On November 10, 2014, a 17-year-old young man named Alec Lansing went missing after he left a group from Trails Carolina, an organization in Western North Carolina that offers wilderness therapy for young adults and children. At the time, Alec, who was from Atlanta, Georgia, had been camping with a group off NC 107 in the forest near Heady Mountain Church Road. A search for Alec involved the U.S. Forest Service, the North Carolina Highway...
Mike O'Boyle On the morning of Tuesday, May 27, 1980, 20-year-old Eugene Carmichael “Mike” O’Boyle left his home in West Columbia and drove to the Shandon area of town to pick up a friend who was going to work on his car. The friend, a 29-year-old student and part-time mechanic named Chris Clifton, was not home when the two were supposed to meet. He came back to his home about 15 minutes after their designated meeting time and found the...
Today I’m talking about a few different true crime documentaries and series that I think fans of this podcast would enjoy. I tried to make selections from a few different streaming services, since I know most of us don’t have access to everything available. I’ll be discussing the Hulu series “The Lesson is Murder,” the Netflix documentary “American Nightmare,” and the Max documentary “They Called Him Mostly Harmless.” The...
Pamela Denise Durham, known as Denise to her friends, was a 16-year-old high school student at East Henderson High School. She lived in East Flat Rock, North Carolina. According to an article that ran in the February 15, 1981 edition of The Asheville Citizen Times, Denise Durham was a model student. She was the secretary of the student council, an honors program student, and a band member who played the clarinet. Her life was going smoothly,...
What is a body broker and how do they operate? According to an investigative series by the news organization Reuters, body brokers are also known as non-tissue transplant banks. These banks are different from the organ and tissue industry, which is highly regulated. No federal law currently governs the sale of cadavers or body parts for use in research or education. In 2004, a federal health advisory panel called for regulation of body brokers....
A man from Fayetteville gets a ride from a co-worker and is never seen again, until a religious awakening with a murderer brings the secrets to light. Another young man from Florida takes a job out of state while he figures out his next move, abruptly exits his truck while riding with co-workers he doesn’t know very well in North Carolina in the early hours of the morning, and his never seen again. And a young woman from North Carolina heads...
A young boy dies at the home of his adoptive parents in what is later found to be the result of swaddling. The boy was only four years old, and his parents had been attempting a controversial parenting therapy before his death. A 10-year-old girl from North Carolina is taken out of state by her adoptive mother in another case of attachment therapy, and also dies at the treatment center. Two boys with special needs die in what appears to be...
January is National Stalking Awareness Month. In January 2003, Debbie Riddle learned her sister Peggy had been murdered by her ex-boyfriend after years of controlling behavior and incidents of stalking. In Episode 81, Debbie shares the story of how her sister's death changed her life and motivated her to begin advocating for change in the way law enforcement and communities handle the crime of stalking. Resources: Peggy Klinke articles:...
On January 13, 2021, an incident of workplace violence at a manufacturing plant in Hickory, North Carolina resulted in the shooting death of a 51-year-old woman. The shooter, also a female, then left the premises, along with her husband, and evaded law enforcement for more than six months. Immediately following the murder, the victim’s family was heartbroken and outraged that more was not done to protect their loved one at her place of...
I wanted to do feature an end-of-year analysis this year, because our production schedule has changed and we’ve seen a tremendous amount of growth since December 2021. In this episode I’ll discuss a little bit of the methodology that goes behind creating the episodes, where I get my ideas, and some good old-fashioned stats. I made the decision this fall to go from a bi-weekly production schedule to a weekly schedule. I did this for a few...
