Most true crime fans are familiar with the TV show “City Confidential.” The long-running show first aired in 1998 and continues today. It features real-life stories from a wide variety of American Cities. Most of the episodes feature murder cases, but they also discuss attempted murders and other scandalous incidents. The signature of the show is an overview of the city, its history, and what it is well known for. While recently watching...
On July 14, 2022, a South Carolina jury indicted Alex Murdaugh on double murder charges in the deaths of his wife Maggie, and youngest son, Paul. He pled not guilty. Jury selection began on January 23 of this year. The trial lasted 28 days before the jury quickly returned a guilty verdict. In this episode, I’d like to discuss the Netflix documentary, “Murdaugh Murders, A Southern Scandal,” which was released in early January of this year,...
In the area I live in there’s a lake, also known as the largest man-made, freshwater lake in North Carolina. But before it became Lake Norman, the area was a village containing textile mills, homes, and family farms called Long Island. According to the Visit Mooresville website, in the early 1900s, James Buchanan Duke and his successors at Duke Power began purchasing land from farmers around the Catawba and Wateree Rivers in preparation for a...
When I was a teenager growing up in a small town about 20 minutes outside of Asheville, the Asheville Mall was my home away from home. I spent many weekends there wandering in and out of the stores and snacking at Corn Dog 7 and Sbarro. I later went on to work both at the mall and the movie theater across the street. At the time, I had no idea a 23-year-old woman named Pamela Murray had been abducted from the mall in the late 1980s and murdered...
Thirty-five years ago, a Durham woman called 911 in the pre-dawn hours to report that she’d accidentally shot her husband with a gun he was keeping underneath his pillow. While police thought it was strange that someone was sleeping with a loaded weapon, the wife’s explanation seemed plausible. After all, she was a gainfully employed woman who attended church regularly with her husband and two sons. It wasn’t until they learned that the...
Benevolent spirits that watch over university libraries and academic buildings. Specters looking for their lost loves. Motherly figures still caring for the students navigating new journeys away from their childhood homes. Lost souls who regret ending their lives too soon. A mysterious creature who roams a historic college campus. And even a fraternity house that remains forever linked to a serial killer. These are stories shared on several...
A murder suspect bonds with his jailers and makes a special connection with a female jailhouse minister. He’s given agency to confess to more than 300 murders, but becomes a most unreliable narrator. A seasoned journalist who’s written a book about notorious serial killer Ted Bundy conducts hours and hours of interviews with the suspect and begins to question everything about what he is saying. A district attorney goes against a respected...
Several months ago, I received an e-mail from a listener asking me if I’d ever heard any stories of murder victims being left on the Blue Ridge Parkway. I couldn’t say I had at that point, so his e-mail inspired me to do a little digging in the newspaper archives. I discovered several cases I hadn’t heard of before, plus a few I knew about but wanted to get more information on. The Blue Ridge Parkway spans 469 miles and runs from Virginia...
When 20-year-old Lue Cree Overcash Westmoreland retired for the evening at the home of her husband’s family on Jan. 19, 1937, no one expected the young bride of only two months would be murdered by the next morning. Lue Cree’s husband, Herman Westmoreland, lived in an apartment during the week so he could be close to his job at Cascade Mills in Mooresville. Lue Cree was staying at the family home in the Amity Hill area of Iredell County....
She was young, beautiful, beguiling and liked to poison the guests at her boarding house in Charleston, S.C. with oleander tea. For centuries, legend had it that Lavinia Fisher was one of America’s first female serial killers, but have the misdeeds of Mrs. Fisher been greatly embellished over time? If you take a tour of Charleston’s Old City Jail, you can be sure to hear tales of the time period during which Lavinia Fisher and her...
