July 16, 2025
Gilbert King presents: Bone Valley Season 3 | Graves County
Today we’re bringing you something new. An introduction to Lava For Good’s newest investigative series – it's called “Graves County” and it will be released right here in the Bone Valley feed. You’ll see it shown here as “Bone Valley Season 3 ” and while there are many familiar themes - this is an entirely new show told by a different host - Maggie Freleng, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and one of the hosts of Lava For Good’s Wrongful Conviction.
The first two episodes of Graves County will be out on July 30th - right here in the Bone Valley feed. Subscribers to Lava For Good+ on Apple Podcasts will be able to listen to the entire series the same day.
As an introduction to the new series, Gilbert King sat down with Maggie for a Q&A about her experience reporting this show for over 2 years and what she learned along the way.
Bone Valley is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
00:00:01
Speaker 1: Hey, it's Gilbert King, host of Bone Valley, and today we're bringing you something new, an introduction to Lava for Good's newest investigative series. It's called Graves County and it will be released right here in the Bone Valley Feed. You'll see it shown here as Bone Valley Season three. And while there are many familiar themes, this is an entirely new show told by a different host, Maggie Freeling, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and one of the hosts of Lava for Goods Wrongful Conviction. The story is about the murder of a young mother, Jessica Curran, in the small Kentucky town she lived in a place where it seems like everyone has a connection to this case. After four years of grossly mismanaged police investigation, a citizen sleuth named Susan Goalbrath stepped in and took the case in a new direction. She concocted a wildly complicated story, and the police decided to go along with it. Susan's version of events eventually led to at least eight different people being charged with Jessica's murder. Most of them have maintained their innocence from the beginning, and one of them, Quincy Cross, is still fighting for his freedom from behind bars. Graves County is a gripping, impeccably reported story of injustice that must be heard to be believed. Maggie Freeling brings urgency, compassion, and relentless journalism to a case that will stay with you long after the final episode. The first two episodes of Graves County will be out on July thirtieth, right here in the Bone Valley Feed. Subscribers to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts will be able to listen to the entire series the same day. As an introduction to the new series, I sat down with Maggie for a Q and A about her experience of reporting this show for over two years and what she learned along the way. Maggie, is so great to see you, so great to speak with you again. I've been listening to Graves County. I'm like four episodes in it. I am hooked, and you've been working so hard on this. This is a huge investigation for you. I just can't wait to ask you a million questions about this.
00:02:20
Speaker 2: Ask away. I love talking about it.
00:02:22
Speaker 1: I can just walk us through the case, just to give us a general sense of what this case is really about.
00:02:26
Speaker 3: Yes, So, in the summer two thousand, Jessica Kern is an eighteen year old mom.
00:02:30
Speaker 2: She just had her baby, Zion, and she is found.
00:02:34
Speaker 3: Brutally murdered and burned, half dressed outside the Mayfield Middle School. And Susan Golbreath was just a woman in the town. Her life was not going great at the time. She needed purpose, and her purpose was I'm going to solve this case. That was around two thousand and four. After the police had initially bungled the case, they hired a rookie detective. They made some initial arrests and it went no So by two thousand and four, the citizen sluth gets involved. She involves a BBC reporter and they go on a hunt to solve the case. And what transpires is some of the craziest case solving techniques I've ever seen, the craziest quote journalism I've ever seen, and just some of the craziest investigating and policing I've ever seen. And it's all on tape and documented in emails and so it was it was pretty incredible to make this story and like have everyone's follies just right there, just documented so well.
00:03:43
Speaker 1: So Maggie, I just was really curious about Susan Goalbreth and she's, you know, the amateur sleuth who helped solve the eight year old murder of a teenage mom. But what drives an everyday citizen to get involved in a murder case like this? And obviously I think she passed away before you got to meet her, but you've obviously been studying her. Can you just talk about Susan and what motivated her to get involved in this case.
00:04:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, Susan is fascinating when people hear this. I mean, she's a true character. She's you know, said that she was compelled by God to solve this murder. She was down the street eating lunch and she heard in this small town that they found a body and she went right to the scene and said God called her to solve this. What I think happened is so often we do see that when there is a void when police in this case, they bungled it, or they bungle it, or if they can't solve it, there is a void left and citizens, louths get involved. I mean we see it now on Reddit and all these crime pages. It's it's something that happens, and she was like a OG one. It was it was back in four she's an OG sleuth.
00:04:53
Speaker 1: How did like police law enforcement treat her like? What was their relationship like with her? They?
00:04:59
Speaker 3: I think they they found her annoying based on these phone calls. I think they just wanted her to go away. However, you'll see as a story goes on, they really legitimized her. They took tips and leads, and ultimately her theory of what happened is the theory that the prosecution went with.
00:05:23
Speaker 1: And she did have some tangential connections to people involved. Can you just talk about how she interacted with them and maybe used them as sources.
00:05:32
Speaker 3: So, Susan, she's a self described busybody, and she knew a lot of people in town.
00:05:38
Speaker 2: She had been there a while.
00:05:39
Speaker 3: She's originally from Chicago, but she had been in Mayfield, small small town for a long time.
00:05:44
Speaker 2: So she knew a lot of.
00:05:47
Speaker 3: The people involved in this case, these young folks, because she was friends with one of their moms, and she just she was friends with a few of these kids' moms that were involved. She used her relationships with these people to get information, and that came at a cost. I think these people eventually realized that she was taking advantage of them.
00:06:08
Speaker 1: Well, you've spent years, you know, covering the criminal justice system, and probably from all different parts of the country. I'm just curious, what about this case that stands out to you? What makes it different than a lot that you've seen.
00:06:20
Speaker 3: So when this case came to me, it came from Jason Flomm, and when it was presented to me, I was basically told cop corruption.
00:06:33
Speaker 2: I hear that all the time. You know what stood out was.
00:06:38
Speaker 3: The police legitimizing a citizen investigator, really using her, like wiring her.
00:06:47
Speaker 2: You'll hear that in the podcast. So that was fascinating to me.
00:06:50
Speaker 3: That was the first time I had really heard something like that where a citizen, someone who has no background in law enforcement, is wiring themselves up and giving police tape, giving police leads, giving them full theories, and they're running with it. And the other thing was how many people were wrapped up in this story and how many people were eventually convicted of this one murder. When you think of Okham's razor, it was certainly not the story that makes the most sense. It was just this wild story that implicated eight or nine people, and I mean more does it implicated countless people, but the amount of people abound to being convicted. I had not seen before five people we talk about in this story that were convicted of it.
00:07:45
Speaker 1: There's just like one mind blowing thing after another. I just heard that. You know, you talk to the lead investigator who basically says I didn't know what I was doing, telling everybody that I don't know what I'm doing, my tail in my head. I've never seen anything like that before. Like, what does that tell you when you.
00:08:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, So that was one of the things that you know when they mentioned like this cop corruption. Okay, I'm interested, not unique, but that was unique about it was why did the assistant chief of police assign this case to a rookie? It seemed almost like you wanted this to be investigated poorly from the beginning if you're going to assign a rookie and not some of your best, which in retrospect to looking back, I don't know if Mayfield Police at some of their best. They were really embroiled with scandals and corruption. And you know that assistant chief of police. You'll hear in the podcast was pretty dirty.
00:08:47
Speaker 1: I want to go back to journalists because you do have this international presence, but you also have the local presence. And I'm just wondering if you can just talk about like the role that journalism plays in a wrongful conviction and what you know noticed in this part of Kentucky.
00:09:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it is so interesting getting to travel and tell so many different stories. I know you really specialize in Florida, which is so cool. I'm sure the amount of connections in Florida are amazing. This was my first time in Kentucky and I don't as a journalist, I don't like to just parachute in and then leave. So I've really been working the story for two and a half years, getting to know people, done multiple multiple trips there, and Kentucky is just a wild place. The lead prosecutor that convicted Quincy Cross in this case and the five other people she's been in office since the early eighties, I mean that is crazy to me. And now we're talking about five wrongful convictions from just this one case and you've been in office since the eighties. How many other people have you railroaded? So to me, that's just like, what, how is that, Okay, how is that possible?
00:09:59
Speaker 2: That is the context of this story.
00:10:03
Speaker 3: And that is so important to understand in order to understand Quincy and what happened.
00:10:10
Speaker 1: I mean, did you ever feel any resentment about there? Because you're down there? Obviously you don't have a deadline of tomorrow and then maybe the case you don't write it about it again, or maybe the cover of the trial in another year or something like that. You're actually doing like long points of time studying this case, investigating this case. One of the things I noticed is that sometimes the local press they're friends with the prosecutors. Those are the people that are given them the stories, given them access, and the journalism has kind of tainted. Did you find the same thing in.
00:10:40
Speaker 2: That part of Absolutely?
00:10:42
Speaker 3: I find that it's all tainted because in these small towns everyone knows each other. It is just like a spider web of people who know each other, people protecting each other. You know, all these shows about small, small southern town to talk about that, and it is so real. It's very different from being in New York, where yes, people they know each other. Of course there's quid quote pros, but it's a different kind of thing. It's not my family grew up with your family kind of situation, and I'm sure that exists, but the small town mentality, it really fosters an environment of secrecy.
00:11:22
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was thinking about that a lot while I was listening to this, and I was just curious, like, when you look at this whole Graves County story, do you see it as like a tragedy, a conspiracy, a cautionary how do you look at Graves County?
00:11:35
Speaker 2: I think it's I think it's all three.
00:11:36
Speaker 3: I think it's a tragedy, a conspiracy, and what was the other one?
00:11:41
Speaker 1: Cautionary tale?
00:11:42
Speaker 2: Cautionary tale?
00:11:44
Speaker 1: You know.
00:11:45
Speaker 3: I think it's a tragedy because if you think of these five people whose lives were ruined that were convicted of this, each of those five people have family, Some of these people had kids, some of these people were kids, So just alone there, it's it's devastating.
00:12:02
Speaker 2: Definitely a conspiracy.
00:12:03
Speaker 3: There's some wacky stuff going on that you'll hear about. And I think it's a cautionary tale because it all started with just believing what we're told, you know, this like confirmation bias, and I think that is so much what happened in this Quincy was arrested and said he was an evil man, and from there on it was believed. And I think one of the things is that we see is an eighteen year old mother was murdered and people wanted justice, and it really was a cautionary tale of how.
00:12:41
Speaker 2: Far will we go to get that justice?
00:12:44
Speaker 3: How many people can we throw under the bus and railroad to close this one case? And we see that all the time in wrongful convictions.
00:12:53
Speaker 1: You know what I really love about it so far is You've made Graves County a character in the story, and I just love the way comes to life. You know, there's definitely colorful people and accents, of course, but you just you start to get a sense of the county. And it made me think, I wonder, like, do you think that this story would have looked the same if it was somewhere in like New England. What is it about Graves County that made this kind of story possible?
00:13:20
Speaker 3: I mean, Graves County is if you google it, it is.
00:13:24
Speaker 2: The heart.
00:13:25
Speaker 3: It is the almost the dead center of this country. When I was like looking at a map, I was trying to figure out, like where's the center of this country? And Graves County is really right there. It's kind of the middle of nowhere, and so secrets like that can really be kept closed, they really stay there. It was so surprising to know people in this state didn't even know about this case. I mean it and the fact that it wasn't as high profile as I thought it should be. There's maybe like two TV shows on it, and both of them again and just repeat the Quincy's a disgusting, horrible man, repeat the story that the police and prosecutors have been telling for years, despite the fact that he.
00:14:08
Speaker 2: Has innocence claims in.
00:14:11
Speaker 3: So no, I think it would have been different, but who knows, for better or for worse.
00:14:16
Speaker 1: One of the things that's happened when I'm listening to this is like it seems like every episode my jaw dropped, kind of drops, like I've never heard recordings of grand jury testimony before like played out and then this Susan Goberth's character, Like every every there's always some moment. I'm just wondering, for you, having studied this case and investigated, was there anything that made your jaw drop having seen everything involved in this case?
00:14:37
Speaker 2: Or you know, I think.
00:14:43
Speaker 3: I think this case for me, it was like a very clear how do you wrongful? Convictions happened? Because I lived this case for so long and watched every piece of tape, which was the most incredible thing to have every police interview. Let me say not every because we've discovered that some are quote missing can't be found, but most of the tape, and watch the stories change, Watch how they're doing the interrogations.
00:15:18
Speaker 2: They are like the.
00:15:19
Speaker 3: Ultimate super villains. My jaw dropped every time they spoke, just every time they asked a question.
00:15:28
Speaker 2: It wasn't a question.
00:15:29
Speaker 3: It was just like threats and interrogations and just really inappropriate things.
00:15:47
Speaker 1: Is there anything that happened that sort of change your outlook or your opinion of anything involved in the case as you dug deeper into it.
00:15:54
Speaker 3: Well, I think just exploring this idea of what is our role as journals and how do we tell these stories?
00:16:05
Speaker 2: It made me.
00:16:05
Speaker 3: You know, in episode one, I mentioned the one time when I very strongly believed in someone's innocence and got it wrong and I had to grapple with that, And I think as journalists we need to think about what we do. Part of our job when we become journalists is to do no harm. That's part of our rules and ethics guidelines do no harm. So it really put the light on myself and thinking about my reporting and that time I did do harm, not necessarily to the man that wound up being guilty, but to the victim because I brought that story up again. So that is something to think about when we do cover these cases of wrongful convictions. There are victims and victims families, and so I think it really helped me process this role of a journalist, especially when we do use emotion and empathy as a tool, and how we present that and use that in a way that is ethical.
00:17:14
Speaker 1: You know, that's interesting. I was listening to some of your you know, obviously there's people who didn't want to talk to you, and did you feel the presence of like being an outsider and like you couldn't penetrate.
00:17:23
Speaker 3: Because well, one of the things that we heard right away is, you know, this is a very rural southern town. It not necessarily segregated, but people often whites stay with the whites and they talk about it like that. And when we came in, instantly it was you're a white person, no one's going to talk to you. That is how that town is. I mean, so I really had to build relationships and make myself trustworthy. And these are people who have had the worst of the worst happen to them, be convicted of crimes, a horrible rape and murder and burning of a teenage girl.
00:18:01
Speaker 2: So yeah, I was. I was very much an outsider, very much.
00:18:05
Speaker 1: Some people ask me about this, you know, when it comes to like Florida, you know, do you think this story will matter to people outside of Florida? And I have an answer for that, but I'm just curious what your answer. People who don't know Mayfield, Kentucky, why would they be interested in this? And can you explain?
00:18:20
Speaker 3: I think the thing that we loved the most when we first when Rebecca and I my producer Rebecca, were first talking about this. To us, it reminded us of like I never watched gossip Girl, but just the title gossip Girl. It was like all these teenage girls gossiping about what happened to their friend, and those rumors turned into this conviction. And that can happen anywhere when people start telling stories and spinning tales and gossiping. That can happen anywhere, not just small town Mayfield Kentucky, So I think, yes, it happened in a real small town, but it's emblematic of wrongful convictions everywhere.
00:19:06
Speaker 2: Really, people making up.
00:19:09
Speaker 3: Lies and blaming people, pointing the finger because we need answers. It's just like a human we need to blame someone, and the blame here everyone was just pointing fingers at each other. And that is why Susan came in, because there was a void.
00:19:25
Speaker 2: It was.
00:19:26
Speaker 3: It was a prime situation to go wrong because the police got it wrong from the beginning. They bungled it, they messed it up from the beginning, so from there it was.
00:19:38
Speaker 2: Just a free for all.
00:19:39
Speaker 1: One of the other things I felt really moving was I'm just hearing from Jessica's father, and I'm just curious, like what your take on him was, because it just seemed like I could really relate to him as you know, a father and just what that would do to you. And I just found him very moving in the story.
00:19:59
Speaker 2: Current is a moving character.
00:20:01
Speaker 3: I mean, he grew up in the Jim Crow South.
00:20:07
Speaker 2: From a lot of his life, the only black guy.
00:20:10
Speaker 3: He grew up in this world of white people, and he did well in that world. In the Jim Crow South and then in segregation and Reese. He did well. He was a pillar in this town. And when his daughter was murdered, he thought all these people that he did good for and helped and was around and would do right by him.
00:20:29
Speaker 2: And they didn't. They absolutely didn't. They failed.
00:20:33
Speaker 3: Joe Kerran in every way possible. And I think that's what was so sad about it. It was a guy who did everything right and persevered through everything and then was just let down so badly. And I think you know, he knows he might never get those because with a story like this, where there is just so much bullshit, it might be lost.
00:20:59
Speaker 2: It might very well be lost.
00:21:01
Speaker 1: I'm just curious. Is he like one of the people that you think about when you're trying to dig into this story, Like I just want to make him have answers, Like I would feel so motivated by the way he spoke.
00:21:12
Speaker 3: It's him and David, and I got closer with David because Joe dealt with another tragedy. One of his sons died while we were reporting this. I mean, the currents have just had loss after a lot, like we couldn't believe another son died, or son died, two kids so you know, I didn't get to build as close of a relationship with Joe that I did with David. But what it was so beautiful to me about Joe is that he was willing to listen to David and sit down with him, the man whose son is convicted of murdering your daughter. It's very like Jeremy Leo. He was like, I'll sit down and listen to your information. That brings up stuff for him, like looking at your daughter case file, looking at what was done to her.
00:22:05
Speaker 2: He suffered through all of that just to get answers he is. He's an incredible person.
00:22:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really comes across and I just the empathy and just I remember there's one like very casual comment, like a waitress says to him, like you look like you just lost your best friend something like that, and realizes what it's about. And I just found that so profound in the story.
00:22:26
Speaker 3: And he still he really does. Joe feels like he is carrying the weight of the world. You know what, We've met with a lot of victims families, and he is not someone that I that I can say, you know, is just moving on, like he really this destroyed him. You know, his wife wasn't there. She can't even talk about it, so I never met her, talked to her. She doesn't want anything to do with this kind of stuff, and.
00:22:55
Speaker 2: It's just too hard.
00:22:57
Speaker 3: It's too hard, and so for Joe to be out there been doing this, We've been wondering like, is Joe going to listen to this? Because the whole time, it's like, we want to make sure, you know, the father of Jessica is able to listen to this. We thought about him and we kind of were like, me, he might not really listen to this.
00:23:15
Speaker 2: That is just how could you? It's so hard.
00:23:31
Speaker 1: Sometimes people ask me like has this case changed you? And I'm just curious, like, going through this process, it's obviously very labor intensive, investigatively intensive. Did it affect you differently? Did you come away from this differently? Yeah?
00:23:46
Speaker 3: I mean as a journalist, it really made me look inwards because when we wanted to be reporting on all of these allegations against the police, we set out to do that, right, we were making an episode all about these allegations about the police, and then we thought, wait a second, but that's what Susan did, what the police did, and we looked at ourselves as journalists and storytellers and reporters, and said, what good would that do to report these allegations and potentially ruin people's names, drag their names for the mud if this isn't true, if we can't fundamentally confirm this, And so.
00:24:24
Speaker 2: That's what it did. It really just made me look again.
00:24:27
Speaker 3: At my role as a storyteller and a journalist and what we choose to present Again, do no harm. And even though I think a lot of these officers are the worst of the worst people things that we have found out about them, it's still my job to do no harm to everyone I report on.
00:24:47
Speaker 1: And just I'm curious what you like about this format telling stories through audio. I'm just curious. You know, you've come in from a print background, like just about everybody. What do you like and what do you see some of the limitations of it your storytelling?
00:25:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I've been into audio since two thousand and nine. I took a podcasting class on garage band in undergrad. So I've always loved it because I just find it so intimate. And for example, with season two when your season Bone Valley, when Gosh, who was reading the letter Jeremy was reading one of Justin's letters or vice versa, but it was very beautifully layered on top Justin playing with his kid in the background as the letters being read.
00:25:34
Speaker 2: And at first I was like, is that in my hotel room? Like where do I hear kids playing?
00:25:37
Speaker 3: Because it was so subtle, But then it was just this beautiful moment of like one of them talking about how well he's doing with his son, and then you can.
00:25:45
Speaker 2: Hear it at the same time.
00:25:47
Speaker 3: And that would have been visual in a TV show, but I like that I could imagine it myself because what I was imagining was the playing with the letter being and it was just so intimate and beautiful, and I think a visual would have taken away from that intimacy.
00:26:01
Speaker 1: That's a really great point. Yeah, there is something about just listening to a voice in your ear with headphones when you know that microphone's.
00:26:10
Speaker 2: Really close, because you know what it is.
00:26:12
Speaker 3: I find visuals very distracting in a way. I'm a visual learner, so I do like visuals, But in terms of storytelling, I find it works when you have, you know, visually wild characters, but I like to imagine what they look like. I you know, some people fixate on things about someone and instantly go, I can't look at that person, or I can't look what they're doing, or like Susan Gallbroth on the stand, I mean, if she was a character in a TV show, I would probably be fixated on her just gum chewing and maybe not even hearing what she's saying. So I just find that listening to it too, it's without the distractions. It takes away one level of distraction. Right then you're just thinking about what audio is distracting.
00:26:55
Speaker 1: Right. That's a really a good point because I noticed that, like, you know, when they did the twenty twenty piece on Leo, like the host has to ask the question did you kill your wife? And you know he says no, obviously, uh huh. But like I've had people concerns saying, you know, he kind of looked to the left and that's kind of something that guilty people do. And like it's just the visual part, like.
00:27:13
Speaker 2: It's all the context anything, I believe.
00:27:16
Speaker 1: So, and so I just think there's something about audio that's just almost more truthful in a way.
00:27:22
Speaker 3: I know, I think that visuals can be an you know, when we talk about this in you know, when I do stories as a journalist.
00:27:30
Speaker 2: Music can manipulate people's feelings too.
00:27:32
Speaker 3: We discuss what kind of music like, and there's just another layer to that with visuals. So I just it's like even more to get wrong, and it's I liked the simplicity of audio, yeah, yeah, and like conveying points that I want to in a very simple, easy, packaged, intimate way.
00:27:52
Speaker 1: I agree. I was just curious what you're thought. And really you started in two thousand and nine, though, that's amazing.
00:27:56
Speaker 3: Well, I was an undergrad and I took a podcasting class and garage band, which I I don't even know if garage band exists anymore, Like I don't think people will even use that. But yeah, it was a podcasting class and garage band, and then yeah, I started audio right in grad school.
00:28:10
Speaker 2: I've been doing it for a very long time.
00:28:13
Speaker 1: Do you remember a lot of the mistakes you made, like doing audio trying to figure out how do we do this?
00:28:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think some of a lot of the mistakes are just like to like overdoing the sound and like music. Like again, it was really learning like how music can manipulate someone's emotions, so like just being really careful with that, because if you're trying to tell a truthful story and you put in some music to make someone feel something, you are manipulat.
00:28:39
Speaker 2: You're telling them what to feel.
00:28:41
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, my big was mistake was I just couldn't shut up when people were talking to I just keep going yeah huh.
00:28:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, I still didn't know. Yeah, I still do that.
00:28:49
Speaker 1: That's a nightmare for the editors. Can you just give us an update on Quincy Cross?
00:28:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, so his case is moving. Quincy's just really hopeful. He's glad his story's out there. I mean, it's when you're put away in prison, you're meant to be forgotten about. They want you to be forgotten about. They don't want these stories coming out there, so they have to acknowledge what has happened, what they did wrong.
00:29:19
Speaker 2: So he's just really happy.
00:29:21
Speaker 3: That people got to hear his truth of the matter, that he's not a disgusting, savage, rapist, burner man, He's just he's a nice guy.
00:29:32
Speaker 2: You know. I hope that Quincy gets out.
00:29:36
Speaker 1: Does he have hope? Do you feel like you can feel it? Yeah?
00:29:41
Speaker 3: I cried so much during this, but especially when David looked at us in the eyes and said, I'm.
00:29:48
Speaker 2: Afraid I'll die before he gets out of prison. They're both old. David's old, Joe is old.
00:29:56
Speaker 3: They're old men, and they both the same thing, and it's really sad that the law in Kentucky's denying these two men those answers.
00:30:10
Speaker 1: Well, Maggie, I just it's been a pleasure to talk to you. I cannot wait to hear the rest of Graves County. And I just really want to commend you on the work, because it's very hard to loop me in on these stories, but this one is just grabbed me from the start, and as I said, a lot of jaw dropping moments which must have been so much fun.
00:30:26
Speaker 2: For you to report on exactly. Thank you. It's always great talking with you. And maybe we'll get a drink.
00:30:32
Speaker 1: After that sounds good. The first two episodes of Graves County will be out on July thirtieth, right here in the Bone Valley Feed. Subscribers to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts will be able to listen to the entire series the same in day
Speaker 1: Hey, it's Gilbert King, host of Bone Valley, and today we're bringing you something new, an introduction to Lava for Good's newest investigative series. It's called Graves County and it will be released right here in the Bone Valley Feed. You'll see it shown here as Bone Valley Season three. And while there are many familiar themes, this is an entirely new show told by a different host, Maggie Freeling, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and one of the hosts of Lava for Goods Wrongful Conviction. The story is about the murder of a young mother, Jessica Curran, in the small Kentucky town she lived in a place where it seems like everyone has a connection to this case. After four years of grossly mismanaged police investigation, a citizen sleuth named Susan Goalbrath stepped in and took the case in a new direction. She concocted a wildly complicated story, and the police decided to go along with it. Susan's version of events eventually led to at least eight different people being charged with Jessica's murder. Most of them have maintained their innocence from the beginning, and one of them, Quincy Cross, is still fighting for his freedom from behind bars. Graves County is a gripping, impeccably reported story of injustice that must be heard to be believed. Maggie Freeling brings urgency, compassion, and relentless journalism to a case that will stay with you long after the final episode. The first two episodes of Graves County will be out on July thirtieth, right here in the Bone Valley Feed. Subscribers to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts will be able to listen to the entire series the same day. As an introduction to the new series, I sat down with Maggie for a Q and A about her experience of reporting this show for over two years and what she learned along the way. Maggie, is so great to see you, so great to speak with you again. I've been listening to Graves County. I'm like four episodes in it. I am hooked, and you've been working so hard on this. This is a huge investigation for you. I just can't wait to ask you a million questions about this.
00:02:20
Speaker 2: Ask away. I love talking about it.
00:02:22
Speaker 1: I can just walk us through the case, just to give us a general sense of what this case is really about.
00:02:26
Speaker 3: Yes, So, in the summer two thousand, Jessica Kern is an eighteen year old mom.
00:02:30
Speaker 2: She just had her baby, Zion, and she is found.
00:02:34
Speaker 3: Brutally murdered and burned, half dressed outside the Mayfield Middle School. And Susan Golbreath was just a woman in the town. Her life was not going great at the time. She needed purpose, and her purpose was I'm going to solve this case. That was around two thousand and four. After the police had initially bungled the case, they hired a rookie detective. They made some initial arrests and it went no So by two thousand and four, the citizen sluth gets involved. She involves a BBC reporter and they go on a hunt to solve the case. And what transpires is some of the craziest case solving techniques I've ever seen, the craziest quote journalism I've ever seen, and just some of the craziest investigating and policing I've ever seen. And it's all on tape and documented in emails and so it was it was pretty incredible to make this story and like have everyone's follies just right there, just documented so well.
00:03:43
Speaker 1: So Maggie, I just was really curious about Susan Goalbreth and she's, you know, the amateur sleuth who helped solve the eight year old murder of a teenage mom. But what drives an everyday citizen to get involved in a murder case like this? And obviously I think she passed away before you got to meet her, but you've obviously been studying her. Can you just talk about Susan and what motivated her to get involved in this case.
00:04:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, Susan is fascinating when people hear this. I mean, she's a true character. She's you know, said that she was compelled by God to solve this murder. She was down the street eating lunch and she heard in this small town that they found a body and she went right to the scene and said God called her to solve this. What I think happened is so often we do see that when there is a void when police in this case, they bungled it, or they bungle it, or if they can't solve it, there is a void left and citizens, louths get involved. I mean we see it now on Reddit and all these crime pages. It's it's something that happens, and she was like a OG one. It was it was back in four she's an OG sleuth.
00:04:53
Speaker 1: How did like police law enforcement treat her like? What was their relationship like with her? They?
00:04:59
Speaker 3: I think they they found her annoying based on these phone calls. I think they just wanted her to go away. However, you'll see as a story goes on, they really legitimized her. They took tips and leads, and ultimately her theory of what happened is the theory that the prosecution went with.
00:05:23
Speaker 1: And she did have some tangential connections to people involved. Can you just talk about how she interacted with them and maybe used them as sources.
00:05:32
Speaker 3: So, Susan, she's a self described busybody, and she knew a lot of people in town.
00:05:38
Speaker 2: She had been there a while.
00:05:39
Speaker 3: She's originally from Chicago, but she had been in Mayfield, small small town for a long time.
00:05:44
Speaker 2: So she knew a lot of.
00:05:47
Speaker 3: The people involved in this case, these young folks, because she was friends with one of their moms, and she just she was friends with a few of these kids' moms that were involved. She used her relationships with these people to get information, and that came at a cost. I think these people eventually realized that she was taking advantage of them.
00:06:08
Speaker 1: Well, you've spent years, you know, covering the criminal justice system, and probably from all different parts of the country. I'm just curious, what about this case that stands out to you? What makes it different than a lot that you've seen.
00:06:20
Speaker 3: So when this case came to me, it came from Jason Flomm, and when it was presented to me, I was basically told cop corruption.
00:06:33
Speaker 2: I hear that all the time. You know what stood out was.
00:06:38
Speaker 3: The police legitimizing a citizen investigator, really using her, like wiring her.
00:06:47
Speaker 2: You'll hear that in the podcast. So that was fascinating to me.
00:06:50
Speaker 3: That was the first time I had really heard something like that where a citizen, someone who has no background in law enforcement, is wiring themselves up and giving police tape, giving police leads, giving them full theories, and they're running with it. And the other thing was how many people were wrapped up in this story and how many people were eventually convicted of this one murder. When you think of Okham's razor, it was certainly not the story that makes the most sense. It was just this wild story that implicated eight or nine people, and I mean more does it implicated countless people, but the amount of people abound to being convicted. I had not seen before five people we talk about in this story that were convicted of it.
00:07:45
Speaker 1: There's just like one mind blowing thing after another. I just heard that. You know, you talk to the lead investigator who basically says I didn't know what I was doing, telling everybody that I don't know what I'm doing, my tail in my head. I've never seen anything like that before. Like, what does that tell you when you.
00:08:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, So that was one of the things that you know when they mentioned like this cop corruption. Okay, I'm interested, not unique, but that was unique about it was why did the assistant chief of police assign this case to a rookie? It seemed almost like you wanted this to be investigated poorly from the beginning if you're going to assign a rookie and not some of your best, which in retrospect to looking back, I don't know if Mayfield Police at some of their best. They were really embroiled with scandals and corruption. And you know that assistant chief of police. You'll hear in the podcast was pretty dirty.
00:08:47
Speaker 1: I want to go back to journalists because you do have this international presence, but you also have the local presence. And I'm just wondering if you can just talk about like the role that journalism plays in a wrongful conviction and what you know noticed in this part of Kentucky.
00:09:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it is so interesting getting to travel and tell so many different stories. I know you really specialize in Florida, which is so cool. I'm sure the amount of connections in Florida are amazing. This was my first time in Kentucky and I don't as a journalist, I don't like to just parachute in and then leave. So I've really been working the story for two and a half years, getting to know people, done multiple multiple trips there, and Kentucky is just a wild place. The lead prosecutor that convicted Quincy Cross in this case and the five other people she's been in office since the early eighties, I mean that is crazy to me. And now we're talking about five wrongful convictions from just this one case and you've been in office since the eighties. How many other people have you railroaded? So to me, that's just like, what, how is that, Okay, how is that possible?
00:09:59
Speaker 2: That is the context of this story.
00:10:03
Speaker 3: And that is so important to understand in order to understand Quincy and what happened.
00:10:10
Speaker 1: I mean, did you ever feel any resentment about there? Because you're down there? Obviously you don't have a deadline of tomorrow and then maybe the case you don't write it about it again, or maybe the cover of the trial in another year or something like that. You're actually doing like long points of time studying this case, investigating this case. One of the things I noticed is that sometimes the local press they're friends with the prosecutors. Those are the people that are given them the stories, given them access, and the journalism has kind of tainted. Did you find the same thing in.
00:10:40
Speaker 2: That part of Absolutely?
00:10:42
Speaker 3: I find that it's all tainted because in these small towns everyone knows each other. It is just like a spider web of people who know each other, people protecting each other. You know, all these shows about small, small southern town to talk about that, and it is so real. It's very different from being in New York, where yes, people they know each other. Of course there's quid quote pros, but it's a different kind of thing. It's not my family grew up with your family kind of situation, and I'm sure that exists, but the small town mentality, it really fosters an environment of secrecy.
00:11:22
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was thinking about that a lot while I was listening to this, and I was just curious, like, when you look at this whole Graves County story, do you see it as like a tragedy, a conspiracy, a cautionary how do you look at Graves County?
00:11:35
Speaker 2: I think it's I think it's all three.
00:11:36
Speaker 3: I think it's a tragedy, a conspiracy, and what was the other one?
00:11:41
Speaker 1: Cautionary tale?
00:11:42
Speaker 2: Cautionary tale?
00:11:44
Speaker 1: You know.
00:11:45
Speaker 3: I think it's a tragedy because if you think of these five people whose lives were ruined that were convicted of this, each of those five people have family, Some of these people had kids, some of these people were kids, So just alone there, it's it's devastating.
00:12:02
Speaker 2: Definitely a conspiracy.
00:12:03
Speaker 3: There's some wacky stuff going on that you'll hear about. And I think it's a cautionary tale because it all started with just believing what we're told, you know, this like confirmation bias, and I think that is so much what happened in this Quincy was arrested and said he was an evil man, and from there on it was believed. And I think one of the things is that we see is an eighteen year old mother was murdered and people wanted justice, and it really was a cautionary tale of how.
00:12:41
Speaker 2: Far will we go to get that justice?
00:12:44
Speaker 3: How many people can we throw under the bus and railroad to close this one case? And we see that all the time in wrongful convictions.
00:12:53
Speaker 1: You know what I really love about it so far is You've made Graves County a character in the story, and I just love the way comes to life. You know, there's definitely colorful people and accents, of course, but you just you start to get a sense of the county. And it made me think, I wonder, like, do you think that this story would have looked the same if it was somewhere in like New England. What is it about Graves County that made this kind of story possible?
00:13:20
Speaker 3: I mean, Graves County is if you google it, it is.
00:13:24
Speaker 2: The heart.
00:13:25
Speaker 3: It is the almost the dead center of this country. When I was like looking at a map, I was trying to figure out, like where's the center of this country? And Graves County is really right there. It's kind of the middle of nowhere, and so secrets like that can really be kept closed, they really stay there. It was so surprising to know people in this state didn't even know about this case. I mean it and the fact that it wasn't as high profile as I thought it should be. There's maybe like two TV shows on it, and both of them again and just repeat the Quincy's a disgusting, horrible man, repeat the story that the police and prosecutors have been telling for years, despite the fact that he.
00:14:08
Speaker 2: Has innocence claims in.
00:14:11
Speaker 3: So no, I think it would have been different, but who knows, for better or for worse.
00:14:16
Speaker 1: One of the things that's happened when I'm listening to this is like it seems like every episode my jaw dropped, kind of drops, like I've never heard recordings of grand jury testimony before like played out and then this Susan Goberth's character, Like every every there's always some moment. I'm just wondering, for you, having studied this case and investigated, was there anything that made your jaw drop having seen everything involved in this case?
00:14:37
Speaker 2: Or you know, I think.
00:14:43
Speaker 3: I think this case for me, it was like a very clear how do you wrongful? Convictions happened? Because I lived this case for so long and watched every piece of tape, which was the most incredible thing to have every police interview. Let me say not every because we've discovered that some are quote missing can't be found, but most of the tape, and watch the stories change, Watch how they're doing the interrogations.
00:15:18
Speaker 2: They are like the.
00:15:19
Speaker 3: Ultimate super villains. My jaw dropped every time they spoke, just every time they asked a question.
00:15:28
Speaker 2: It wasn't a question.
00:15:29
Speaker 3: It was just like threats and interrogations and just really inappropriate things.
00:15:47
Speaker 1: Is there anything that happened that sort of change your outlook or your opinion of anything involved in the case as you dug deeper into it.
00:15:54
Speaker 3: Well, I think just exploring this idea of what is our role as journals and how do we tell these stories?
00:16:05
Speaker 2: It made me.
00:16:05
Speaker 3: You know, in episode one, I mentioned the one time when I very strongly believed in someone's innocence and got it wrong and I had to grapple with that, And I think as journalists we need to think about what we do. Part of our job when we become journalists is to do no harm. That's part of our rules and ethics guidelines do no harm. So it really put the light on myself and thinking about my reporting and that time I did do harm, not necessarily to the man that wound up being guilty, but to the victim because I brought that story up again. So that is something to think about when we do cover these cases of wrongful convictions. There are victims and victims families, and so I think it really helped me process this role of a journalist, especially when we do use emotion and empathy as a tool, and how we present that and use that in a way that is ethical.
00:17:14
Speaker 1: You know, that's interesting. I was listening to some of your you know, obviously there's people who didn't want to talk to you, and did you feel the presence of like being an outsider and like you couldn't penetrate.
00:17:23
Speaker 3: Because well, one of the things that we heard right away is, you know, this is a very rural southern town. It not necessarily segregated, but people often whites stay with the whites and they talk about it like that. And when we came in, instantly it was you're a white person, no one's going to talk to you. That is how that town is. I mean, so I really had to build relationships and make myself trustworthy. And these are people who have had the worst of the worst happen to them, be convicted of crimes, a horrible rape and murder and burning of a teenage girl.
00:18:01
Speaker 2: So yeah, I was. I was very much an outsider, very much.
00:18:05
Speaker 1: Some people ask me about this, you know, when it comes to like Florida, you know, do you think this story will matter to people outside of Florida? And I have an answer for that, but I'm just curious what your answer. People who don't know Mayfield, Kentucky, why would they be interested in this? And can you explain?
00:18:20
Speaker 3: I think the thing that we loved the most when we first when Rebecca and I my producer Rebecca, were first talking about this. To us, it reminded us of like I never watched gossip Girl, but just the title gossip Girl. It was like all these teenage girls gossiping about what happened to their friend, and those rumors turned into this conviction. And that can happen anywhere when people start telling stories and spinning tales and gossiping. That can happen anywhere, not just small town Mayfield Kentucky, So I think, yes, it happened in a real small town, but it's emblematic of wrongful convictions everywhere.
00:19:06
Speaker 2: Really, people making up.
00:19:09
Speaker 3: Lies and blaming people, pointing the finger because we need answers. It's just like a human we need to blame someone, and the blame here everyone was just pointing fingers at each other. And that is why Susan came in, because there was a void.
00:19:25
Speaker 2: It was.
00:19:26
Speaker 3: It was a prime situation to go wrong because the police got it wrong from the beginning. They bungled it, they messed it up from the beginning, so from there it was.
00:19:38
Speaker 2: Just a free for all.
00:19:39
Speaker 1: One of the other things I felt really moving was I'm just hearing from Jessica's father, and I'm just curious, like what your take on him was, because it just seemed like I could really relate to him as you know, a father and just what that would do to you. And I just found him very moving in the story.
00:19:59
Speaker 2: Current is a moving character.
00:20:01
Speaker 3: I mean, he grew up in the Jim Crow South.
00:20:07
Speaker 2: From a lot of his life, the only black guy.
00:20:10
Speaker 3: He grew up in this world of white people, and he did well in that world. In the Jim Crow South and then in segregation and Reese. He did well. He was a pillar in this town. And when his daughter was murdered, he thought all these people that he did good for and helped and was around and would do right by him.
00:20:29
Speaker 2: And they didn't. They absolutely didn't. They failed.
00:20:33
Speaker 3: Joe Kerran in every way possible. And I think that's what was so sad about it. It was a guy who did everything right and persevered through everything and then was just let down so badly. And I think you know, he knows he might never get those because with a story like this, where there is just so much bullshit, it might be lost.
00:20:59
Speaker 2: It might very well be lost.
00:21:01
Speaker 1: I'm just curious. Is he like one of the people that you think about when you're trying to dig into this story, Like I just want to make him have answers, Like I would feel so motivated by the way he spoke.
00:21:12
Speaker 3: It's him and David, and I got closer with David because Joe dealt with another tragedy. One of his sons died while we were reporting this. I mean, the currents have just had loss after a lot, like we couldn't believe another son died, or son died, two kids so you know, I didn't get to build as close of a relationship with Joe that I did with David. But what it was so beautiful to me about Joe is that he was willing to listen to David and sit down with him, the man whose son is convicted of murdering your daughter. It's very like Jeremy Leo. He was like, I'll sit down and listen to your information. That brings up stuff for him, like looking at your daughter case file, looking at what was done to her.
00:22:05
Speaker 2: He suffered through all of that just to get answers he is. He's an incredible person.
00:22:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really comes across and I just the empathy and just I remember there's one like very casual comment, like a waitress says to him, like you look like you just lost your best friend something like that, and realizes what it's about. And I just found that so profound in the story.
00:22:26
Speaker 3: And he still he really does. Joe feels like he is carrying the weight of the world. You know what, We've met with a lot of victims families, and he is not someone that I that I can say, you know, is just moving on, like he really this destroyed him. You know, his wife wasn't there. She can't even talk about it, so I never met her, talked to her. She doesn't want anything to do with this kind of stuff, and.
00:22:55
Speaker 2: It's just too hard.
00:22:57
Speaker 3: It's too hard, and so for Joe to be out there been doing this, We've been wondering like, is Joe going to listen to this? Because the whole time, it's like, we want to make sure, you know, the father of Jessica is able to listen to this. We thought about him and we kind of were like, me, he might not really listen to this.
00:23:15
Speaker 2: That is just how could you? It's so hard.
00:23:31
Speaker 1: Sometimes people ask me like has this case changed you? And I'm just curious, like, going through this process, it's obviously very labor intensive, investigatively intensive. Did it affect you differently? Did you come away from this differently? Yeah?
00:23:46
Speaker 3: I mean as a journalist, it really made me look inwards because when we wanted to be reporting on all of these allegations against the police, we set out to do that, right, we were making an episode all about these allegations about the police, and then we thought, wait a second, but that's what Susan did, what the police did, and we looked at ourselves as journalists and storytellers and reporters, and said, what good would that do to report these allegations and potentially ruin people's names, drag their names for the mud if this isn't true, if we can't fundamentally confirm this, And so.
00:24:24
Speaker 2: That's what it did. It really just made me look again.
00:24:27
Speaker 3: At my role as a storyteller and a journalist and what we choose to present Again, do no harm. And even though I think a lot of these officers are the worst of the worst people things that we have found out about them, it's still my job to do no harm to everyone I report on.
00:24:47
Speaker 1: And just I'm curious what you like about this format telling stories through audio. I'm just curious. You know, you've come in from a print background, like just about everybody. What do you like and what do you see some of the limitations of it your storytelling?
00:25:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I've been into audio since two thousand and nine. I took a podcasting class on garage band in undergrad. So I've always loved it because I just find it so intimate. And for example, with season two when your season Bone Valley, when Gosh, who was reading the letter Jeremy was reading one of Justin's letters or vice versa, but it was very beautifully layered on top Justin playing with his kid in the background as the letters being read.
00:25:34
Speaker 2: And at first I was like, is that in my hotel room? Like where do I hear kids playing?
00:25:37
Speaker 3: Because it was so subtle, But then it was just this beautiful moment of like one of them talking about how well he's doing with his son, and then you can.
00:25:45
Speaker 2: Hear it at the same time.
00:25:47
Speaker 3: And that would have been visual in a TV show, but I like that I could imagine it myself because what I was imagining was the playing with the letter being and it was just so intimate and beautiful, and I think a visual would have taken away from that intimacy.
00:26:01
Speaker 1: That's a really great point. Yeah, there is something about just listening to a voice in your ear with headphones when you know that microphone's.
00:26:10
Speaker 2: Really close, because you know what it is.
00:26:12
Speaker 3: I find visuals very distracting in a way. I'm a visual learner, so I do like visuals, But in terms of storytelling, I find it works when you have, you know, visually wild characters, but I like to imagine what they look like. I you know, some people fixate on things about someone and instantly go, I can't look at that person, or I can't look what they're doing, or like Susan Gallbroth on the stand, I mean, if she was a character in a TV show, I would probably be fixated on her just gum chewing and maybe not even hearing what she's saying. So I just find that listening to it too, it's without the distractions. It takes away one level of distraction. Right then you're just thinking about what audio is distracting.
00:26:55
Speaker 1: Right. That's a really a good point because I noticed that, like, you know, when they did the twenty twenty piece on Leo, like the host has to ask the question did you kill your wife? And you know he says no, obviously, uh huh. But like I've had people concerns saying, you know, he kind of looked to the left and that's kind of something that guilty people do. And like it's just the visual part, like.
00:27:13
Speaker 2: It's all the context anything, I believe.
00:27:16
Speaker 1: So, and so I just think there's something about audio that's just almost more truthful in a way.
00:27:22
Speaker 3: I know, I think that visuals can be an you know, when we talk about this in you know, when I do stories as a journalist.
00:27:30
Speaker 2: Music can manipulate people's feelings too.
00:27:32
Speaker 3: We discuss what kind of music like, and there's just another layer to that with visuals. So I just it's like even more to get wrong, and it's I liked the simplicity of audio, yeah, yeah, and like conveying points that I want to in a very simple, easy, packaged, intimate way.
00:27:52
Speaker 1: I agree. I was just curious what you're thought. And really you started in two thousand and nine, though, that's amazing.
00:27:56
Speaker 3: Well, I was an undergrad and I took a podcasting class and garage band, which I I don't even know if garage band exists anymore, Like I don't think people will even use that. But yeah, it was a podcasting class and garage band, and then yeah, I started audio right in grad school.
00:28:10
Speaker 2: I've been doing it for a very long time.
00:28:13
Speaker 1: Do you remember a lot of the mistakes you made, like doing audio trying to figure out how do we do this?
00:28:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think some of a lot of the mistakes are just like to like overdoing the sound and like music. Like again, it was really learning like how music can manipulate someone's emotions, so like just being really careful with that, because if you're trying to tell a truthful story and you put in some music to make someone feel something, you are manipulat.
00:28:39
Speaker 2: You're telling them what to feel.
00:28:41
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, my big was mistake was I just couldn't shut up when people were talking to I just keep going yeah huh.
00:28:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, I still didn't know. Yeah, I still do that.
00:28:49
Speaker 1: That's a nightmare for the editors. Can you just give us an update on Quincy Cross?
00:28:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, so his case is moving. Quincy's just really hopeful. He's glad his story's out there. I mean, it's when you're put away in prison, you're meant to be forgotten about. They want you to be forgotten about. They don't want these stories coming out there, so they have to acknowledge what has happened, what they did wrong.
00:29:19
Speaker 2: So he's just really happy.
00:29:21
Speaker 3: That people got to hear his truth of the matter, that he's not a disgusting, savage, rapist, burner man, He's just he's a nice guy.
00:29:32
Speaker 2: You know. I hope that Quincy gets out.
00:29:36
Speaker 1: Does he have hope? Do you feel like you can feel it? Yeah?
00:29:41
Speaker 3: I cried so much during this, but especially when David looked at us in the eyes and said, I'm.
00:29:48
Speaker 2: Afraid I'll die before he gets out of prison. They're both old. David's old, Joe is old.
00:29:56
Speaker 3: They're old men, and they both the same thing, and it's really sad that the law in Kentucky's denying these two men those answers.
00:30:10
Speaker 1: Well, Maggie, I just it's been a pleasure to talk to you. I cannot wait to hear the rest of Graves County. And I just really want to commend you on the work, because it's very hard to loop me in on these stories, but this one is just grabbed me from the start, and as I said, a lot of jaw dropping moments which must have been so much fun.
00:30:26
Speaker 2: For you to report on exactly. Thank you. It's always great talking with you. And maybe we'll get a drink.
00:30:32
Speaker 1: After that sounds good. The first two episodes of Graves County will be out on July thirtieth, right here in the Bone Valley Feed. Subscribers to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts will be able to listen to the entire series the same in day
