In 1999, fresh out of Harvard University, Helen Zuman began seeking out a place where she could practice communal living and learn more about organic farming and homesteading. The place turned out to be Zendik Farm in Western North Carolina. When she left five years later, she slowly realized the leader had been operating the farm as a cult. Listen to episode here. Learn more about Helen Zuman Check out Helen's memoir, Mating in...
On July 9, 1988, 30-year-old High Point, North Carolina resident Sandra Coulthard passed away at Duke University Medical Center. She’d been sick for about six months with vomiting, diarrhea, vomiting, and numbness of her feet and fingers. Doctors had diagnosed her with Guillain-Barre (Ghee-yan Bah-ray) syndrome and had been treating her for it, but her symptoms never improved. Guillain-Barre syndrome is a rare neurological disorder that...
According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 1 in 5 people experience mental illness each year. Their website states: A mental health condition isn’t the result of one event. Research suggests multiple, linking causes. Genetics, environment, and lifestyle influence whether someone develops a mental health condition. A stressful job or home life makes some people more susceptible, as do traumatic life events. Biochemical processes and...
I have one of those journals I got as a gift with a positive affirmation stamped on the front cover in cursive. It tells me how beautiful, smart, and talented I am and says I am going to do amazing things. But if you open the notebook, you might be surprised at what you find scribbled on the pages. This journal has become my true crime notebook. The first page has a Post-it note where I’ve written “NC/SC John and Jane Does,” a...
In 1968, the town of Gaffney was much smaller, quieter, in the midst of integrating black students into schools that had been predominantly white up until that point. Lyndon B. Johnson was the president of the United States and daily headlines reported on the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. People in the community thought nothing of leaving their doors unlocked or traveling by foot to get from one place to another. In fact, many people...
The case of Jock and Jane Doe was featured on “Unsolved Mysteries” on January 20, 1995. The couple was discovered in August of 1976 in Sumter, South Carolina on a rural road by a trucker passing through. They had both been shot multiple times. They both appeared to be in their 20s, with the man measuring six feet tall and the woman about five feet five inches. The man had extensive dental work and was wearing an expensive watch and a ring...
On the morning of July 15, 1993, 26-year-old Chapel Hill resident Kristin Lodge-Miller left her apartment for her daily run. Kristin was an avid runner who kept a log of her routes and times in a journal at home. She lived in a residential neighborhood but was still apprehensive about jogging alone, so her husband bought her a can of Mace for her keychain. Around 6 a.m., a young man accosted her as she jogged down a local running trail on Estes...
On July 10, 1985, Curtis Bane, age 55, and Thaddeus Hayes, age 24, failed to return home after working on a fence on Curtis’s property on N.C. 10, about five miles west of Durham. Curtis’s wife, Dorothy, said the two men had eaten lunch at their home and then planned to go back to the work site for a few hours before dinnertime. Curtis owned different properties in Orange County, which he worked on developing, and also managed several...
Terry Harmon is a native and lifelong resident of Watauga County and has a deep interest in genealogy and local history. He is a graduate of Appalachian State University in Boone and has worked at Samaritan’s Purse, also in Boone, for more than twenty-eight years. He was six years old when the Durham family, which lived two miles away from his own family, was murdered. From then on, Harmon was fascinated by the case, which eventually...
On a snowy night in February of 1972, the small, quiet town of Boone, North Carolina was the site of a shocking triple homicide. This horrific crime stunned the community—things like this just didn’t happen in the mountain town, home to Appalachian State University. Not only that, but the victims owned a successful business, and the murders left only one survivor who lived a few miles away. Within a few months, four men were arrested and...
