many of the other people who were wrongly targeted
Speaker 18: and ultimately so badly hurt, you know, Venichea Victoria, Jeff Burton,
Speaker 18: we talked about Tamera Caldwell. Each one of those people
Speaker 18: has people that love them. Some of them had children
Speaker 18: that they left behind. All of them have scars that
Speaker 18: don't easily heal, you know, from this horrific experience of
Speaker 18: being betrayed by people who their taxes go to pay
Speaker 18: in service of somebody who skated.
Speaker 1: Quincy was convicted in two thousand and eight. He lost
Speaker 1: his first appeals by twosand and ten after three more
Speaker 1: attempts to get his case revisited. He was denied for
Speaker 1: several years now. Jason, his team at Lava for Good
Speaker 1: and the Innocence Project had been pulling out all the
Speaker 1: stops trying to free him.
Speaker 18: I called Joe Kerrn. I spoke to David Cross, the
Speaker 18: dads of the victim, and the wrong for convicted man.
Speaker 18: I believe he's wrongful convicted again. Listen, make your own judgment.
Speaker 18: And I said, I got to help. And one of
Speaker 18: the things I've done over the years is tried to
Speaker 18: appeal to governors and even presidents for clemency in situations
Speaker 18: where I know wrong has been done. It's a it's
Speaker 18: a power that's vested in these people because they are
Speaker 18: the last, you know, stop gap in the system that
Speaker 18: gets it wrong far too often. You know, there's a
Speaker 18: great saying from the English jurist William Blackstone who said,
Speaker 18: it's better the ten guilty men go free than that
Speaker 18: what innocent should suffer. And so in this case, I thought,
Speaker 18: let me try to reach out to the governor, you know,
Speaker 18: because this this has got to change. And when you've
Speaker 18: got the victim's father advocating for the guy who's wrongly convicted.
Speaker 18: That's powerful. You know, that should go a long way.
Speaker 18: I feel connected to Kentucky. You know, my my wife's
Speaker 18: father is Muhammad Ali, so you know he's a Louisville
Speaker 18: So I reached out. I didn't know. I don't know
Speaker 18: the governor. I met him only once, actually at the
Speaker 18: Ali Center in Louisville, but only four minutes. But I
Speaker 18: didn't know him back then. I'd never met him. But
Speaker 18: I was able to get somebody in a position of
Speaker 18: significant power and influence in the highest levels of government.
Speaker 18: I won't name names on the phone, and I figured
Speaker 18: it'll give me three or four minutes just to I
Speaker 18: don't want to say humor me, because there's nothing funny
Speaker 18: about it, but to you know, placate me. And I
Speaker 18: ended up speaking to this person for twenty six minutes.
Speaker 18: I remember that because I remember looking at my phone
Speaker 18: and going damn. That was a long conversation. And he
Speaker 18: was like, oh my god, this is the craziest case.
Speaker 18: And you know Mayfield, Kentucky, there was a tornado there recently,
Speaker 18: and you know, you know the mayor, and you know
Speaker 18: we're going to get involved like this this is got
Speaker 18: you know. He was like he was almost breathless. And
Speaker 18: I've never had a conversation with a person in a
Speaker 18: position like that. I've had a lot of conversations, but
Speaker 18: never was somebody who's like so enthused to get involved
Speaker 18: and help. Usually it's very, you know, monotonal, you know,
Speaker 18: relatively Kurt. And then he called me back that night
Speaker 18: at home, kids running around making noise in the background.
Speaker 18: He's like, I just want to make sure I got
Speaker 18: this straight, and he's going through details of the things.
Speaker 18: I'm like, oh my god, I called mister Cross. I'm like,
Speaker 18: I think we're going to get somewhere with this. This
Speaker 18: is I mean, I hate to say that, because you
Speaker 18: never want to raise expectations. Well, I was like, this
Speaker 18: is unbelievable. It really seems like they're really interested in
Speaker 18: this injustice. And then he ghoested me, never heard back again,
Speaker 18: tried reaching out, and I'm the farthest thing from a
Speaker 18: conspiracy person. But one might speculate that perhaps he was
Speaker 18: excitedly talking to somebody else, I don't know who, who
Speaker 18: said to him, back off, leave that one alone.
Speaker 1: Victoria Caldwell has flipped back and forth over the years,
Speaker 1: recanting her statements and then turning around and saying that
Speaker 1: she was actually telling the truth. Jason's team uncovered emails
Speaker 1: between Susan Golbroth and Tom Mangold from all the way
Speaker 1: back in twenty twelve, where Tom wrote that there's a
Speaker 1: quote teeny weeny, it'sy bitsy chance we've got this whole
Speaker 1: fucking murder story wrong in public, though he doesn't want
Speaker 1: to talk about the case. After the Kentucky Innocence Project
Speaker 1: got involved, CNN covered their progress. They reached out to
Speaker 1: Tom for comment and he said, quote, if your project
Speaker 1: does any attempt or reference to the fact that Quincy
Speaker 1: Cross and all the others who were convicted of Jesse's
Speaker 1: murder might be innocent, and I want nothing to do
Speaker 1: with it. If it's anything else, I'd be pleased to help.
Speaker 18: Quincy is still in prison. I spoke to him today. Actually,
Speaker 18: he's excited that we're today as we're recording, not today
Speaker 18: as anyone's listening, as people listen whenever they listen. But yes,
Speaker 18: I spoke to him today. I've spoken to him many times.
Speaker 18: He's relentlessly optimistic. He's not bitter. He really just wants
Speaker 18: his story to be heard, and he wants justice. Not
Speaker 18: just for himself, but for Jessica and for the others.
Speaker 18: I've interviewed hundreds of people on the Wrongful Conviction podcasts
Speaker 18: who've been either you know, who are either on death
Speaker 18: row or they're in prison for life, or they've been
Speaker 18: they've been freed after serving ten twenty forty four years
Speaker 18: more forty eight years like Lynn Simmons in prison, and
Speaker 18: every one of them is, you know, optimistic, thoughtful, even,
Speaker 18: I mean, they exude this sort of grace, you know,
Speaker 18: and it's just mystifying and inspiring to hear them, and
Speaker 18: it puts it puts gratitude in my attitude and puts
Speaker 18: any other problems that we all have in perspective. There's
Speaker 18: still some legal remedy. I'm trying to remember what it is,
Speaker 18: but he does have Yes, he does have some court
Speaker 18: proceedings still to come. There's some discovery being done, so
Speaker 18: follow along, and I believe that there's still a strong chance.
Speaker 18: I have to cling to that belief that he can
Speaker 18: be exonerated in court. But the other last option is
Speaker 18: if that's what it takes, then I hope that the governor,
Speaker 18: this governor, the next governor will take a hard look
Speaker 18: at this case and see what now is clear to
Speaker 18: anybody who takes a serious look at it, which is
Speaker 18: that the wrong guy's in prison, and he's been in
Speaker 18: for a very long time.
Speaker 1: For Jessica's parents, the system's failures have a different cost.
Speaker 1: The paperwork, the headlines, the atlas retellings, none of it
Speaker 1: brings their daughter back.
Speaker 9: When they tell you, you know, well, something good to
Speaker 9: come out of this, and things are getting better with time, and.
Speaker 7: You get ask my wife, and.
Speaker 9: It's just like it happened the last weeks.
Speaker 21: It don't get better. You learn to live with it,
Speaker 21: but it never gets better. We're going to miss her
Speaker 21: until the day we're gone, no doubt about it, and.
Speaker 9: So will everybody else in our family, because she had
Speaker 9: that big of an impact on all of us, and
Speaker 9: I would say most of her friends.
Speaker 7: She was just that kind of person.
Speaker 1: The fire that took Jessica Kurrn's life never really stopped burning.
Speaker 1: Susan Gobrieth reignited the sparks, maybe hoping the flames would
Speaker 1: clear the debris and reveal the truth, or maybe to
Speaker 1: burn away evidence that pointed towards Jeremy Adams. In the end,
Speaker 1: those flames weren't a tool of justice. They were chaotic, aimless,
Speaker 1: driven by something other than truth, and they eventually consumed
Speaker 1: everything in their path. That's gonna do it for this
Speaker 1: episode and this year. Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: We'll be back after a short break.
Speaker 12: Bye.
Speaker 20: What's up, my man?
Speaker 12: This is Ken Tennessee.
Speaker 7: Listen.
Speaker 20: First thing I gotta say he's got as a law
Speaker 20: enforcement officer. It's truly makes my blood boiled sometimes when
Speaker 20: you say that you don't and people on your show
Speaker 20: should not talk to cops. As much of an advocate
Speaker 20: as you are for the victims that you portray that
Speaker 20: are let on your show, you're saying don't.
Speaker 11: Talk to the cops.
Speaker 12: Totally pass accurate to me.
Speaker 20: But nonetheless, I gotta say I was one of those
Speaker 20: guys who never liked podcasts. I thought they were for.
Speaker 12: Weird people who had no good days of music. But
Speaker 12: when I was introduced to your show, I gotta say
Speaker 12: I was into the Obviously, I drive a lot with
Speaker 12: my job, so when somebody gets to my car they
Speaker 12: hear what's on the radio, it looks like it are
Speaker 12: pretty astamping. So from your law enforcement.
Speaker 20: Fan base, I say to you, stay safe and keep
Speaker 20: up to good work my dude.
Speaker 12: Thanks m HM.