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