Transcript of The After Show: Lost in the Night (Who Killed Jessica Currin?)

I'm John Quinones. Vanessa Guillen, a 20-year-old soldier, vanishes while on duty at an army base in Texas. Her family demands answers. How can she go missing on a military base? That's too ridiculous. The search goes on for months.

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Did he do it? This is a question that has divided this small town. In fact, the victim's father even has questions about whether the right man has been convicted. And now there's a groundbreaking update in the case. There's a possibility of a new trial for Cross, and of course, it could change everything for him. So we are following this case on so many levels. But first of all, 2020 producer Susan Welsh is here to talk to me about it, to break it all down. This episode is called Lost in the Night: Who murdered Jessica Curran? And you can stream it on Disney Plus and Hulu if you haven't already seen the program, and I think you're going to want to see our program one way or another. But in the meantime, Susan and I are going to talk about this story and just all the details and the complicated details. Susan. Hi there. Hey, good to see you. Good to see you. You and I work together in the field so often. You're usually giving me all kinds of information, and you've booked all kinds of people who are going to talk to me in the stories, but we've not done this before.

That's true.

This is exciting, actually.

Yeah. So let's let the listeners get a chance to know who you are, because you've been here at 2020 for a long time. We've worked on a lot of A lot of stories together. A lot of stories together. A lot of heavy stories. So what is it about this work? And you and I have done different stories over the years, but of course, now we do a lot of true crime. What is it about the 2020 stories that captivates you?

I think the The biggest thing about some of the 2020 stories that we've done, but just overall, is the impact on the larger community. The fact that we are able to sit down and talk with people and get information and glean answers that sometimes they weren't able to get themselves. And that can sometimes get someone to look at a case more deeply. It can give more visibility to a case, and it helps these families. And these families are then helping other families that might go through this. So that's the biggest thing for me is how it impacts families and what's going on in their particular situation.

Yeah, and that's the case here with Jessica Currens' case, too, because you and everybody who worked on this story shown a light on a story that a lot of people are uncertain about. You do such a great job at this, and you care so deeply. That's what I always think about when you and I are working on stories. You get to know, typically, the victim's families. You are in there with them. If you really, really care about these stories, Susan, which I have to say, I really appreciate. Well, let's talk about this one, Jessica Curran. I mean, the story on its face is so, so tragic. An 18-year-old found dead, brutally murdered, and she's got an infant child that she leaves behind. And there are so many accounts of what happened that night. You and I were talking about it before, all the different people who were involved. It was a complex story, somebody who was looked at as a suspect and then released in someone else. So let's talk before we get to the different people who were involved in the story. What was your first approach? Because it was very complicated. What captivated you in the very beginning?

I think that we just wanted to get to the bottom of what happened to Jessica, what really occurred there. Like you said, this is a big case in a small town. So our first instinct, this mighty team, this small but mighty team of producers and bookers, we really started to reach out to those people who were involved, the Curren family, as well as David Cross, Quincy Cross's father, and also reaching out to of community leaders, law enforcement, and two very important witnesses, Vinisha Stubblefield and Victoria Caldwell. Our bookers, Booker and Isabelle, really did a fantastic job of reaching out to these people and saying, We want to hear this story from you. We want to know what happened and why all of this has occurred the way it's occurred. Can you sit down and talk to us?

But some were reticent.

And some were hesitant. That was no easy feat to get everybody in the seat. But once we did, they really started to talk to us and tell us what they felt was at the bottom of what happened to Jessica or what they think happened.

There were a number of people involved. So you're talking about everybody seemed to be a suspect. And then, as you mentioned, they were at the center of it where Victoria Caldwell and Vinisha Stubblefield. So their stories shifted dramatically throughout the investigation. And there were questions about who was really with her at the night. This all happened. Did they have regrets? When they were talking with you about this? What were their overall feelings? Because you were talking about young people at the time who obviously have become older adults now. But what were their emotions when you reached out?

Oh, yeah. When we reached out, they're now at a point in their lives where they wanted to talk. Victoria actually said to us, It's time for the truth to come out. I'm tired. So both Vinisha and Victoria do have regrets. They have regrets at the way things turned out because they felt that back in 2000, when this was all happening, they were youngsters. They were 15 and 16 years old, and they felt very vulnerable, and they felt that they just didn't have a great deal of control over what was being done. And as a result, there are inconsistent statements and changing statements from them, statements that have put people behind bars. So they absolutely have regrets now that that happened, and really just want to set the record straight.

And we have seen cases like this where young people were interrogated, and then later there were big questions about whether they were actually pressured. Well, in a dramatic moment, Venetia actually put her hand on a Bible, swore she was telling the truth when she was being questioned by the police. Let's take a listen to that bit of the story.

The night that she was murdered, that night after she left us, that was it. I didn't see her no more. So whatever statements you all got saying that I did, well, you're wrong because I did not see her no more that night.

But you're telling us right now that you were not there.

If you all give me a Bible right now, I'll put my right-hand on the dot on that Bible to let you all know that I was not there.

Bring me the Bible, dude. My right-hand on this Bible, I was never in that car, and I never was around. She clearly had a lot of deep feelings about being interrogated.

When she was sitting down talking with you all, what was the motivation? They wanted to talk to you, but was it all about trying to clear their names?

I think to some extent, as As was said before, they both felt a little tired and that they had been dogging them for so many years. When I sat down and talked to Vinisha, Vinisha, very nice person, but she obviously has had some tough times. One of the things that she also said was that she just wants to finally tell the truth. They were young, they were vulnerable, they didn't feel that they had much control. While there were some allegations of feeling pressured, the Kentucky The Bureau of Investigation has denied that there was any pressure that was put on people to say something that they did not believe was true.

So the authorities deny that even though they maintain that? That is correct. Jessica was the daughter of a lieutenant with the town's fire department. And of course, he wanted justice for his daughter. He had faith in his brothers, I guess, if you will, in the police department. But let's talk about the detective in this case, because he had only just been promoted within the Mayfield Police Department, not as experienced. This was his first homicide investigation. And the team in 2020 actually went through investigative files over the decades to see what they could find out about the investigation and also about this detective. Talk to us a little bit about that.

The initial detective there was actually totally inexperienced in handling a homicide. Here you have this big case and a big homicide in this town, and the person that's really over it doesn't know what they're doing.

He's a little out of his depth.

He's out of his depth. And he admitted to Joe Curran, the father of the victim, that he wasn't sure why he was here, and he's not sure he knew what he was doing. So that was very jarring to us. And another thing was that there was evidence that wasn't properly preserved. So that's really important to a case as well.

Susan Galbraith was a citizen sleuth, and we do a lot of stories where there are people in the community, and these days with social media, there are a lot of citizen sleuts out there. And she was a major player, actually, in this investigation. She didn't know Jessica, but she actually got involved in this case. I'm still trying to figure out how citizens, just ordinary people actually get involved and have an influence on this case. How did she?

It's funny because Susan was definitely a character.

Well, we have a lot of those in our story.

In this story. But I do think that in general, law enforcement, in these cases, will often reach out to the public for information and for tips. Susan Galbreath was a local citizen who took it upon herself to be the ultimate tipster. She was someone who knew everybody in the community because it is a small town, and she would go and talk to them. She definitely worked with the police because she was able to get some information that they might not have been able to get from the average citizen. As a result, she would take some of that information to them, and And they found some of it useful, which is why they continued to work with her as she got some information.

Solid information, in your view?

She was willing to work in tandem with them to even talk to people, to record her conversations with people, and then pass along that information to police, which the police thought were solid leads at the time, judging from their own investigation and then looking at who she was talking to and what they were saying. So they were piecing together what she was doing with what they were investigating. Dating and felt that some of these leads were worth following.

And her thoughts on the police eventually zeroing in on Quincy Cross?

Yeah, she started to zero in on Quincy and felt that after speaking to a lot of different people, including Victoria and including Vinisha, that these folks were all leaning towards Quincy Cross and his involvement in this. And that's how his name started to come up. And Susan expressed that to the police.

Even though he said he didn't know the victim. Well, we're going to talk more that, Susan. When we come back, there's also a major update in this case. What happened at the hearing for Quincy Cross, and big questions about whether he's ever going to walk free. We're going to bring in criminal defense lawyer and ABC News legal contributor, Brian Buckmire, who is going to help us break this all down. So stay with us. How hard is it to kill a planet? Maybe all it takes is a little drilling, some mining, and a whole lot of carbon pumped into the atmosphere. When you see what's left, it starts to look like a crime scene. Are we really safe?

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Access content from each service separately. Savings compared to purchasing both plans separately. See stream. Espn. Com for complete terms and conditions. We are back with 20 2020, The After Show, taking a deeper look at our most recent 2020 episode called Lost in the Night: Who murdered Jessica Curran. And I'm talking with Susan Welsh, who produced this story. And then Brian Buckmire, our ABC news legal analyst, is here. Brian, let's bring everybody up to date. Quincy Cross was convicted of killing Jessica Curran 17 years ago, he was sentenced to life without parole. There was a hearing that could potentially offer a new trial to Quincy Cross. Bring us up to date. What exactly happened there.

In this hearing, what Quincy Cross's attorneys are doing and what they successfully did was get the judge to agree that they need an evidentiary hearing to show that there's enough information, enough material information here, that if the judge was to see the full breadth of what could have been presented at trial, a jury would have come to a different outcome.

There are some new things in the recantation, the 2023 recantations that have not been raised before. I know I'm going to have an evidentiary hearing. I'm going to focus only on the recantations of Vinisha Stubblefield, Victoria Caldwell.

So we know that November 25th, Quincy Cross's attorneys, with the help of the Kentucky Innocent Project, will present their case to try to overturn or vacate this conviction.

Now, Brian, you spend a lot of time in courtrooms, and certainly on the defense side, you have had to fight some of these battles. Let's talk about some of the strengths and the weaknesses in this case because he claimed he didn't know the victim. I mean, he has claimed his innocence all along. What was really compelling, do you think, that actually convinced the jury? What was strong and what was not so strong in this case?

I would say one of the stronger aspects of this case, whenever you're talking about a homicide or even just a violent assault, is the lack of forensic evidence. People, when they think about cases and they become jurors, they think, Well, I'm going to see a fingerprint. I'm going to hear about DNA. I'm going to hear about... Especially if you're talking about a brutal murder that follows an alleged sexual assault, we're going to see some evidence of that sexual assault. Show me her dress. And because Because that was lacking in so many areas where the testimony of so many of the witnesses said he had her in the car, hit her over the head with a bat, dragged her out, sexually assaulted her, burned her body. But there was no forensics tying him there. I think that was some of the defense's strongest argument. But it was the, quote, unquote, eyewitness account of these co-defendants in many ways who convicted Quincy Cross.

Yeah, and we see that play out. What I think is so interesting is to have a parent of the victim, the father of the victim, in this case, Joe Curran, who isn't convinced himself that the right person is in prison. Susan, you and the team had a chance to talk with him about his relentless fight to find justice, in this case, for his daughter. Let's listen to what he said. We've suffered to do it a long, long time, and we just don't feel like we have a completion. Just for Jessica would be finding the real people that murdered her. Sometimes I do believe she's guiding me. I do believe that she want me to stay on the case all the way to the end, till the truth comes out. My promise to her is I won't ever stop. I don't quit. So he says that he is determined that the truth will come out. Brian, you can hear the pain in his voice. I mean, this is a father who all these years later is still pain, but also trying to find what he believes would be the true killer of his daughter. Let's talk about the power of parental advocacy.

You're a lawyer. I'm sure you've run into the cases where parents just will stop at nothing to try to find what they believe to be justice. After somebody has been charged, I mean, how difficult is this?

It's extremely difficult, but I don't think you can understate the power of a parent in just being relentless. Prior to being an ABC legal analyst, I covered both the Ahmaud Arbery trial as well as a Breonna Taylor trial and had the opportunity to sit down with both of those mothers and interview them about their fight. If you remember the Ahmaud Arbery trial, there were no allegations until that mother started knocking on doors and screaming out, We run with Ahmaud.

She's the one who really got this case to trial.

Exactly. I think it's safe to say there would not be a trial without her. I don't think you can understate the advocacy of a parent, but a voice is only as strong as an ear that will listen. Here, you have the prosecution saying, We did our job. The jury came to a conclusion, and we're not really hearing anything else. I can see I don't know why a parent might feel like their voice would be screaming into the wind, but I still think that voice is powerful nonetheless.

A voice is only as powerful as the ear that will listen. That's very interesting. Susan, Joe Curran has his doubts, but does he fully believe Is it Quincy Cross is completely innocent?

I think one of the things that Joe shared with us is that, yes, he does have doubts. He has doubts overall because, one, it took so for someone to even go to trial, almost eight years for someone to go to trial for his daughter's murder. Then there was a lot of chatter. There were a lot of people talking about what may have really happened. He does express that there were some doubts. He even had those doubts at the trial itself, wondering if Quincy really may be the right person.

Well, John Quinones, our correspondent, who is just so powerful in these stories. One of the things I think our viewers for 2020 and our listeners will be by is the fact that Joe, Jessica's dad, along with David Cross, Quincy's father, have joined forces. I mean, that's rare for the parent of the victim and the parent of the accused to actually join forces, they say, to find justice. What was that like to witness these two figures coming together in ways that we don't often see? They're usually at opposing sides.

That's right. We don't often see that. But I've met both of these men, lovely, very down to earth. And seeing them together like that with John, it was heartwarming, but it was also very powerful. Because the truth of the matter is they say, Look, we've known each other for a while, and believe it or not, it looks like we should be on opposite sides, but we really aren't because we both want to get to the bottom of what has really happened to our children. Joe Curran wants to know what happened to Jessica that night. Basically, David Cross, Quincy's father, wants to know, How did my son get swept up into this when there's no physical evidence tying him to it? I strongly believe he's innocent. They both are fighting to really try and get to the bottom of it, just to make sure that the right person, not just any person, is serving the time.

Of course, Cross's father feels like the wrong person is. Brian, you don't see this very often, do you?

No. Oftentimes, especially because of the relationship between the prosecution's office and the victim's family, they are hand in hand with their belief of who they've gotten. What this might suggest to me would be that the prosecution and the family are no longer hand in hand in what they believe the evidence or the testimony to be. And so they're seeing something that's uniquely different from the prosecution. And then to go to the person that is not just accused of, because don't forget, in this case, Quincy Cross was not the first person to be accused of these murders. There were two others before that. But to support the person who's been convicted of it, that 12 people had said, I believe this person killed your daughter, and say, I think something off, that's very Very unique.

Brian, two other people connected to the murder were Jeffrey Burton and Tamara Caldwell, and they actually entered Alfred plea for manslaughter and abuse of a corpse. I've heard of the Alfred plea before, which... How does it work exactly?

It is a very confusing thing. The easiest way to describe an Alfred plea is when a defendant takes a stand or they stand up in open court, and what they're basically saying is, I'm not saying that I'm guilty. I'm not saying I did anything wrong, but I am agreeing that you, prosecutor, have enough information that if you presented it to get a jury, I would have been convicted.

I could get convicted.

It's this weird thing of like, I'm not guilty, but I know you got it. But these people are still felons for abuse of a corpse and manslaughter. They would walk around with a conviction. I know they've done at least eight in seven years in prison. They are now out, and they would have any limitations that any person would have with being a felony offender in Kentucky, not be able to run for office, not be able to have a firearms, and potentially not be able to vote.

Well, According to the Innocence Project, there are lots, tens of thousands, maybe, of innocent people in the States who are sitting behind bars who didn't maybe commit the crime. And they are trying to change this. Of course, we know that, Brian. You know a lot more about that. We're going to talk more about that when we come back. So don't go anywhere.

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Now playing only in Peters. We're back with Susan Welsh and Brian Buckmire talking about our most recent 2020, the Jessica Curran case. The man who was convicted, Quincy Cross, denies that he did it, and the Kentucky Innocence Project is trying to help him. What role have they played, Susan?

Well, it's interesting because the Kentucky Innocence Project had actually looked into Quincy's case back in 2012. But because of funding, it had to be shell. So with the push of the currents, David Cross, even Jeffrey Burton's family, they decided to take it back up. And as a result, they have found that, or what they say, are strong markers of wrongful conviction. And they point specifically to Vinisha and Victoria saying that they lied at the trial about Quincy's involvement.

That could have a major impact, Brian.

It could, but the difficulty at the stage in which we're at now, where we're talking about overturning it based on new evidence, a judge will make a distinction between evidence that could have helped steer the jury in a different direction and evidence that would have had them in a completely different time zone. I mean, think about a lot of the wrongful convictions that we see overturned. Dna is the Holy Grail. Yeah, exactly. If you could say, All right, here's her dress, which unfortunately was not preserved. Here's her dress. Quincy Cross's DNA is not on it. John Smith's DNA is. That, I would say, is- That's a slam dunk. That's a slam dunk. But simply saying, Well, she lied here and this wasn't presented. A judge may look at that and say, That doesn't move the needle enough.

Lots of people like to listen to podcasts these days. Journalist Maggie Freeling got together with John Quinones in this case. Together, they went to some key locations in this investigation. And of course, she helped renew interest through her podcast, Bone Valley 3 Graves County. And podcast can have a big impact on stories like this as well as 2020. How do stories like this on podcast maybe move the needle a a little bit? Can it have an impact on a case like this or even criminal justice reform, Brian? First you and then Susan.

So yes to both. But I remind people that prosecutors are elected officials, and they get elected from time to time. And if there's this groundswell of people saying, You should look into this. This person should get another look at this case. Even judges, depending on what level or what state, are also elected as well. And elected officials want to make sure they're doing right by their constituents. And so a groundswell of a movement like this surrounded by a podcast, can have absolutely massive influences on cases.

Susan, did you feel that there's an impact for... 2020 is involved in this case. There are podcasts now. They're to look. Do you feel that there's an opportunity here to shine a light on something that may not have been looked at thoroughly?

I do. You mean for this case in particular? For this case. I do, because I just think that now that we have brought forth a lot of the people, some of whom had not spoken before, we've brought forth what they have to say about this case, what they're now thinking, and just, again, some of the chatter that we heard in the town, that that might bring more people forward. Something like this can help.

Brian, you have had clients who have professed their innocence for a very long time and feel they've been wronged by the justice system. As a lawyer, what do you say? I mean, they are just fighting for their lives, and they feel like the freedom has been denied and justice has been denied. What does a lawyer say to clients like that?

So interesting enough, it's not when they profess profess their innocence that you really say anything because then you can really be like, Hey, I'm with you. Let's go. But they're not professing their innocence 24/7, seven days a week. At some point, there are some dark turns, dark times where they say, I don't know if I'm going to get out. I don't know if this appeal is going to work. Will the judge hear this? It's those low points where you really have to talk them through it and be there with them for it and understand, I'm not sleeping in the cell with you. I'm not walking this with you. But in my position as an attorney, I will do everything I can for you in terms of every avenue, every rock to turn over, every argument you can make, go on a podcast, go on the court, whatever you can. Some people say that they serve time with their clients when they serve because you can empathize authentically feel it, but you try your best to be there on the low points. The high points are easy.

Yeah. Well, it's going to be very interesting on this case because there's movement here. So now we see what happens. This is a fascinating story. It's called Lost in the Night: Who murdered Jessica Curran. And we will keep you up to date on this case. Susan and Brian, always great talking with you both.

Thank you so much.

My pleasure. Yeah. Well, you can stream 2020 full episodes anytime on Disney Plus and Hulu, and of course, including this report, as I said, Lost in the Night: Who Killed Jessica Curran. Thanks so much for joining us. From 20th Century Studios and the Director of Pray, Predator Badlands.

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