On the morning of Sunday, April 15, 1973, Virginia Olson, known as “Ginger” to her friends, awoke on a chilly morning in the Craig Dormitory, located on the campus of UNCA, nestled in the mountains of Western North Carolina. A sophomore dramatics major, Ginger was known for enjoying her alone time. She liked to read, go on long walks, paint and sketch, and play her guitar. Ginger had grown up in McLean, Virginia, but graduated from high...
In September of 1988, 21-year-old Brian “Neil” Hooks went missing from the Florence area of South Carolina. According to an article that ran in the Florence Morning News, his sister Amy Turner said Hooks had gone by their parents’ house and said that he and his live-in boyfriend were going to the beach for the weekend. He said he’d call them when he got back. They never saw him again. According to the facts share on The Doe Network...
On November 22, 1984, a four-year-old little boy vanished in the rain from his parents’ home. Jeremy Grice lived with his mother and step-father, Donna and Nick Arrington, and his 10-month-old sister Christy. His step-father put Jeremy to bed the night before while his mom worked second shift at a local manufacturing plant that made thermostats. She arrived home from her shift around 1 a.m. and went to sleep. Her husband Nick got up around 7...
Since 2017, the DNA Doe Project has worked on more than 200 cases of unidentified remains. With the work of their leadership, countless volunteers, advances in technology, the organization was able to make some of the very first identifications through investigative genetic genealogy. They’ve been able to identify people with dementia who went missing and died in another state, away from family members. They’ve been able to identify victims...
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...
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...
When I was researching upcoming book releases on NetGalley this past summer, I noticed Mandy Matney had a memoir coming out about her involvement with the Alex Murdaugh case. I immediately requested the book and was excited to get an advance copy of it. I had listened to her show, “The Murdaugh Murders Podcast” and knew that she had worked in the local media around South Carolina. I wanted to get her take on how she first found out about...
For many years, before streaming services became the norm, made-for-tv movies were the bread and butter of network television’s advertising revenue. Those networks often relied on true crime books and journalists to help find ideas for their latest projects. In the case of the state of North Carolina, there have been many of these network movie events that have featured crimes that occurred here. In fact, I was reading one article where a...
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...
