Investigation: Homicide

In March 2012, Karima Gordon flew from New York to Jackson, Mississippi, for what she thought would be a quick cosmetic procedure. She’d been told the woman doing it was a medical professional. She paid in cash, got the injections in a house on Peyton Avenue, and left for Georgia that same day.

Within hours she was in the emergency room. Eight days later, Karima was dead.

This week, Therese Apel and Amanda Johansson are joined by Investigator Lee McDivitt who worked the case for the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office. They follow the p...

Tonight on Investigation: Homicide, Therese Apel and Sara Perkins Ricks sit down with author Charlie Spillers — a man whose life reads like the books he writes. Before he was a bestselling author, Spillers was an ex-Marine, an undercover agent, and a federal prosecutor, and he’s spent his career on both sides of the most dangerous corners of the law.

We’ll talk about Confessions of an Undercover Agent, his memoir of a decade spent infiltrating criminal operations across the South, and Echoes of War, which reaches back to where it all started. It’s a conversation about co...

Amanda Johansson and Nicole Woods sit down with Sandy Middleton, executive director of the Center for Violence Prevention, to talk about what it takes to protect special victims and fight domestic violence in Mississippi.

The numbers are hard to ignore. One media outlet tracked around 80 domestic violence incidents in 2024 that left at least 100 people dead, some of them children and some law enforcement officers. On a single day last September, Mississippi’s domestic violence programs served 348 victims. They had to turn away 68 more requests for help, and nearly all of those were for a safe place to st...

For a good officer, training doesn’t end at graduation. The skills learned in the classroom, and kept sharp throughout a career, shape how an officer handles a traffic stop, a crisis call, or a homicide scene.

Therese Apel and Sara Perkins-Ricks sit down with Tony Carleton, executive director of the Mississippi Law Enforcement Officers Training Academy, to talk about why training and education throughout an officer’s career matter, not just for police but for the communities they serve and protect.

Carleton has held leadership roles at several agencies over his ca...

In April 2023, Byram officers responded to a house fire on Gary Drive and found people badly burned and a home fully engulfed. What looked like a tragedy turned out to be something else entirely. It became Detective Judson Magloire’s first homicide case as an investigator.

Magloire sits down with Amanda Johansson and Therese Apel to talk about that case and what it taught him. He also tells the story of a teenager he couldn’t save.

Magloire met him when he was 13, back when Magloire was on patrol. They shot hoops...

Allegations of gang rape at Cornell have been headlining news outlets lately, and meanwhile Law & Order: SVU remains one of the most beloved shows on television. 

But what is the reality of being the person who works sex crimes at an agency? It's not wrapped up in an hour, and the cases rarely come with a tidy confession.

This week, Madison County Sheriff's Office Investigator William Horton joins us to talk about his experience working some of law enforcement's hardest cases. Horton has spent 20 years in the profession, four of them as...

In September 2022, Jaylen Lewis, 25, was shot and killed during a Capitol Police stop at West and Mayes streets in Jackson. Two officers fired that night: Steven Frederick Jr. and Michael Rhinewalt. Both were charged with manslaughter, and the case drew strong reactions from every direction, about the shooting itself and about the two men on trial.

After almost a week in Judge Faye Peterson's courtroom, a Hinds County jury deliberated less than five hours before finding Frederick not guilty. Jurors could not reach a verdict on Rhinewalt, and Attorney General Lynn Fitch announced hours later t...

August 1990. A young mother working the late shift at the Western Sizzlin in Flowood stops at a Brandon Texaco for cinnamon rolls for her kids' breakfast. She's inside for only a few minutes. Half a mile from home, a man rises from the back of her van with a knife to her throat. Thirty days later, a nurse leaving a Memphis hospital lives through the same nightmare. The attacker made both women the same threat, and then he disappeared for more than three decades.

The case went cold, then colder. A false confession from a M...

Twenty-five years after 9/11, the toll of a quarter-century spent on high alert is written into the bodies of the people who answered the call. This week, Sara Perkins-Ricks and Therese Apel sit down with Sgt. Jordan Jones to talk about what constant high-intensity service does to those who serve, and how they recover.

Jordan is the founder and CEO of Holos, a performance optimization and wellness company built for military personnel, law enforcement, first responders, and other high-stress professionals. He brings more than two decades of military service to the conversation — more than half of it as a...

There are many voices around Mississippi speaking on behalf of first responders in the field of mental health. One of the more prominent currently is Kevin Whitsell, a 20-year veteran paramedic and firefighter and the founder and host of “A Silent War Within,” a podcast dedicated to confronting and destigmatizing mental health challenges among first responders and healthcare professionals. A Mississippi native, Whitsell spent years in critical care transport, including pediatric and neonatal patients, before moving into supervisory roles. His advocacy is rooted in his own journey through the mental health struggles that come with the job.

Ther...

In April 1996, a spring afternoon in South Jackson turned into a scene of terror the metro area has never forgotten. This week, Therese Apel and Sara Perkins-Ricks sit down with Charlie Smith, a former Jackson Police Department Crime Scene Investigator, who walks them through one of the most harrowing cases of his career, from the inside.

On April 12, 1996, Larry Wayne Shoemake barricaded himself inside an abandoned Po' Folks restaurant at the Ellis Isle shopping center near Ellis Avenue and Interstate 20. From within the building he opened fire on people in and around the center, in a siege...

Some of the people who change our lives never know they did it.

Capt. Barbara Folsom-McNeal was eleven years old when a police officer walked into the worst night of her childhood and carried her out. She'd been whipped with an extension cord, and to a terrified kid, he was a promise that someone would come through when it mattered most.  She didn't learn his name that night, but because of him, she grew up to wear the badge herself in order to continue to fulfill that promise to others. 

A few months ago, Barbara sa...

Jackson has held the highest homicide rate per capita in the nation for five years running. Behind every one of those numbers is a name, a family, and a death someone has to answer for. In Hinds County, that responsibility runs through Jeramiah Howard.

As County Coroner, Howard oversees an office that investigates them all: every scene, every call in the middle of the night, every hardest conversation of someone's life. This week, Therese Apel and Sara Perkins Ricks sit down with the man who carries the weight of a city's losses to ask the q...

From Olivia Benson to Dana Scully to Ziva David, we’ve all got a TV idea of what it looks like to be a female cop. Spoiler alert: you can’t actually run in those heels, and the cases don’t wrap up in 42 minutes.

Tonight, Therese and Amanda sit down with Warren County Sheriff’s Office Lieutenant Stacy Rollison, and her story is the real thing. She started as a part-time jailer while raising three kids as a single mom, and she didn’t stop until she became Warren County’s first female patrol deputy, then investigator...

George David Herrin spent a decade as a fixture at the Canton Estates Apartments. The 85-year-old security guard mowed lawns, helped residents with small tasks, and was a grandfather figure to the kids in the neighborhood.

Then, one Sunday night just after 11:20 p.m., deputies responded to gunshots and found him shot multiple times as he sat in his vehicle outside the complex. The Madison County Coroner called it a homicide. Authorities called it execution-style. He died in the hospital the next morning.

Sara Perkins Ricks and Therese Apel are joined to...

In October 2004, Janell Hatton, a 63-year-old real estate agent from the Bunker Hill community in Marion County, was shot during a robbery at her home. Her body was found buried in a barn near Kokomo. Before it was over, five people would be arrested, and the brutality of the crime would make it one of the most talked-about murders in recent Mississippi history.

This week, Sara Perkins-Ricks and Therese Apel sit down with Lt. Col. Jimmy Herzog of the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation to walk through how the case came together, from the search for a missing...

Sometimes the best conversations are the unplanned ones. Our guest for tonight was under the weather this week, so hosts Therese Apel and Amanda Johansson are flipping the script and opening the floor. Episode 68, "You're the guest," is exactly what it sounds like. No case file, no set agenda, just the two of us talking with you about the stories that pull us in and keep us coming back.

We are pulling back the curtain on how Investigation: Homicide actually comes together, what draws us to a particular case or guest, and why we keep telling the...

Some stories don't start in a courtroom or a case file. They start at a kitchen table, in a grandmother's voice, in a story carried quietly across generations because the truth was too heavy and too dangerous to say out loud.

In 1937, Roosevelt "Red" Townes and Robert "Bootjack" McDaniels were lynched in Duck Hill, Mississippi. It became one of the most photographed lynchings in American history. For decades, the weight of that story lived in the memory of one family, including a little girl named Jimmie Lee, who would one day pass it on to h...

This week on Investigation: Homicide:

An 18-year-old from West Memphis tells his mom he’s heading to the movies. Three days later he’s found in the Holly Springs National Forest. He’s 80 miles from home, shot multiple times, just yards off a remote county road.

Fredarrious Wilson was months from graduating. He wanted to be an architect. Instead he was lured across a state line into the woods by people who knew exactly where to take him so no one would hear.

His father begged other parents...

Tonight on Investigation: Homicide, Therese Apel and Sara Perkins Ricks sit down with author Charlie Spillers — a man whose life reads like the books he writes. Before he was a bestselling author, Spillers was an ex-Marine, an undercover agent, and a federal prosecutor, and he’s spent his career on both sides of the most dangerous corners of the law.

We’ll talk about Confessions of an Undercover Agent, his memoir of a decade spent infiltrating criminal operations across the South, and Echoes of War, which reaches back to where it all started. It’s a convers...

First responders already know what it means to be strangers in a strange land — set apart by what they’ve seen, rewired by what they’ve carried. For those who also hold a faith life, there’s a second kind of strangeness layered on top of the first. In this episode, hosts Therese Apel and Amanda Johansson sit down with Clint Hatch, author of Keeping the Peace Within, to talk about what happens when those two worlds collide — and whether faith is actually robust enough to meet a warrior in the dark, or whether it’s been too sanitized to reach the...

They run toward the worst moments of our lives and then they go home and carry it alone. On the next Investigation: Homicide, Therese Apel and Sara Perkins sit down with Kristy Daniels, who knows that weight personally.

After losing her husband to suicide, Kristy didn't just grieve, she built something that would start to address the devastating and fatal metal health crises that first responders deal with. 1828 is her answer to a crisis that too many first responders face in silence. It’s a nonprofit dedicated to making sure the men and women of Mad...

She was about eleven, washing dishes with fresh gashes up her arms and praying to die, when three officers answered a call for help. Two got pulled into an argument at the door. The third — a tall veteran officer whose name she never learned — knelt down and took her hands. That moment is the reason Jackson Police Department Capt. Barbara Folsom-McNeal wears a badge today.

Now, more than forty years later, she’s the veteran cop who answers the calls, and she wants to find him. To say thank you — or to tell his family what he d...

Every courtroom tells a story, but rarely do we hear it straight from the bench.

This week, Nicole Kral and Therese Apel sit down with Justice Court Judge Marsha Weems Stacey for a candid conversation about what it really looks like to dispense justice at the community level. Judge Stacey pulls back the curtain on cases that have moved through her courtroom: the ones that stay with you, the ones that challenge you, and the ones that reveal something true about the people we live alongside every day.

It’s a conversation about law...

 On April 24, 1996, an ordinary shift at Jackson Fire Department headquarters turned into one of the deadliest days in the department's history. Firefighter Kenneth Tornes walked the halls of the station he knew well, moving from office to office with deadly intent — targeting the men who wore the same uniform he did, the supervisors who had dedicated their lives to protecting others. When it was over, four members of the command staff were dead: Captain Merideth Moree, District Chief Dwight Craft, Captain Stan Adams, and District Chief Rick Robbins.

For retired Jackson Police Department Crime Scene Inve...

When a defense attorney steps into a case that has captured national attention, the stakes couldn’t be higher. On this episode of Investigation: Homicide, Jackson-based attorney Aafram Sellers joins Therese Apel and Nicole Kral for an in-depth conversation about representing Brett McAlpin, the alleged ringleader in Mississippi’s infamous “Goon Squad” case. Sellers offers a rare look at the legal strategy, public scrutiny, and ethical complexities that come with defending a client at the center of one of the most talked-about law enforcement scandals in recent memory.

Throughout the episode, Sellers discusses what it’s like to navigat...

Tonight on Investigation: Homicide, we revisit the case of Alex Easterling, a missing man from Pickens whose disappearance continues to raise questions for his family and community.

Joining us is his mother, Ashley Martin, who shares the latest developments in her son’s case and the ongoing search for answers. She also discusses new efforts she’s leading to support other families facing the heartbreak of missing loved ones, turning her personal tragedy into a mission to help others.

As the investigation continues, Martin speaks candidly about the challenges, the unanswered questi...

A woman's body is found in the road in Rankin County. No one knows how she got there. Was it a hit-and-run? An accident? Investigators are left with more questions than answers — until the phone rings.

Tonight, hosts Therese Apel and Sara Perkins sit down with Rankin County Coroner David Ruth, who worked the case as a Brandon Police officer, to talk about the night Sonja Stapleton was found and the investigation that followed. What started as a mystery on a dark Mississippi road would eventually lead somewhere no one expected.

This episode is...

Tonight on Investigation: Homicide, Therese Apel breaks down the latest developments in the murder trial of Ming Chen Hsiao.

The case centers on Quinton Tellis, also known as the primary suspect in the Jessica Chambers case, as the first week of testimony wrapped Friday in a bench trial that has already raised serious questions.

Joining the conversation tonight is defense attorney Lance Mixon of Stewart and Associates, offering a defense attorney’s perspective on what we’ve seen so far and what it could mean moving forward.

With court now awaiting a date to r...

This week on Investigation: Homicide, hosts Therese Apel and Nicole Kral sit down with Sheriff Tyree Jones, who takes us back to his days as a Jackson Police Department detective working the 2007 murder of Lyneil Deshun Vaughn.

Vaughn, who was disabled, was found burned and rolled up in a blanket — the tragic end to a horrific crime that began as a kidnapping. Three suspects were ultimately charged, but the case would test the resolve, instincts, and teamwork of the detectives who worked it.

It’s a story that not only reveals the dark side of huma...

Mississippi’s fight over first responder retirement benefits is heating up at the Capitol — and tonight we’re breaking down what it means for the people on the front lines.

On this episode of Investigation: Homicide, hosts Therese Apel and Nicole Kral are joined by Southern States Police Benevolence Association President Andy Matuszewski, also known to many in law enforcement as “Ski.”

Matuszewski will discuss the progress of several bills currently moving through the Mississippi Legislature that could directly affect first responders across the state. One of the biggest debates centers around Tier 5 of the Publ...

On this episode of Investigation: Homicide, Therese Apel and Amanda Johansson sit down with Byron Swilley, sheriff of Copiah County, to take a deep dive into the case of Jack Donald Cole — a case that raises difficult questions about self-defense, property rights and the limits of Mississippi’s Castle Doctrine.

Jesse James Chapman knew someone had been slipping onto his property to steal catalytic converters. What he didn’t know was what would unfold the day he came face to face with suspected trespassers. Chapman walked away from that encounter — but weeks later, Cole was dead.

August 2025: Two front doors kicked in. Two men shot multiple times inside their own homes. One suspect who would ultimately confess to both killings.

Tonight on Investigation: Homicide, Therese Apel and Nicole Kral Woods sit down with Rankin County Investigator Tyler Burnell to walk through the chilling case that stunned Rankin and Madison counties and ended with a rare courtroom moment: a double guilty plea to murder and capital murder just two months after the crimes were committed.

Investigator Burnell gives listeners an inside look at how the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department and the Br...

Human trafficking is dominating headlines around the world — dramatic rescues, sweeping arrests, viral claims. But what does human trafficking actually look like here in Mississippi?

On tonight’s episode of Investigation: Homicide, hosts Therese Apel and Amanda Johansson sit down with Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch and Favian Jones, the supervisor of her Human Trafficking Task Force, for a grounded, no-nonsense conversation about the realities behind the rhetoric.

They break down how trafficking cases really begin, who is most at risk in the Magnolia State, and why some of the most popular narratives can distract from...

Tonight on Investigation: Homicide, brought to you by The Southern Connection Police Supplies, we sit down with Warren County Sheriff Martin Pace to revisit a case that, more than two decades later, still weighs heavily on his mind — the death of Angela Shires Barrentine.

In November 2004, the 27-year-old Vicksburg mother left home the evening before Thanksgiving to pick up cigarettes. She never returned. When she failed to show up for holiday dinner the next day, her family reported her missing, launching a search that would stretch on for months.

Angela was last reportedly seen in Ed...

Tonight’s episode of Investigation: Homicide steps away from case files, crime scenes, and criminals to focus on something many first responders quietly rely on every day: faith.

Tonight, Therese Apel and Amanda Johansson will host Clint Hatch, an investigator with the Rankin/Madison District Attorney’s Office, for an honest conversation about belief, resilience, and the importance of protecting mind and spirit.

Hatch will talk about how his reliance on Christ has helped him navigate the trauma, stress and despair that often accompany the life of a first responder. From scenes that linger long afte...

Tonight on Investigation: Homicide, the focus turns to one of the most disturbing and complex fronts in modern law enforcement: Internet Crimes Against Children.

The episode features Jay Houston, a veteran investigator who spent more than two decades confronting online child exploitation in Mississippi and around the world. Houston now serves as director of training for the Child Rescue Coalition, but his expertise was earned in the field.

Houston served 24 years in law enforcement before retiring in 2021, spending more than half of his career with the Mississippi Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, where he...

Mississippi’s first responders are pushing back as lawmakers debate the future of public employee retirement during the current legislative session. In this episode of Investigation: Homicide, we sit down with Reservoir Fire Chief Josh Swales to break down what Tier 5 of the Public Employees’ Retirement System really means for those on the front lines.

Set to apply to new hires beginning March 1, 2026, Tier 5 requires 35 years of service for full retirement and replaces a traditional pension with a hybrid plan that includes a smaller guaranteed benefit and a market-based investment account. First responder organizations warn the changes coul...

On this episode of Investigation: Homicide, host Therese Apel and Nicole Kral are joined by veteran Memphis-area journalist Ron Maxey to revisit one of the most haunting and high-profile cases in the Mid-South: the 2014 murder of Jessica Chambers.

Both Apel and Maxey covered the case from its earliest days, when the Panola County teenager was found burned alive on a remote rural road — a crime that drew national and international attention and stunned even seasoned investigators and reporters. The case went to trial twice, ending in hung juries both times, leaving Jessica’s murder officially unres...

It’s a day Mississippi will never forget. October 1, 1997, a nerdy teenager walked into a high school and changed everyone’s life forever. We talk with Greg Eklund, who was an investigator with the Rankin County Sheriffs Dept at the time. Eklund takes us through the events leading up to that day and what the ripple effect has been over time.

This episode is produced by Daniel Anderson at Audio Alchemy Productions.