Transcript of Something Stinks

In the 1980s, modeling wasn't just a dream. It was a battlefield. It's a freaking war zone. These people are animals. The Model Wars podcast peels back the glossy cover and reveals a high-stakes game where survival meant more than beauty. Hosted by me, Vanessa Gregoriades, this is the untold story of an industry built on ruthless ambition. Listen to Model Wars on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Introducing IVF Disrupted: The Kind Body Story, a podcast about a company that promised to revolutionize fertility care. It grew like a tech startup. While Kind Body did help women start families, it also left behind a stream of disillusioned and angry patients. You think you're finally in the right-hand. You're just not. Listen to IVF Disrupted: The Kind Body Story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Liz went from being interested in true crime to living true crime. My husband said, Your dad's been killed. This is Hands Tied, a true crime podcast, Exploring the murder of Jim Melgar. I was just completely in shock. Liz's father murdered, and her mother found locked in a closet, her hands and feet bound.

It didn't feel real at all. More than a decade on, she's still searching for answers. We're still fighting. Listen to Hands Tied on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Heads up, this series contains graphic descriptions of violence. There's a saying I heard on a recent trip to the south. A half-truth is a whole lie. If there's a place that breathes life into that proverb, it's the town of Mayfield. Mayfield, in Graves County, Kentucky. A horrific murder went unsolved for six years in Mayfield, Kentucky, a town of 10,000 people. Then one local resident decided to take matters into her own hands. On August first, 2000, the body of Jessica Curran was found outside of the Mayfield Middle School. It appeared as though she'd been beaten and set on fire. Jessica was just 18 years old. A new mom and the daughter of a lieutenant with the Mayfield Fire Department, and her case would go unsolved for years. When police in Mayfield, Kentucky, found a body, Susan Galbraith found a purpose. She had to know who murdered Jessica Curren. Until a local homemaker and a handful of girls came forward with a story, a story that police would use to convict six people, landing Susan Galbraith in the newspapers and the radio and on national TV.

Galbreath was a housewife, married three times and drifting. She had no law enforcement training, and she'd never even met Jessica Curran. But whatever grabbed her wouldn't let go. Somebody had to do something. If it somebody was me, so be it. Years later, the Kentucky Attorney General would even honor Susan with an Outstanding Citizen Award for finding the key witness in the Jessica Curran case. It's a made-for-TV story. Ordinary Woman Helps Solve murder. Brings justice to a small town. Susan Galbraith was named Citizen of the Year by the Kentucky Bureau of Investigation. And to know that I had just the slightest part. It just felt like I was meant to. Susan Galbraith has done more than just prove one person really can make a difference. Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Kerr. Catnip for the press. And who could blame them? It's a good one. Maybe too good to be true. Because this story will go beyond one woman. It's about the lengths our legal system, our communities, and the press will go in order to find someone to blame. And it's about the tales we tell and choose to believe in pursuit of justice, the repercussions of which have uprooted lives, shattered families, and exposed a deep rot in Kentucky's Halls of Power.

This is Graves County, Chapter One, Something Stinks. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer-winning journalist and producer who has spent years reporting on the criminal legal system. That's how I first heard about this case and about Susan Galbreath. I didn't get a chance to meet Susan in person. She died in 2018 at the age of 58. A lot of what I've learned about Susan comes from her interviews with the press and her own writings, emails I've had the to review, and from her testimony in the trial for the murder of Jessica Curran. When I was a child, I either wanted to be a comedian or a police officer. So neither, of course. But I've just always had fascination with the law and things like that. Had you taken an interest in it? I don't care. Susan Galbreath was born in Chicago and moved to Mayfield, Kentucky, in her early 30s. She liked living in a small town with a tight-knit community, and she had a son she loved. But by the time her 40th birthday hit, Susan was in a rut, a self-described cigarette smoking busy body. She was on her third marriage to a man who drank too much, and she'd lost her job from an injury.

She was aimless. On top of that, she had a string of deaths in her family. In 1999, I had the death of my brother, father, and mother. So it was a real rough year for me. Here she is talking to a local public radio station, WKMS, in 2013. I think that I've always felt that I was meant to be there the day that they found Jessica's body. I often refer to it as through her, I somehow got my purpose back because it was a It was a really rough year in '99. In her telling, Susan was sitting at a restaurant on a summer day when she overheard a waitress saying that police had found a body. What happened after that can only be described as spiritual, an epiphany of sorts. She just had to go to the scene of the crime and see it for herself. What she found horrified and captivated her. She would spend every waking hour wondering what monster could have done such a thing. But time passed and the case went unsolved. After four years, the police had little to show for their work, except for some failed leads and a string of rumors about what had happened to Jessica Curran.

That's when Susan, since her curiosity, turned into an obsession. If the cops weren't going to crack the case, she would. She'd play detective and string tidbits of information together. Chase leads, find the truth. But this amateur sleuth needed help. She started emailing people, important people, like Oprah and Julia Roberts, anyone who could connect her to resources or give this case much needed attention. But she heard nothing. A federal investigation in Brooklyn. Then on TV one day, she saw a British investigative journalist by the name of Tom Mangold. I'll be revealing how they've lied, deceived, and manipulated the truth for 40 years. So she wrote him as well. Date, 04/04, 2004. From susange@charter. Net. This is Susan reading part of that email for a radio piece Tom produced for the BBC in 2012. It was a retrospective on the work Susan ended up doing for the case. Hello, Mr. Mangold. I am writing Concerning a murder in a small town in the state of Kentucky here in the US. The victim, a beautiful 18-year-old Black girl. Tom flew to Kentucky about a month after getting that email in 2004. It was the beginning of a year's long partnership with Susan and the launch of their investigation.

They were an odd duo. Here are segments on how they describe each other in Tom's radio piece. When I first met Tom, I thought he was prim and proper, like he had to stick up his ass. I mean, he was just really formal. When I first met Susan, I liked her on site. She's chubby, lively, great sense of humor, sexy, deep voice, and passionate about the one thing she needed to be passionate about, the murder of Jessica Curran. Tom, then in his late '60s, said he brought his experience as a seasoned investigative reporter and taught Susan how to pars gossip from truth. They drank bottles of Sauvignon Blanc together, chased leads, discussed theories, and eventually, they pinpointed a local girl who turned out to be key to solving the case. Victoria Caldwell. Doris Victoria Caldwell. And what do people call you? Victoria. She came forward saying she was an accomplice to the crime, and she ended up being the state's key witness. In July 2000, how old were you? I was 15. Fifteen years old. Victoria's account about what happened to Jessica Curran would be the driving force in the conviction of her accused killers.

Common Health versus Quincy O'Norra Crosh. This was the story Victoria told. We've edited her statements for length, and, warning, it contains descriptions of physical and sexual violence. Your Honor, I'm going to call Victoria Ludwell. On a summer night in 2000, Victoria says she was hanging out with a few kids from around town, including Jessica Curran and Vinisha Stubblefield. All of them teenagers at the time. According to Victoria, they eventually ended up in a car with some older kids, all in their early 20s, including Victoria's cousin, Tamra, Tamra's boyfriend, Quincy Cross, and a guy they knew from school named Jeff Burton, the only white person in the group. Quincy started passing out the drugs. What drugs? Coke. She says they did cocaine and other drugs in the car. Yes. Extasy. Tamra and Quincy were driving in the front with Jessica, and they started touching her. Quincy and camera were rubbing on Jessica's legs. She was telling them to stop and no. Did they stop? No. Now, you Then what happened? Then when we got to the driveway of Jeff house, Quincy, he wrecked under the seat and he had a bat, and he hit her in her head.

Like a small, like a little bat. She says Quincy reached under the seat and then hit Jessica in the head with a souvenir bat. I'm not really sure how to explain it. After that, they drove to Jeff's house, and they carried Jessica's unconscious body inside. According to Victoria, Quincy and Jeff raped and beat Jessica with the help of Tamara. And That's when Jessica started to wake up. Jessica was in and out of consciousness. Actually woke up. She was saying she wanted to go home. She just wanted to go home to her son. She was kept in her son's eye His son's name. She was pleading for her life and calling out the name of her seven-month-old son. Then what happened? Quincy, he hit her. He hit her with a ratchet. And she just knocked back out. Victoria says Quincy then started strangling Jessica with his leather belt. He was just choking her. How was he choking? She just kept pulling and pulling, pulling on it. What was she doing? She was gasping for air. Did she keep gasping? Yes. Huh? Yes. Did she keep gasping? Yes. But it didn't end there. Victoria says that after Quincy killed Jessica, he ordered the girls to have sex with her ravaged, lifeless body.

Quincy had told me that he had to everyone that they had to do something. She describes the sexual acts in lured detail, but I'm not going to share those specifics here. It's gruesome. Did other people perform sexual acts on Jessica Curran's body? Yes. According to the prosecution, this would implicate them all in the murder and ensure their silence. After it was all done, Victoria says they wrapped Jessica's body in a blanket and hid her in Jeff's garage for a few days until she started to smell. Then, she says a few of them drove Jessica's body to the middle school, where they dumped her and set her on fire. Victoria says she took the blanket, Jeff poured the gas, and Vinisha lit the match. And then we left. Has the jury reached a verdict? If you'd hand it to the Baylor police. On April 8, 2008, after only 3 hours and 45 minutes of deliberating, a Kentucky jury convicted Quincy Cross on all charges. We, the jury, find the defendant guilty of kidnapping, guilty of murder, Guilty of rape and the first guilty of rape, and the first, guilty of abuse of a court, guilty of tampering with physical evidence under instruction number 15.

He was later sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Tamara and Jeff took police and were sentenced to 10 and 15 years, respectively. Vinisha and Victoria got lighter sentences for cooperating with the prosecution. Remember, Victoria was the state's key witness. The case would make headlines because it took eight years to find and punish the accused killers, and because of Susan and Tom. Susan stayed on the case, and Tom stayed on the story long after the convictions. In an email a few months after the trial, Tom informed Susan he was writing an article on her for the Times of London. He writes, I'll make you famous yet, to which Susan responds, I couldn't be happier about this. I can only hope I don't let you down. Tom and Susan would appear in interviews like the one you heard earlier from a public radio station, celebrating their feet. Tom told WKM, him as that he had received about 15 film offers from movie studios interested in their story. They were all interested in the relationship between an aging British hack and this lovely young lady, a originally from Chicago. He and Susan ended up signing a contract with BBC Films.

Don't ask me who's going to play me because I wanted Brad Pitt to play me. That's what I was thinking, Tom. It would have been a perfect match. He's far too old for me. I know the talk is of Susan Soundon type actress to play Susan. It's an interesting story, and we have had a remarkable relationship, and one that has given me intense pleasure. In a perfect world where good guys win and the bad guys are punished, this is where the story would end. Roll credits. To accept this free call, press one. To refuse this free call, press two. Thank you for using Securus. You may start the conversation now. Hello. Okay. Hey, Quincy. Hey, how are you doing? I'm well. How are you doing today? I'm just still You're doing time as well. But then again, I wouldn't be here if things worked the way they should. Quincy, what is that like for the world to think you're somebody as terrible as a murderer? It's painful. It's very painful. And it's something that I've never adjusted to living by. To understand this story, you need to know the people accused and convicted of Jessica Currens' murder.

My story is not just about me, but it's about Jessica, the victim, and it's about Tamara and Jeff Burton, too. All our stories. We was betrayed to be something that we're not. So the the world looked at us different. They still do. So my story is to help clear all that up. I've gotten to know two of them well, Quincy and Tamara. And from the very beginning, they have maintained that the story Victoria told at trial was a lie. People still talk about me to this day, but I don't care because I know I sleep great at night. I know I didn't do anything. I know I didn't do a thing. Other people ensnared in this story have told me the same thing. They did not kill Jessica Curran. That's after the break. Power struggles, shady money, drugs, violence, and broken promises. It's a freaking war zone. These people are animals. There's no integrity. There's no loyalty. That's all gone. In the 1980s, modeling wasn't just a dream. It was a battlefield. Book, book, book. Nice deals. Let's get models in. Let's get them out. And the models themselves, they carried scars that never fully healed.

Until this day, honestly, if I see a measuring tape, I freak out. The Model Wars podcast peels back the glossy cover and reveals a high-stakes game where survival meant more than beauty. Hosted by me, Vanessa Gregoriades, this is the untold story of an industry built on ruthless ambition. Listen to Model Wars on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I started trying to get pregnant about four years ago now. We were getting a little bit older, and it just felt like the window could be closing. Bloomberg and iHeart podcast present, IVF Disrupted: The Kind Body Story, a podcast about a company that promised to revolutionize fertility care. Introducing Kind Body, a new generation of women's health and fertility care. Backed by millions in venture and private equity, it grew like a tech startup. While Kind Body did help women start families, it also left behind a stream of disillusioned and angry patients. You think you're finally with the right people in the right hands, and then to find out again that you're just not. Don't be fooled. By what? All the bright and shiny. Listen to IVF Disrupted, The Kind Body Story, starting September 19 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Podcasts. My name is Ed. Everyone say, Hello, Ed. Hello, Ed. I'm from a very rural background myself. My dad is a farmer, and my mom is a cousin. So it's not like... What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? I know it Sounds like the start of a bad joke, but that really was my reality nine years ago. I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different. On stage stood a comedian with a story that no one expected to hear. On 22nd of July, 2015, a 23-year-old man had killed his family. And then he came to my house. So what do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? A new podcast called Wise Crack, where stand-up, comedy, and murder take center stage. Available now. Listen to Wise Crack on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Mayfield, Kentucky, is in the dead center of Graves County, tucked away in the southwestern corner of the Commonwealth. There's more crops than people. Corn, soy, and tobacco fields stretch as far as the eye can see. Legacy of a time when African people were bought and sold like chattel to cultivate these same crops.

Alcohol laws in Graves County date back to the dry crusade or Prohibition era, so there's not many places to gather and grab a drink on a Friday. Folks in Mayfield are damn proud of their winning high school football team, the Cardinals. But other than game night, locals tell me there's not much to do. Just under 10,000 people live in Mayfield. The population hasn't grown in decades. Like in many small towns across the country, lack of activity or opportunity often leads to mischief and petty crime. A lot of it in the county is drug-related, people selling or possessing drugs, and a lot of people have kids young in their teens and 20s. That was the case for Tamra Caldwell. So you were 17, you got pregnant, and was there any question about keeping the baby, or were you- Oh, yeah, I'm keeping it. Tamra always knew she wanted to be a mom, so when she got pregnant as a teen with her first child, a boy, Tamra was happy. You're like, I'm ready to be a mom. I'm ready. Yeah. I'm ready. I'm not getting rid of it. I'm ready. And when another baby, a daughter, came just two years later, and another one, a few years after that, she knew she'd adore those little girls just as much.

There was love to spare. I enjoyed being with my kids because they were my life. Tamara also knew that she wouldn't need a man to raise the kids, just like her mom and grandmother before her. Who is your dad? My mother is my dad. She's always been my dad, and we'll always be like that. Men would come and go, but Tamara's family would stay together. That's not to say that some men didn't stay a little while. One of them was Quincy Cross. Before they were both accused of murder, their names tied to a brutal crime. They were just two kids in their early 20s who fell in love. Quincy was from a town just across the border in Tennessee, about a 40-minute drive southwest of Mayfield. Quincy had the swagger that comes from being a young man without a care in the world. Unlike Tamra, who says she's always been more of a homebody, content on the couch with her kids, watching soap operas or Jeopardy. Quincy was a bad boy, getting in trouble. We was drinking and drugging, hear me? Quincy says he and his friends would run the streets. It was selling drugs.

It was hanging out late. It was hanging out with a whole bunch of females, different females all the time. It was kids, a whole bunch of kid things going on. You know what I'm saying? Like I said, drinking and drugging, man. We was most of the time doing it all, man. Doing what kids do. And those things usually landed Quincy in and out of jail. That's actually how Tamara and Quincy met. He was locked up in the same jail as Tamara's brother in Graves County. And in one of her visits, Tamara says she saw Quincy looking at her. He was cute, a little short, he's 5'4, with big cheeks and a warm dimpled smile. And she remembers thinking, Maybe I ought to talk to him. So she did, and he turned out to be nice as well. He was friendly, cute, friendly. And funny. Quincy was a comic. Quincy was just a fun person. I enjoyed talking to him. Quincy enjoyed Tamra. Tamra had a nice heart. Tamra had a nice heart, man. Tamra was a friend before she was anything else. We was good to hang out with each other, man. She was a good person, for real.

Tamra was already pregnant when she got serious with Quincy. She didn't party, so they liked watching movies together, eating pizza. Quincy even moved in with Tamra and her mom for a bit. He was there when Tamra had to have an emergency C-section, and her youngest girl Shade was born. I held Shade before she did. Oh, man. I cried. I cried. I was soft, man. I ain't going to trip. I cried. I shedded some tears right there. That was a beautiful thing. Yeah. That was a beautiful day. That was bringing back some good memories right there. Tamaara says Quincy was good with the kids. She even gave Shadeh his last name, even though he wasn't the biological dad. Even though he didn't have no kids, my kids were his kids. He didn't seem to mind the mess that comes with children, literally. Before he got in the door, before he opened the door, he would change shirts because he knew that Bibi was going to throw up. Yes. Bibi is Shade's nickname. And he was okay with it. Yes, he was the best. Tamara says Quincy loved Bibi and her whole family. He was even a pallbearer at her grandma, Doris's funeral.

He was fully in her life. We were like best friends. But after a few years, their relationship fated the way relationships do. I just had to go back home. Back home to Tennessee. I just wanted to go back home, man. Mayfield is- You have one minute left. It's corrupt down there, man. There's a lot of corrupt things going on down there. And I figured it was time for me to come back home. Tamra and Quincy broke up around 2005 and lost contact for a bit, but he wasn't able to shake Mayfield off for long. A few years after the breakup in 2007, he'd to Kentucky. And even though he'd never get back together with Tamra, their names would be forever linked to each other and to Mayfield's most infamous murder. I got out of prison in 2012. I was in there five years, eight months. It's two days. Five years, eight months, two days, yeah. I'm sitting with Tamara at her mom's house in Mayfield. She's bold and bright with shimmery makeup. Makeup and colorful braided hair. Tamra says since she was a kid, she's always had colorful hair. Today, it's blue, her favorite. But inside, Tamra is guarded, scarred by prison and the events that led her there.

I used to be outgoing. I was always the positive one. Not no more. Not like I used to be. Not like it used to be. It won't never be like it used to be because I can't get... I will never get that time back. Can't never get that time back. And I was taken away from my family for something I didn't even do. If I knew what I know now, then It's been a whole different story. It's crazy when you call home and your kids, there's something wrong with your kids. You can't do anything because you're locked up. It's hard, but I had to keep to faith because I wanted to go home. Because if If I didn't keep the faith, I probably wouldn't even be here now. I've spent the last two years traveling to Mayfield, talking to people there, sorting through hundreds of hours of law enforcement interviews and interrogations, court transcripts, private investigator findings, and records, trying to figure out if there's any truth to their claims of innocence. What would it be like to have your conviction cleared for you? What would it be like? Oh, a great deal. I can't even get a job because of my conviction, what my charges are.

Yeah, I will never get five years, eight months, or two days back, but I deserve something. I want my name cleared, and Jeff's name cleared, and Quincy out of jail, out of prison. That's all I want, clear my name. Two years of sifting through lies, rumors, and stories, picking out any discernible bits of truth, trying to figure out how they were accused in the first place. At times, it's been almost impossible to discern truth from rumor, and it's made me question, who can I trust when so many people obscure the truth? Now, over the course of time, I have grown to trust one woman in particular, and she warned me from day one that this case was going to be a hard one. Good luck deciphering the fucking lies in this case. My apologies for cussing, but that's what it is. There are so many lies. That's after the break. Power struggles, shady money, drugs, violence, and broken promises. It's a freaking war zone. These people are animals. There's no integrity, there's no loyalty. That's all gone. In the 1980s, modeling wasn't just a dream. It was a battlefield. Book, book, book. Make deals. Let's get models in.

Let's get them out. And the models themselves, they carried scars that never fully healed. Till this day, honestly, if I see a measuring tape, I freak out. The Model Wars podcast peels back the glossy cover and reveals a high-stakes game where survival meant more than beauty. Hosted by me, Vanessa Gregoriades, this is the untold story of an industry built on ruthless ambition. Listen to Model Wars on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I started trying to get pregnant about four years ago now. We were getting a little bit older, and it just felt like the window could be closing. Bloomberg and iHeart podcast present, IVF Disrupted: The Kind Body Story, a podcast about a company that promised to revolutionize fertility care. Introducing Kind Body, a new generation of women's health and fertility care. Backed by millions in venture capital and private equity, it grew like a tech startup. While Kind Body did help women start families, it also left behind a stream of disillusioned and angry patients. You think you're finally with the right people in the right hands, and then to find out again that you're just not. Don't be fooled.

By what? All the bright and shiny. Listen to IVF Disrupted, the A Kind Body Story, starting September 19 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Ed. Everyone say hello, Ed. Hello, Ed. I'm from a very rural background myself. My dad is a farmer, and my mom is a cousin. So it's not like... What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? I know it sounds like the start of a bad joke, but that really was my reality nine years ago. I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different. On stage stood a comedian with a story that no one expected to hear. On 22nd of July, 2015, a 23-year-old man had killed his family. And then He came to my house. So what do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? A new podcast called Wise Crack, where stand-up comedy and murder takes center stage. Available now. Listen to Wise Crack on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2004, Susan Galbraith, the Kentucky housewife who you met at the top of the show, wrote journalist Tom Mangold, asking for help solving the Jessica Curren case.

Almost two decades after that, a woman named Dara Wolman would contact me and my team, saying the man in prison for the crime had been wronged. Much like Susan, Dara is not a detective or a lawyer. She's not even from Mayfield. Yet, she has dedicated years of her life to this case. But if Susan helped put Quincy Cross in prison, Dara is dead set on getting him out. I don't believe he was there. I don't believe that he did it. I don't believe he had anything to cover up. It's just a gut feeling. Has your intuition ever led you astray? I mean, look at the fuck towards that day. Yeah, absolutely. Sorry. My intuition has led me a lot of times astray. In 2021, she launched an endeavor aimed at helping people in prison. I started the Department of Collaborators. I really wanted to call it the Department of Correctors, but I felt like that was too country, the DOC. I do not have a website. I do have a bank account. The Department of Collaborators, a group of folks from all walks of who volunteer their time to finding people they think have been wrongfully convicted and connecting them with folks like me who can give them a voice.

We're just a group of misfits that can't let go of this case. Dara got in touch with my colleague, Jason Flam, who's long worked in criminal justice reform, and he passed the case along to me. Dara has asked me point blank to not compare her to Susan Galbreath, but the irony of it all, the similarities are not lost on me. I'd be crazy not to point them out. And one of them is that I am taken by Dara the way Tom was taken by Susan. Dara is a character. She's constantly calling and sending me voice messages at all hours. Anyway, again, I'm sorry for my monotone voice talking like I have marbles in my goddamn mouth, but that's just the way I talk tonight. Dara is a born and bred Southerner who plays to every stereotype for laughs. Like, these are the kinds of phrases she signs off with. God bless the USA. And fuck Nancy Rice. Dara grew up in Mississippi, but lives in a McMansion neighborhood outside of Nashville now. My producer, Rebecca and I, went to visit in the summer of 2024. Welcome to the jungle. The jungle? It's a very nice jungle.

Dara lives with her mom, son, and Ludacris. Hi, Ludacris. You're so cute. A dog, not the rapper. A scruffy white terrier mutt who's always by her side. He doesn't identify as a dog. Dara is a striking woman in her 40s with icy blue eyes and long blonde hair. As we walk past the foyer into what appears to be the sitting room, there are three huge paintings on the wall. What? Is this just you? Oil paintings of Dara in a revealing mini dress that her mother painted. But my boobs are really enhanced. Dara says the Southern blonde shtick works. It leads people to underestimate her. But you shouldn't be fooled. She's tenacious and full of moral outrage over what she perceives as a deep injustice. The proof of Dara's tenacity Where do you have all your documents and stuff? All in my office by the downstairs. Oh, that's your office. Okay, not me. Dara's home office is a bright room, jam-packed with tons of memorabilia from the years, like Dolly Parton figurines, Kate Moss's mugshot, and of course, documents. Filing cabinets full of papers and binders of CDs containing hours of court proceedings, security footage, interrogations, interviews, everything.

Like emails between Susan and Tom. How did someone get her personal emails? Who was that? Who was able to get these? It's not supposed to be part of discovery. I mean, she was a witness. She was a witness. That makes sense. She's giving me full access. Dara hasn't collected all of this alone. In the Department of Collaborators, there's a person who gathers all the data, one who organizes it, and there's Dara, the connector, staying in touch with everyone involved. It's grown past a little volunteer job, Dara says. It's become personal. The truth of the matter is that I fell in love with Quincy's family. They've fallen in love with me. And with all the other people who've been touched by this case. Tamra, Jeffrey. That's the truth when it comes to Quincy Cross's case. It's not about solving the murder of Jessica Kern, because at the end of the day, who am I to think I can fucking solve it? I'm just trying to get a man that's wrongfully in prison out, and I'm trying to get his other two co-defendants exonerated. So that's what Dara wants, and what I want is to get it right for a few reasons.

I'm a white girl from New York parachuting into this community in the south where the victim and most of the accused are Black. I'm painfully aware of the stereotype, White lady saves the day, Susan, Dara. We've heard this from people in town who are wary of outsiders. I don't want to give them more reasons to distrust people like me. On top of that, a few years ago, I got it really wrong. Covering what I was convinced was a wrongful conviction out of Alliance, Ohio. I dedicated a year of my life and 20 podcast episodes trying to find out if a man was in prison unjustly, only to learn midway that he'd most likely done it and my instincts were wrong. A lot of listeners commended my honesty, but I also got slammed for hurting the victim's family by dragging all this up. I felt like failure and went on hiatus for a few months, dug a hole and burrowed in it, licking my wounds. My mistake is always in the back of my mind. But I'm not the first journalist with doubts about their own work. It turns out I'm not the first journalist with doubts about the convictions in this case.

When Susan Galbraith died in 2018, Tom Tom Mangold wasn't able to fly from England for the funeral, but he wrote Susan's family an email expressing his condolences. He called Susan a, quote, life force. He wrote that Susan's enthusiasm for the investigation infected him and eventually, infected law enforcement. It was, quote, wholly because of her drive and cunning that the perpetrators were caught and sentenced. Publicly, Tom was and continues continues to be certain that the case Susan helped bring forward and the one he covered for years was not only right, but righteous. But privately, I found a different story, one that plants a seed of doubt. This is from Susan to Tom. I'm sitting with my producer, Rebecca, going through hundreds of pages of documents we got from Dara and from court filings. They include years of Tom Mangold's emails from Susan, law enforcement, and many other people in Mayfield. This email is between Tom Mangold and Lacy Gates, a friend of Susan Galbraith. Yeah, I thought she was- That begins working with Mangold and Galbraith. These specific emails are from around the time Tom was preparing to release yet another piece on Susan, four years after Quincy, Tamra, and Jeff were convicted.

It's the radio documentary you heard earlier from the BBC titled Something Rotten in Mayfield. In he rehashes the story of Susan helping to find Jessica's killers. And he features Victoria Caldwell retelling her version of events. Yet, this is an email he sent to Susan's friend a few months before the piece air. Oh, my God. This is from Tom to Lacy in January 2012. Lacy, I'm just beginning to wonder, this is but a tiny worm of an idea in my my wine-soaked brain, that there is a teeny-weeny, itsy-bitsy chance that we've got this whole fucking murder story wrong and that there may have been a huge miscarriage of justice. A renowned journalist talking about a case that he helped solve that went all the way to the Kentucky attorney general that sent six people to prison. And he's saying there's an itsy-bitsy chance that they got this whole fucking murder story wrong. This season on Graves County. I mean, you should hear all the stuff that goes around. You know, some of it might be as true as it comes. You just can't ever tell what's rumored and what's not. You look so pathetic, faking those tears, rocking in that chair, and telling that lie.

They accused a lot of innocent people. They hurt their families. They hurt their friendships. Don't let nobody ever tell you you get closure because you're going to always miss a person like that the rest of your life. It sounds like a lot of people have come forward saying, I know who did this, but no one has said who did it. That's correct. Why? I don't know. Some of them that I've dealt with that's involved in this are perpetual liars. I did not know her, and I did not kill her, or rape, or burn, or any of that other stuff that you all said. America, you all better wake the hell up. Bad things happen to good people in small towns. Braves County is a production of Lava for Good in Association with Signal Company number one. This show is written and produced by me, Maggie Freeling, and senior producer, Rebecca Ibarra. Jason Flam, Jeff Kempler, and Kevin Werdes are executive producers. Our editor is Martina Abraham's Ilunga. Dania Suleiman is our fact checker. Sound design and mixing by Joe Plourd. Music created by Wrench. Our theme song is the gangsta grass version of The One Who's Holding the Star by Leo Scofield and Kevin Herrick.

Dara Wulman is investigative producer. Our head of marketing and operations is Jeff Clibern. Ismany Guadalrama is our social media director, and our social media manager is Sara Gibbons. Andrew Nelson is art Director with additional production help from Jackie Pauley, Kara Cornhaber, and Kathleen Fink. Be sure to follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and threads @LavaForGood, and follow me at Maggie Freeling. We know there's a lot of names for you to keep up with in this series. For a detailed list of characters, please go to our show notes. In the 1980s, modeling wasn't just a dream. It was a battlefield. It's a freaking war zone. These people are animals. The Model Wars podcast peels back the glossy cover and reveals a high-stakes game where survival meant more than beauty. Hosted by me, Vanessa Gregoriades, this is the untold story of an industry built on ruthless ambition. Listen to Model Wars on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Introducing IVF Disrupted: The Kind Body Story, a podcast about a company that promised to revolutionize fertility care. It grew like a tech startup. While Kind Body did help women start families, it also left behind a stream of disillusioned and angry patients.

You think you're finally in the right-hand. You're just not. Listen to IVF Disrupted, The Kind Body Story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Liz went from being interested in true crime to living true crime. My husband said Your dad's been killed. This is Hands Tied, a true crime podcast, Exploring the murder of Jim Melgar. I was just completely in shock. Liz's father murdered, and her mother found locked in a closet, her hands and feet bound. I didn't feel real at all. More than a decade on, she's still searching for answers. We're still fighting. Listen to Hands Tied on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.