Speaker 1: Heads Up. This series contains graphic descriptions of violence. On
Speaker 1: the morning of August first, two thousand, a teacher preparing
Speaker 1: for the first day of classes noticed something on the
Speaker 1: ground near the flower beds behind the Mayfield Middle School.
Speaker 2: I saw this sandal laying right by the.
Speaker 3: Door.
Speaker 2: There's a little concrete path there, and I saw the
Speaker 2: sandal laying there, and I just thought, you know, I
Speaker 2: wonder what that sandal's doing there.
Speaker 1: As her sight shifted away from the sandal, scanning the
Speaker 1: school grounds, the teacher saw something else.
Speaker 2: And when I looked over to the left is when
Speaker 2: I saw the body.
Speaker 4: There's not a lot of bodies found in Mayfield, Kentucky.
Speaker 4: When you heard there was on, what were you thinking, Oh,
Speaker 4: our man was racing.
Speaker 5: But you know, when you've never had nothing like this
Speaker 5: happen before, it kind of gives you a little, you know,
Speaker 5: a little thought that, no, it's not happening to me.
Speaker 1: This is Joe Curran. For two days before Jessica's body
Speaker 1: was found, he and his wife, Jean had been searching
Speaker 1: for their eighteen year old daughter. The next day, police
Speaker 1: identified the body with the help of dental records, and
Speaker 1: Joe and Jan it was Jessica. They recognized the jewelry
Speaker 1: on their daughter's hands.
Speaker 6: It's the loneliest crime, saying, I'm ere saying, I've saying
Speaker 6: a lot.
Speaker 1: You met Dara, a woman on the last episode. Like me,
Speaker 1: Dara has poured over pictures and video of the crime scene.
Speaker 7: She just looked as if she had been tossed out
Speaker 7: the back her. She was, you know, all the jewelryes
Speaker 7: still honor and it was everything that she had that
Speaker 7: she felt. It was a value she had on her still.
Speaker 7: But she was all by herself. It was just long ley.
Speaker 1: According to police, Jessica's murder was the first in Mayfield
Speaker 1: in over a year and a half. They told the
Speaker 1: press that the school grounds appeared to be the scene
Speaker 1: of the crime, that there were signs of a struggle
Speaker 1: and then a homicide.
Speaker 5: We're getting that information that she was beaten, strangled, staled
Speaker 5: and burned. I don't know how I could get much worse,
Speaker 5: and then her body was dumped behind the middle school.
Speaker 1: I first met Joe Curran in twenty twenty three. He
Speaker 1: was born in Graves County in nineteen fifty seven, just
Speaker 1: a year after Mayfield started to desegregate its public schools.
Speaker 5: I'm kind of a country boy, and I went to
Speaker 5: some few schools out in the county and they didn't
Speaker 5: have any you know, black students at all.
Speaker 1: You were the only black kid.
Speaker 5: Yes, What was that like? Well, I mean, it's kind
Speaker 5: of like most of my life.
Speaker 1: Joe was among that first generation of black children to
Speaker 1: study in what had been white only schools in a
Speaker 1: county that has always been majority white ninety percent as
Speaker 1: of the last census. This is the world Joe grew
Speaker 1: up in.
Speaker 5: You know, I ride horses and go to rodeos and stuff,
Speaker 5: and a lot of places that I go basketball games
Speaker 5: and football games, and it's a whole stadium full of people.
Speaker 5: A lot of times, I'm only back person there. I
Speaker 5: go to a lot of farmers meetings, three hundred people.
Speaker 5: I may be the only black person in the room.
Speaker 5: So I mean, it don't mean anything to me.
Speaker 1: And Joe learned to thrive in this world. He played
Speaker 1: defense for the high school football team, the beloved Mayfield Cardinals,
Speaker 1: worked as a bailiff, and ran his own business.
Speaker 5: I'm a fish farmer, so I'm eight fish pond.
Speaker 1: What kind of fish?
Speaker 8: Catfish?
Speaker 1: He became a lieutenant in the fire department and went
Speaker 1: to church every Sunday. Joe Curran did write by Mayfield,
Speaker 1: so when his daughter was brutally killed, Joe thought Mayfield
Speaker 1: would do right by him. Instead, local police bungled the
Speaker 1: case and it went unsolved for years. This is Graves County,
Speaker 1: Chapter two, Jessica. Depending on who you ask, there are
Speaker 1: dozens of versions of what happened to Jessica between the
Speaker 1: times she was reportedly last seen and the time her
Speaker 1: body was found. You already heard one version last episode,
Speaker 1: but that's different from the story about the final days
Speaker 1: of Jessica Current's life that were first put on the record.
Speaker 1: This is according to my team's own reporting, court testimony,
Speaker 1: police interviews, and private investigator interviews, which you'll be hearing
Speaker 1: throughout this episode, all of which have been edited for
Speaker 1: length and clarity. In July of two thousand, had a
Speaker 1: seven month old baby named Zion. She was close with
Speaker 1: her family, shared a room at home with Zion and
Speaker 1: her baby's sister, but she wanted her independence, so Jessica
Speaker 1: got her own apartment at an affordable housing complex in
Speaker 1: the southeast part of town, so she was slow to
Speaker 1: fully move out.
Speaker 5: Joe says the first whole week she stayed at home.
Speaker 5: In the second week, she moved out on Thursday. She
Speaker 5: went to her house on Thursday, and she was there
Speaker 5: on Friday and in Saturday.
Speaker 1: That Saturday morning, Jessica dropped off Zion with her parents
Speaker 1: and she went to hang out with some girlfriends, including
Speaker 1: her boyfriend's cousin, Veneisha's Stubblefield. You heard her name last episode.
Speaker 1: Vnesha and Jessica had become friends earlier that year.
Speaker 6: Me and Jessica just started really actually hanging out.
Speaker 9: In two thousand, she was going to a Duart Lunder
Speaker 9: Center to get her ged form when she dropped out
Speaker 9: of high school when she was pregnant.
Speaker 6: She went to the GD school.
Speaker 1: They crossed paths after class.
Speaker 10: Well, she was coming from Gd's school when I was
Speaker 10: coming from summer school.
Speaker 1: Venetia, a wiry girl with giant eyes, was among the
Speaker 1: very first people interviewed by police. She was sixteen at
Speaker 1: the time. According to Venetia, she Jessica and a few
Speaker 1: other girls hung out at a friend's house playing cards
Speaker 1: and having drinks. That night, we all sat.
Speaker 5: Third play ors listen to music.
Speaker 1: We had a few drinks.
Speaker 11: Wad it.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, in another part of town. There was a party
Speaker 1: on a street called Chriss Drive. It's about a ten
Speaker 1: minute drive south from where Jessica was hanging and a
Speaker 1: little more rural, surrounded by fields hanging out or a
Speaker 1: handful of locals and twenty four year old Quincy Cross
Speaker 1: Quincy in Tennessee, but a friend had convinced him to
Speaker 1: go to Mayfield and hang. He could even sell some
Speaker 1: drugs there.
Speaker 6: He was like, come on, man, if you go, we'll
Speaker 6: bring you back later on.
Speaker 1: Some partygoers say Quincy stood out that night, not just
Speaker 1: because he was an out of towner, but because he
Speaker 1: was rowdy. He kept wanting to play drinking games and
Speaker 1: was fidgeting with his braided belt.
Speaker 7: He had aided belt at home, and he was swinging
Speaker 7: it around the night.
Speaker 12: Because while he was talking to us in the living room,
Speaker 12: he was flickering the end of it, kind of flicking
Speaker 12: around while he was talking.
Speaker 13: It stuck out in my mind because he had taken
Speaker 13: the belt off and was like swinging it around and
Speaker 13: wrapping it around his hands and making noise with it.
Speaker 13: And I think at some point Ashley and I both
Speaker 13: kind of looked at each other and thought, you know,
Speaker 13: that's annoying.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, back at the other gathering, the low key one
Speaker 1: with the girls playing cards, Jessica decided to call it
Speaker 1: a night around one or two am. Her friends tried
Speaker 1: to get her a ride home, but no one was available,
Speaker 1: so Jessica had to go back to her apartment on foot.
Speaker 1: Venetia walked Jessica outside to say goodbye.
Speaker 14: We stood there wait talk for a brief minute, then
Speaker 14: she left the shoe.
Speaker 5: Up by herself.
Speaker 1: Venicia says she told Jessica to take care and watched
Speaker 1: her disappear into the night. So this was the night
Speaker 1: that we think everything happened. She leaves there and it starts.
Speaker 6: She's walking somewhere along here.
Speaker 1: I charted that walk with Joe Curran and a private investigator.
Speaker 1: It would have been at least a forty minute journey
Speaker 1: alone in the dark.
Speaker 6: But that'd be a long walk for her at that
Speaker 6: time of day.
Speaker 12: Not that she wasn't capable of doing it, but I
Speaker 12: don't know how smart that would be.
Speaker 1: The middle school is halfway to Jessica's place, and it
Speaker 1: would have been desolate.
Speaker 12: This town pretty much dies at dark.
Speaker 1: Back at the party on Chris Drive, Quincy asked to
Speaker 1: borrow someone's car around daybreak. He says he wanted to
Speaker 1: go find food.
Speaker 6: I'm like, man, I'm hungry.
Speaker 10: Now, I'm like, man, how do you get to town?
Speaker 5: So he pointed in a direction.
Speaker 13: I asked him, let me use his car.
Speaker 1: But some of the other partygoers remember it differently.
Speaker 12: He was on the phone quite frequently that night and
Speaker 12: was calling back to university in different places, saying that,
Speaker 12: you know, he found some women at a hotel or
Speaker 12: something or other.
Speaker 1: He recalls Quincy saying he wanted to get.
Speaker 12: Some bitious, sorry, get some bitches.
Speaker 1: So he borrowed the car and drove off. But remember
Speaker 1: it's two thousand, he'd been partying. We didn't have Google
Speaker 1: Maps or anything like that back then. So Quincy says,
Speaker 1: he got lost on those rural roads.
Speaker 15: I can end up making a big loop, a big
Speaker 15: old circle.
Speaker 6: So when I do that, the car runs.
Speaker 5: Out of gas.
Speaker 1: It stalled about two miles from Chris Drive. That's when
Speaker 1: a local jailer saw Quincy pulled over and asked if
Speaker 1: he needed help.
Speaker 6: I popped his trunk and this gas.
Speaker 10: Can you know what I'm saying, It's in this trunk soul.
Speaker 1: The jailer watched him put gas in the car and
Speaker 1: spill some on himself.
Speaker 10: He's standing right beside me, so he see me drunk,
Speaker 10: a couple of trumps and gas on my parts.
Speaker 5: Laid he seat me do it.
Speaker 1: There's no disputing that the jailer found Quincy putting gas
Speaker 1: in a car, but there doesn't seem to be a
Speaker 1: consensus as to where exactly the gas can came from.
Speaker 1: Here's the car's owner at trial.
Speaker 14: Is that your gas?
Speaker 12: No, sir, I didn't have a gas can my car.
Speaker 12: Did mister crosstay where he got that?
Speaker 8: Guess?
Speaker 12: Said he stole it from building or something somewhere around
Speaker 12: the road. He got the gas in my call or
Speaker 12: try to get the gas station.
Speaker 1: Either way. Around seven fifty am, a state trooper driving
Speaker 1: by noticed Quincy right away.
Speaker 5: He had no shirt on.
Speaker 2: He could see multiple tattoos.
Speaker 14: He had a pair of dark pants on with no belt.
Speaker 1: Quincy quibbles with some of those details.
Speaker 10: I had a key shirt on, he kept saying, I
Speaker 10: didn't have no ke shirt on. I did have a
Speaker 10: T shirt home.
Speaker 1: But the trooper says he specifically noticed Quincy didn't have
Speaker 1: a belt on.
Speaker 13: The pants were drooping.
Speaker 14: I could see his box or shorts. He kept having
Speaker 14: to pull him up while we were having conversations.
Speaker 1: The state trooper gave Quincy a ride back to Chris Drive,
Speaker 1: and when the trooper went to retrieve the stalled car
Speaker 1: as he found marijuana seeds on the front seat and
Speaker 1: a handgun in the glovebox. That gave him enough to
Speaker 1: go back to Chris Drive and search all the party
Speaker 1: goers for more drugs or weapons, and Quincy, along with
Speaker 1: a few others at the party, ended up getting arrested
Speaker 1: early Sunday for drug possession. One of the guys booked
Speaker 1: with Quincy remembers the smell any.
Speaker 10: Stong cup gasoline.
Speaker 5: I mean it was just breaking on a smell I gay.
Speaker 1: Later that Sunday morning, Jessica's parents, Joe and Jean, went
Speaker 1: to pick up Jessica so they could all go to
Speaker 1: church with Zion, but they didn't find her. At first,
Speaker 1: Joe thought she's probably still out with friends. When did
Speaker 1: you realize something was really wrong?
Speaker 5: Well, being working at the fire department in the shrif's department,
Speaker 5: I knew that a person is a grown up at eighteen.
Speaker 5: You can't really do nothing with a missing person until
Speaker 5: so many hours, So I mean, we were already feeling like,
Speaker 5: you know, something wasn't right, because she hadn't been calling.
Speaker 1: Sunday went by, then Monday, and still no sign of
Speaker 1: their daughter until the teacher found the body on Tuesday.
Speaker 1: She'd been burned, part of her dress charred onto her body.
Speaker 1: Her sandals were strewn as if she'd been dragged or
Speaker 1: had run. Her underwear was found ripped into next to
Speaker 1: her on the ground. According to the medical examiner, Jessica
Speaker 1: appeared to have been hit in the head, her nose
Speaker 1: was broken, she had some cuts around her face, and
Speaker 1: what appeared to be stab wounds in her back. He
Speaker 1: determined the cause of death was blunt force trauma plus
Speaker 1: strangulation based on another piece of evidence found near Jessica's body,
Speaker 1: the fragment of a black braided belt laying near her neck.
Speaker 1: More after the break, for a brief moment in time,
Speaker 1: Joe Curran had everything he wanted. He and his wife Jean,
Speaker 1: got married young, and their plan was to have two
Speaker 1: boys and two girls.
Speaker 5: And I wanted boy first and girl second, and that's
Speaker 5: the way we had. We had a boy and a girl,
Speaker 5: and then another boy and a girl.
Speaker 1: All their names start with Jay. Is Jessica the.
Speaker 5: Youngest, No, she's the second oldest.
Speaker 1: Joe Curran is the kind of man who looks like
Speaker 1: he carries the weight of the world. He stands tall
Speaker 1: and proud with the build of a football player, but
Speaker 1: his eyes are sunken and tired, revealing decades of pain.
Speaker 5: And that's a picture of her, her older brother.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting with Joe going through old family photographs.
Speaker 5: This is a picture of my wife and she's holding her.
Speaker 1: There a tiny Jessica in a frilly white dress and
Speaker 1: white bonnet, probably going to church. Jessica was pretty, with
Speaker 1: big brown, almond shaved eyes and a wide, perfectly white smile.
Speaker 1: She looks like Joe, a spitting image of her dad.
Speaker 1: She usually wore her hair in a cute short bob.
Speaker 1: And she was tall.
Speaker 5: Yeah, she was about five nine fifteen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's like a little string bean here, tall and skinny. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and athletic. She ran track and she was a solid
Speaker 1: nineties teen who liked Tupac and the X Files.
Speaker 5: She was the only one that would watch the X
Speaker 5: Files with me, and she could kind of keep up
Speaker 5: with it. My wife gets lost on it and she can't.
Speaker 5: She can't keep she have the patience.
Speaker 1: So Joe's wife, Jean isn't sitting with us.
Speaker 5: I've apologize for my wife. She's still pretty shook up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to ask you about that, So
Speaker 1: you know why. While she's talked to press in the past,
Speaker 1: Jeane just isn't up for it today. I can't say
Speaker 1: I blame her. After years of telling strangers about your
Speaker 1: dead child, what else is there to say except I'm
Speaker 1: in pain and I miss her.
Speaker 5: I mean she still goes to the down to the
Speaker 5: grave site at least once or twice the week sometimes.
Speaker 5: I mean they were close. They were close friends. I
Speaker 5: mean about as close as you could be for a
Speaker 5: mother and a daughter, you know, daughter, Yeah, almost like
Speaker 5: you know, two sisters. And it really really hurt her.
Speaker 1: After two years of reporting on this case, I can
Speaker 1: say that from all I've gathered, Jessica was sweet and loving,
Speaker 1: but she was also feisty and brave.
Speaker 3: Jessica cut a boy one time for calling her the Inward,
Speaker 3: she pulled out a light and.
Speaker 1: Cutting This is an old police interview of Jessica's best
Speaker 1: friend seeing Jessica once pulled a knife on a boy
Speaker 1: for calling her the n word.
Speaker 3: If she had a problem, I mean she would I mean,
Speaker 3: hit you or whatever she felt necessary to defend herself.
Speaker 1: Jessica Lindsay met Jessica Curran at Graves County High.
Speaker 3: I've considered her one of my best friends. She was
Speaker 3: a very outgoing person, very down to earth. What caught
Speaker 3: my attention about her in school was that she stood
Speaker 3: up for people, like when they would get picked on,
Speaker 3: and she didn't allow that. If she's saying it going on.
Speaker 16: She would put a stop to it.
Speaker 3: So, I mean she was just very you know, very
Speaker 3: kind girl, very very kind girl. She would pretty much
Speaker 3: do anything for anybody.
Speaker 1: And she was also a teenager who in the summer
Speaker 1: of two thousand was getting over a heartache. She had
Speaker 1: her baby in December nineteen ninety nine, a little boy
Speaker 1: named Zion, and Jessica thought that baby's dad was a
Speaker 1: boy named Marcus.
Speaker 3: She used to snake out her bedroom window and I'll
Speaker 3: say him.
Speaker 1: But after Zion was born, Jessica got the news.
Speaker 3: She was trying to get child sport ordered for Marcus
Speaker 3: or whatever, and they'd done a daneitis and it came
Speaker 3: back negative or however they come back. It wasn't his.
Speaker 1: It hit her heart, especially when she realized that if
Speaker 1: Marcus wasn't the dad, then it had to be a
Speaker 1: local drug dealer named Jeremy Adams, a guy she barely
Speaker 1: knew and didn't even like. According to her friend, they
Speaker 1: had just hung out once and smoked some weed.
Speaker 16: We all went.
Speaker 3: Back to my house and we smoked a blunt and
Speaker 3: hung out marijuana and we hung out or whatever. And
Speaker 3: that night he kind of forced Lee took her around
Speaker 3: the building and had.
Speaker 16: Said they had sex.
Speaker 17: It was like two.
Speaker 3: Seconds they were around there and came back and he
Speaker 3: walked off and that was that.
Speaker 6: That was that.
Speaker 1: A baby came nine months later.
Speaker 16: She was very upset when she found out it wasn't Mark,
Speaker 16: So she was very upset. This is after Zion was born.
Speaker 16: She stopped messing with Marcus and she started messing with.
Speaker 1: Lolo Carlos, Lolo Saxton, Venetia Stubblefield's cousin, and another local
Speaker 1: drug dealer, a dreamy one at that a year older
Speaker 1: with sad puppy eyes. They started seeing each other in
Speaker 1: the spring of two thousand.
Speaker 3: I mean she liked him, she really liked him.
Speaker 1: It was panning out to be a good summer for
Speaker 1: young Jessica, meeting a boy she liked, moving out on
Speaker 1: her own so much to look forward to. In the
Speaker 1: months that followed his daughter's killing, Joe walked around in
Speaker 1: a daze, in a nightmare. He remembers sitting at a restaurant.
Speaker 5: I was sitting at the table by myself, and this
Speaker 5: waitress come over and said to me, you look like
Speaker 5: you lost the last person in the world. It looked
Speaker 5: like you y'all lost your best friend.
Speaker 1: She didn't know, She.
Speaker 5: Had no clue. She apologized later because she found out
Speaker 5: what happened and she knew who I was, and she
Speaker 5: apologized later. She said, I had no clue that you
Speaker 5: know that was your daughter, because it just showed on
Speaker 5: my face, me sating there by myself. We'd just show.
Speaker 1: One of the few comforts the Kerran family had was
Speaker 1: believing that soon, eventually they'd find whoever did this to Jessica,
Speaker 1: and they'd be able to ask how and why, and
Speaker 1: hopefully get some sense of justice. The man put in
Speaker 1: charge of Jessica Kerrn's murder investigation was Tim Fortner, a
Speaker 1: patrolman who had just been promoted to detective. This was
Speaker 1: his very first murder investigation, and according to interviews, press reports,
Speaker 1: and court filings, Fortner and his small town police department
Speaker 1: were out of their debts. The problem seemed to have
Speaker 1: started from the get go.
Speaker 7: Here's Dara again, okay, So it took forever for them
Speaker 7: to rope off the crime scene, right.
Speaker 1: They didn't log who came and went or properly canvassed
Speaker 1: the neighborhood.
Speaker 6: No statements were taken at the scene.
Speaker 1: They also threw away the maggots they found on Jessica's body.
Speaker 1: Maggots could have helped determine how long her body had
Speaker 1: been decomposing. Without them, it was hard for the medical
Speaker 1: examiner to determine an exact time of death.
Speaker 7: In supplemental reports that I've read by the police, they're like,
Speaker 7: do we keep her underwear?
Speaker 6: What about the seven up bottle?
Speaker 1: They threw away part of Jessica's dress and a couple
Speaker 1: rape swabs from other crime scenes were mixed in with
Speaker 1: the evidence boxes for Jessica's case.
Speaker 6: So no one is in charge. It's the blind leading
Speaker 6: the blind.
Speaker 1: I found Fortner's number and called him to ask about
Speaker 1: the investigation. Hello, Hi, I'm looking for mister Tim Fortner.
Speaker 1: I interrupted his evening at home. Hi, mister Fortner, my
Speaker 1: name is Maggie Freeling.
Speaker 6: How are you.
Speaker 5: I'm well, how are you?
Speaker 1: He still lives in Kentucky as far as I can tell.
Speaker 1: His last gig in law enforcement was as a school
Speaker 1: resource officer in another county, and he hosts a show
Speaker 1: on the side for WKMS, the local public radio station.
Speaker 1: I am a journalist and I am reporting on the
Speaker 1: Jessica Currn case and going through the documents. You were
Speaker 1: the first responding officer, So I was hoping you'd want
Speaker 1: to talk. Yeah, I was, but I'm in the middle
Speaker 1: of dinner and I don't have to be you know,
Speaker 1: there's nothing to comment on.
Speaker 6: Okay, cool? Appreciated. Yeah, I'm actually in town. Could I
Speaker 6: meet you tomorrow? Perhaps? Well probably not?
Speaker 1: Probably not as in no, and.
Speaker 5: So it's.
Speaker 6: You know, do you can contact the stake place? Okay?
Speaker 6: And I should do appreciate your calling me.
Speaker 1: A very polite no.
Speaker 6: You all right?
Speaker 1: You two buye. But Fortner has spoken to the press before,
Speaker 1: and he's admitted that he wasn't the man for the job.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and four, he told Tom Mangold, the
Speaker 1: BBC reporter, that quote, I didn't have a clue what
Speaker 1: to do next. He said, I didn't know how to
Speaker 1: organize a crime scene or look for forensic evidence. Frankly,
Speaker 1: I was scared stiff. He even admitted this to the Currents.
Speaker 5: Told us me and my wife that he had no
Speaker 5: clue what he was doing. He didn't know what he
Speaker 5: was doing.
Speaker 1: He tells this to you, The lead detective on your
Speaker 1: daughter's homicide case, says to you, I don't know what
Speaker 1: I'm doing.
Speaker 5: He said, I don't know what I'm doing. That's his words.
Speaker 1: On top of that, the Mayfield Police Department was dealing
Speaker 1: with a flurry of internal investigations and allegations of malfeasance.
Speaker 1: The chief and assistant chief were ousted and eventually played
Speaker 1: guilty to felony charges for misusing public funds, including money
Speaker 1: that police had confiscated from drug arrests. Mayfield Police Department
Speaker 1: was a mess. Fortner and his team had chased some leads,
Speaker 1: interviewed many people, and pinpointed a few suspects, but it
Speaker 1: all fell apart the rookie detective's first big case of failure.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and three, Fortner quit and the Kentucky
Speaker 1: State Police had to step in to take over the case.
Speaker 1: The state police pursued some lines of investigation, but didn't
Speaker 1: seem to get far either, and as the years went by,
Speaker 1: Joe had to fight to keep his daughter's case top
Speaker 1: of mind.
Speaker 5: We've had protests at the courthouse several times. We've had
Speaker 5: one at Mitch McConnell's office, the leading senator from Kentucky
Speaker 5: in Paducah.
Speaker 1: Even Reverend in Dell Sharpton's National Action Network got involved.
Speaker 5: We went to Frankfurt, to the Attorney General's office, we
Speaker 5: went to the FBI office, the YUS Attorney's office. We
Speaker 5: didn't out all of that stuff.
Speaker 1: But what Joe didn't know at first was that another
Speaker 1: person was also growing increasingly frustrated by law enforcement failures
Speaker 1: and decided to stop watching from the sidelines. Susan Golbreth,
Speaker 1: the citizen sleuth who you met last episode, embarked on
Speaker 1: a whole investigation of her own, and now she started
Speaker 1: digging into the files. A name stood out, of.
Speaker 10: Course, both well Quincy Ill last across.
Speaker 1: After the break, Susan said she'd felt a connection to
Speaker 1: Jessica Currn since the day her body was found, and
Speaker 1: she went to look at the crime scene that she
Speaker 1: was called by a divine power to help find her killer,
Speaker 1: but as far as I can tell, she didn't actually
Speaker 1: act on that calling until four years after the murder,
Speaker 1: when Susan began talking to the Kentucky State Police and
Speaker 1: getting updates on the case.
Speaker 6: Susan, yeah, it's the same, and.
Speaker 1: Started both prying on and cooperating with the investigation.
Speaker 6: Hi, how are you. I'm fine. I'm surprised I had
Speaker 6: heard from you.
Speaker 15: Well, I've been off and I hadn't been working any
Speaker 15: of this week.
Speaker 1: In reviewing her correspondence, taper, courtings, and court testimony, I
Speaker 1: found that at times the detectives kept Susan at arm's length,
Speaker 1: but they often entertained her ideas and followed up on
Speaker 1: her tips.
Speaker 15: But Lieutenant Cannon called and said he spoke with you
Speaker 15: and said that she had some new information or something
Speaker 15: that you.
Speaker 6: Wanted to know. It was the same information.
Speaker 1: And this emboldened Susan to start conducting a parallel investigation,
Speaker 1: even though, as she testified in court, she had no experience.
Speaker 14: Education in the area of all no, just a lot
Speaker 14: of court TV.
Speaker 1: It was also around this time that Susan started working
Speaker 1: with British journalist Tom Mangold, who flew to Mayfield in
Speaker 1: the spring of two thousand and four, so he was.
Speaker 14: In Mayfield for ten days when he left.
Speaker 5: I continue to dig.
Speaker 1: Susan kept digging through police records that Tom helped get,
Speaker 1: interviewing people. She even started wearing a wire.
Speaker 14: I kept a recorder pinned to my body or duct
Speaker 14: taped at all times.
Speaker 1: All with a main suspect in mind.
Speaker 5: Quincy became the top of the list.
Speaker 1: Susan had seen Jessica's autopsy, pictures from the scene of
Speaker 1: the crime and the police reports from the weekend she
Speaker 1: was last seen alive, and there she noticed that a
Speaker 1: man named Quincy Cross had come to town. Witnesses heard
Speaker 1: him asking about finding girls, and he had been arrested
Speaker 1: smelling of gas with his belt missing. So she connected
Speaker 1: the dots.
Speaker 5: I just know he killed her.
Speaker 1: In an email to Tom, Susan wrote that from the
Speaker 1: beginning she knew who the suspects were and her job
Speaker 1: was proving it, and Tom helped her publicize her main
Speaker 1: suspect's name, starting with his first article in the summer
Speaker 1: of two thousand and four and subsequent reports through the years.
Speaker 1: Here's Tom and Susan in a BBC broadcast.
Speaker 8: So here was a man shortly after the murder of
Speaker 8: Jessica cahnen. His black braided belt is missing because it's
Speaker 8: round the throat of the dead girl. Correct, and he
Speaker 8: stinks of gas.
Speaker 17: Yes, everything just started coming together. It was like a
Speaker 17: deca card just fallen. I really really got emotional because
Speaker 17: I finally started feeling that there's going to be an.
Speaker 5: End to this.
Speaker 1: Now. Not only did Tom introduce Quincy Cross as his
Speaker 1: main suspect in his articles, but as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell, he was the first reporter to really hint
Speaker 1: at the idea that there was a sexual element to
Speaker 1: the crime against Jessica. Up until then, every time law
Speaker 1: enforcement talked about Jessica's case to the press, they did
Speaker 1: not mention rape or sexual assault. But Tom took those
Speaker 1: descriptions of Quincy at the party as one and wanting
Speaker 1: girls and wrote the Quincy's demeanor quote suggested a sexual
Speaker 1: predator on cocaine end quote. Years later, he would go
Speaker 1: even further, saying that early on in his reporting, he
Speaker 1: and Susan knew something more nefarious had occurred.
Speaker 11: We were pretty certain by now that Quincy Cross together
Speaker 11: with other accomplices, had murdered Jessica in a sex and
Speaker 11: drugs frenzy.
Speaker 1: In his digging, Tom also found that a small souvenir
Speaker 1: bat had allegedly gone missing from the car. Quincy had
Speaker 1: borrowed a bat that, according to Tom, could have been
Speaker 1: used to bludgeon Jessica since no other weapon had been found.
Speaker 1: Tom and Susan shared all their findings and theories with
Speaker 1: the police, but they were both disappointed to learn it
Speaker 1: was not enough to make an arrest.
Speaker 11: The Kentucky State Police were no closer to arresting the
Speaker 11: perpetrators than their Happiness predecessors, the Mayfield.
Speaker 1: Police, but Susan did not give up. Instead, she continued
Speaker 1: to pursue another one of the suspects on her list, Vnesha' Stubblefield,
Speaker 1: the last known person to see Jessica current alive. Susan
Speaker 1: already knew Venesha from around town. Remember Mayfield is small.
Speaker 14: I want to say the first time I met her
Speaker 14: she was thirteen years old.
Speaker 1: But her interactions with Venesha increased when she started investigating
Speaker 1: the case.
Speaker 14: After two thousand and four is when I talked to
Speaker 14: her a whole lot more.
Speaker 1: In their first investigation, Mayfield police suspected that Veneisha knew something,
Speaker 1: but they never really got anywhere with her. Then came Susan.
Speaker 1: She became convinced that Venetia had to know who killed Jessica.
Speaker 1: The police let her off too easily. In their recorded conversations,
Speaker 1: you mostly hear Susan talking trying to convince Vanicia to
Speaker 1: come clean.
Speaker 18: The reason that no one has pushed you or any
Speaker 18: further on this for these four years is because no
Speaker 18: one's really listened to you talk. Well, at the time
Speaker 18: I've seen you, I listened to you talk.
Speaker 1: I listened.
Speaker 18: No one's done that to this point.
Speaker 15: Wait.
Speaker 18: Wait, that's what I'm saying. I listened to you, and
Speaker 18: when I listen to you, I hear what you're selling
Speaker 18: to me. I hasn't anyone has any four years.
Speaker 1: In Susan's mind, if Vanicia knew the killer and the
Speaker 1: killer was Quincy, then she had to get Vevoenicia to
Speaker 1: write him out. Susan also tells Vanisiha that if she confesses,
Speaker 1: she'll help broker a deal with police.
Speaker 18: And honestly, when we were in the car today, I
Speaker 18: just felt that you were going to tell me. Then
Speaker 18: I really did. And I kept thinking, Okay, I could
Speaker 18: go to Mills and I could say, look, she's willing
Speaker 18: to talk, you've got to guarantee your safety and guarantee
Speaker 18: her jail time.
Speaker 1: But still Vansia doesn't deviate from the original story she
Speaker 1: told police, the one about the all party playing cards
Speaker 1: and saying goodbye to Jessica around one or two a m.
Speaker 1: And she doesn't even admit to knowing Quincy.
Speaker 14: I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her, we know
Speaker 14: we know what.
Speaker 2: I don't get kill quick for that.
Speaker 18: Just well, I'm talking to me, all.
Speaker 1: Right, got here, So Susan tried another angle. If the
Speaker 1: nishe wasn't gonna crack, then Susan would have to get
Speaker 1: the suspected killer to confess. She would have to talk
Speaker 1: to Quincy Cross herself. And it turns out Susan knew
Speaker 1: one of Quincy's cousins from around town.
Speaker 14: I would go to her house and work on her
Speaker 14: computer in the meantime, always talk to her about Quincy,
Speaker 14: just try to, you know, get anything I could out
Speaker 14: of her.
Speaker 1: And she used her to set up a meeting with
Speaker 1: Quincy under the pretense that she was a researcher for Tom.
Speaker 6: Which I was.
Speaker 14: I did help to research for him. So after he
Speaker 14: went back to London, I just kept up the speel anybody.
Speaker 1: She even told her she could help Quincy.
Speaker 5: I told her that I was good. I was there
Speaker 5: that to try to clear.
Speaker 1: His name, and Susan told the Kentucky State Police about
Speaker 1: her planned sting operation.
Speaker 14: I called Kentucky State Police and invited them to help
Speaker 14: me on that.
Speaker 1: The police did indeed help her. They gave her a
Speaker 1: cell phone to record and a few officers to wait
Speaker 1: outside of the house for protection.
Speaker 14: Was all set up very professionally.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 14: We had code words I had if I needed any
Speaker 14: assistance from them, I had my code rounds were I
Speaker 14: wish my big brother was here and they would be
Speaker 14: come right into the residents.
Speaker 1: Quincy did not know he was being recorded. I don't
Speaker 1: have the recording. I asked law enforcement for it and
Speaker 1: they said they can't find it. But according to Susan's
Speaker 1: court testimony, a transcript, and a police report, these are
Speaker 1: some of the things. Quincy allegedly says that he was
Speaker 1: wearing a sweatsuit that night, yes, that.
Speaker 14: He didn't have a belt, and that he was wearing
Speaker 14: a jogging outfit.
Speaker 1: But then he says they kept his belt at the
Speaker 1: jail when he was arrested. Then, according to Susan, Quincy
Speaker 1: says that as soon as they smelled gas on him,
Speaker 1: he knew police would blame him for what had happened,
Speaker 1: and Susan perked up at this Was this a confession
Speaker 1: a slip? How did he know that night that a
Speaker 1: girl had been burned unless he was there? Tom Mingled
Speaker 1: also thought she'd struck gold.
Speaker 11: She didn't get a full confession, but she got an
Speaker 11: interview which contained self incriminating remarks. She'd made more progress
Speaker 11: in a day than the police agencies have made him
Speaker 11: five years.
Speaker 1: But still no arrests. Another failed plan in Susan's citizen investigation,
Speaker 1: and another year with no major inroads by the Kentucky
Speaker 1: State Police until the Kentucky Attorney General stepped in a
Speaker 1: year later in two thousand and six, with a new
Speaker 1: set of agents and brand new set of ears for
Speaker 1: Susan goalbreath. Around this time, Susan was pursuing what would
Speaker 1: be her final scheme. With a little help from the Internet.
Speaker 1: She set up a MySpace account.
Speaker 14: It's titled Murdered Jessica Curran at MySpace.
Speaker 1: This was pre Facebook being widely available, and Susan used
Speaker 1: the page to track down anyone from Mayfield and add
Speaker 1: them as a friend. That's how she first made contact
Speaker 1: with Victoria Caldwell, the state's main witness you heard from
Speaker 1: last episode, the one who eventually confessed to being an
Speaker 1: accomplice to the crime. The first message between them that
Speaker 1: we have a record of is from January two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven. Here's Victoria reading that message for Tom's piece
Speaker 1: on the BBC.
Speaker 19: In January twenty four, two thousand and seven. I don't
Speaker 19: want anyone to find me. I am afraid from my life.
Speaker 19: I'm sorry about what happened. I will help the police
Speaker 19: as much as I can, but I really don't know
Speaker 19: who to trust. I am afraid someone might kill me
Speaker 19: if I testify to things about this.
Speaker 1: Victoria was living in California at the time, far away
Speaker 1: from Mayfield, apparently in hiding, and Victoria turned out to
Speaker 1: be Susan's missing puzzle piece. She would not only point
Speaker 1: the finger at Quincy, but at many others, including her
Speaker 1: own family, and her story would find a captive audience
Speaker 1: in the investigators from the Attorney General's office. Sometime after
Speaker 1: Tom Mangold published his first p on Jessica's killing, her
Speaker 1: father Joe Curran told a local TV news station that
Speaker 1: he thought maybe this was it. Finally they were getting
Speaker 1: closer to solving his daughter's murder, thanks in part to
Speaker 1: a journalist from England.
Speaker 15: This gentleman had come over here and investigated about a
Speaker 15: week or ten days on this case. He had found
Speaker 15: several pieces of information that hadn't been discovered and hadn't
Speaker 15: been checked out. Wouldn't make no police had the case.
Speaker 1: All the information Tom and Susan uncovered was stuff the
Speaker 1: original investigators with the Mayfield Police Department had, but according
Speaker 1: to Susan, the police had missed it, either on purpose
Speaker 1: or because of ineptitude. Tom and Susan took a few threads,
Speaker 1: a belt, a gas can, a missing miniature bat, and
Speaker 1: they used them to weave together a story, one that
Speaker 1: was incomplete and till Victoria showed up. And all I
Speaker 1: have right now is Quincy's account saying he was just
Speaker 1: at a party that day, took a drive, got lost,
Speaker 1: and then the car ran out of gas and he
Speaker 1: got arrested. But the problem with people's stories is they
Speaker 1: can be inconsistent. So I call my producer Rebecca to
Speaker 1: discuss a few things that are nagging at me.
Speaker 6: Hello Maggie.
Speaker 5: Hello.
Speaker 1: So, first, Quincy told me he left the party to
Speaker 1: go find something to eat, but none of the other
Speaker 1: party goers seem to have ever supported that claim.
Speaker 9: And one of the also only consistent things is that
Speaker 9: the entire night Quincy is saying I'm going to find girls,
Speaker 9: I'm going to find goals and he took the car
Speaker 9: to go find one of his girls. That has been
Speaker 9: consistent from the beginning, which is also kind of sketch
Speaker 9: because it's like, he again told me he went to
Speaker 9: get food.
Speaker 7: I think either Quincy is misremembering, or he was like, well,
Speaker 7: I was also hungry, or he's like, no, that makes
Speaker 7: me sound creepy and bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think he thinks it makes me sound back.
Speaker 1: And again, that's just really sketchy.
Speaker 9: That a girl goes missing, you're driving around like, I
Speaker 9: get it, I get why they're onto him.
Speaker 1: Second, the infamous belt. According to police records, Quincy wasn't
Speaker 1: arrested wearing a belt, but.
Speaker 9: Then he also says the police kept his belt.
Speaker 1: He also told Dara this.
Speaker 9: By the way, Dara's like, no, the police kept his
Speaker 9: belt once he was arrested, and I was like, okay,
Speaker 9: what belts?
Speaker 1: What are we even talking about right now? Lastly, the gas.
Speaker 1: We know Quincy smelled like gas and the jailer saw
Speaker 1: Quincy spilled gas on himself, but I haven't been able
Speaker 1: to corroborate where the gas came from or what exactly
Speaker 1: he was doing in the time he left the party
Speaker 1: and his car stalled, Like this is where the breakdown
Speaker 1: all happens.
Speaker 9: So this is where I'm like, this is this is
Speaker 9: where Quincy gets pinged because of the belt and the gas,
Speaker 9: and like, what is the truth?
Speaker 6: Do you think Quincy Cross killed Jessica Kurran No, I
Speaker 6: don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 1: On the next episode and I told Joe.
Speaker 2: Current that day, I said, if I'm elected, I will
Speaker 2: be my best to solve that case.
Speaker 7: We're here to product an interview with Tambra Calwell, you
Speaker 7: presently located in the conference room of the Druid Sweeps.
Speaker 7: It brought down the defenses of the people they were
Speaker 7: interviewing because you're in a hotel, you're not in a
Speaker 7: police station.
Speaker 6: Everyone felt like, what the Fuck's.
Speaker 10: Happening, but just to sit there and to see the
Speaker 10: kangaroo cord that they've done.
Speaker 5: They would not even let.
Speaker 10: Us sit through picking the jeer that kicked us out
Speaker 10: of the court room.
Speaker 1: Graves County is a production of Lava for Good in
Speaker 1: association with Signal Company Number One. This show is written
Speaker 1: and produced by me Maggie Freeling and senior producer Rebecca Ibarra.
Speaker 1: Jason Flamm, Jeff Kempler, and Kevin Wurtis are executive producers.
Speaker 1: Our editor is Martina Abraham's Ilunga. Dannia Suleman is our
Speaker 1: fact checker. Sound design and mixing by Joe Plord. Music
Speaker 1: created by Wrench. Our theme song is the gangsta grass
Speaker 1: version of The One Who's Holding the Star by Leo
Speaker 1: Schofield and Kevin Herrick. Daryl Woolman is investigative producer. Our
Speaker 1: head of Marketing and Operations is Jeff clyburn. Is Many
Speaker 1: Quarter is our social media director, and our Social Media
Speaker 1: manager is Sarah Gibbons. Andrew Nelson is art director, with
Speaker 1: additional production help from Jackie Pauley, Kara Kornhaber, and Kathleen Fink.
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow us on Instagram. TikTok, Facebook, and
Speaker 1: threads at Lava for Good and follow me at Maggie Freeling.
Speaker 1: And we know there's a lot of names for you
Speaker 1: to keep up with in this series, so for a
Speaker 1: detailed list of characters, please go to our show notes