My Girl Susan

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Heads up, this series contains graphic descriptions of violence.

00:00:09
Speaker 2: That's your dang through the record, please, Susan Galberth.

00:00:14
Speaker 1: When Susan Galbreath was called to testify in the Jessica Current murder trial, she started with an apology for the judge.

00:00:22
Speaker 3: I'd like to have first apologize for the show you.

00:00:26
Speaker 2: I didn't mean to be late today.

00:00:28
Speaker 3: I want to mention it.

00:00:31
Speaker 4: For you.

00:00:32
Speaker 5: Okay.

00:00:33
Speaker 6: This set the tone for the rest of her testimony.

00:00:36
Speaker 1: She was kind of scattered, hedging on her answers, chewing gum loudly. The attorneys on both sides even approached the judge to complain, I'll be responsive.

00:00:51
Speaker 6: She's saying.

00:00:52
Speaker 1: Susan's not answering the questions, She's meandering. Susan sounds nothing like.

00:00:59
Speaker 6: The woman who so clearly had written and talked about her fervent commitment to solving the murder. Like this is how she describes her feelings about Jessica's case. Yeah, I've like followed courtev stuff like that, and.

00:01:16
Speaker 5: So I of course was at the time there were so many murders.

00:01:20
Speaker 3: In Mayfield going on that it was I.

00:01:23
Speaker 6: Was just you know, dumbfounded by it.

00:01:25
Speaker 3: It was just you know, and here was another one, and it just all of them kind of captured an interest in me, you know.

00:01:33
Speaker 1: And this strikes me as odd considering there weren't many murders in Mayfield around two thousand. Police said it had been the first.

00:01:42
Speaker 6: In over a year. Now.

00:01:45
Speaker 1: I can't ask Susan what was going on in her head, but the way it looks to people who Susan accused is that she's trying to downplay her involvement in the case and with some of the people embroiled in it.

00:01:59
Speaker 7: So what about jar is.

00:02:05
Speaker 6: Jeremy Adams is a name you've heard before. He's the unwitting father of Jessica Currn's baby boy, Zion. You might remember Jessica's friend describing their encounter.

00:02:18
Speaker 8: He kind of forcibly took her around the building and had said they had sex. It was like two seconds they were around there and came back and he walked off and that was that.

00:02:36
Speaker 6: She said.

00:02:36
Speaker 1: How disappointed Jessica was to find out that Zion was Jeremy's son.

00:02:41
Speaker 6: She was very upset.

00:02:44
Speaker 1: Another significant fact about Jeremy Adams. He was initially charged with Jessica's murder when the Mayfield police department bungled the investigation, he got off, and when Susan Goalbrath began her citizen investigation, suddenly the blame shifted elsewhere. This is Graves County, Chapter four, My girl, Susan, You've now heard the story the prosecution used to convict Quincy Cross, Tammer Caldwell, and Jeff Burton a kidnapping, a drug field orgy and rape, necrophilia, and a murder. But many of the people I've talked to about this case have told me that if I want to figure out exactly why Quincy was arrested in the first place, then bits of truth lies somewhere in the beginning, back when police had a much simpler theory and alternate suspects, Their main one was Jeremy Adams. Jeremy Adams was only twenty when Jessica was killed, a skinny kid with a buzz cut and the whisper of a mustache on his top lip. He was known as a local troublemaker with a growing rap sheet charges like promoting contraband, robbery, and assault, but nothing that merited serious prison time until two thousand and one, when he was arrested for Jessica's murder, Jeremy wasn't charged alone. His co defendant was another person you've heard of, Carlos Lolo Saxton, Jessica Curran's boyfriend at the time she was killed. Remember her best friend said about Carlos.

00:05:26
Speaker 8: I mean she laughing, she really liked him.

00:05:30
Speaker 1: He and Jeremy were both indicted the year after Jessica's killing, Jeremy for murder and Carlos for complicity to commit murder, and the person who was among the first to point the finger at them was none other than Victoria, called well, the state's key witness against Quincy Cross.

00:05:54
Speaker 4: Do you want to be called the king or.

00:05:58
Speaker 9: Let it matter?

00:06:00
Speaker 1: In September of two thousand, more than one month after Jessica's body was found, Victoria told the very first investigators on this case that she had overheard Jeremy, Carlos and others talking about Jessica.

00:06:14
Speaker 6: This tape has been edited for length.

00:06:18
Speaker 10: Oh, Jeremy the b Ray pay back to the book.

00:06:23
Speaker 1: Okay, the recording is not very clear, but she's saying, Jeremy said, payback's a bitch and we're gonna get her good.

00:06:32
Speaker 10: Why would payback be a bitch?

00:06:34
Speaker 11: Rather working from Jeremy or I guess they found out that they okay.

00:06:40
Speaker 4: So maybe he got upset because she was telling everybody but the baby was whoever or something.

00:06:50
Speaker 1: Jeremy was in a relationship with a girl named net Todd back in two thousand. They even had kids, and the rumor around town, which then became the first Fie theory, was that Jessica went to confront Jeremy about child support. Maybe she even threatened to tell Net that the baby was his. This made Jeremy lash out, and then he accidentally or intentionally killed her. Jeremy and Carlos have been tough to track down, but net Todd lives about twenty minutes outside of Mayfield, and she's one of the many people I've reached out to for this story.

00:07:32
Speaker 6: Hey, my name is Maggie. We have been looking into a really old taste from a long time ago, Quincy Cross.

00:07:39
Speaker 1: I don't have anything to do with it, but she's not exactly happy that I'm standing here.

00:07:46
Speaker 3: I don't know anything about that.

00:07:47
Speaker 4: Yeah, and labor property.

00:07:49
Speaker 1: N There aren't that many details in the press about the case police built against Jeremy, and there's even less out there about the charge which is against Carlos. On top of that, many of the files in the case were destroyed in December twenty twenty one when a devastating tornado hit western Kentucky and leveled the Graves County Courthouse. A lot of those records were kept there, So getting the full story is tough.

00:08:20
Speaker 6: But I've got a secret weapon.

00:08:23
Speaker 4: Well at least, shall Kate never say that I don't keep you informed with the going zones and the gossip. So Darryl Woolman, ay, I love your face, Jeez, America, Trump and.

00:08:39
Speaker 6: Shovels.

00:08:40
Speaker 1: She got me a partial recording of the two thousand and one grand jury proceedings against Jeremy and Carlos.

00:08:46
Speaker 6: Would you state your name for the record player?

00:08:48
Speaker 4: Check?

00:08:48
Speaker 2: Is Tam Partner and I'm Jim.

00:08:50
Speaker 4: And how are you employed.

00:08:51
Speaker 2: I'm employed by.

00:08:52
Speaker 12: The City of Mayfield as a police detected I.

00:08:54
Speaker 1: Actually have grand jury proceedings are secret. These tapes aren't usually made public. We are lucky to have this insight, and in.

00:09:03
Speaker 8: That capacity, you are here to be testifying some cases now being brought against the Jeremy Adams and also Carlo Saxon.

00:09:11
Speaker 11: Is that correct?

00:09:11
Speaker 8: Yes?

00:09:12
Speaker 9: Correct?

00:09:12
Speaker 1: Now, that's Tim Fortner, the lead detective for the Mayfield Police who very politely declined to talk to me for this series. In this proceeding, you hear him laying out the first police theory of the case. He says, Jeremy and Carlos knew each other from around Mayfield and dealing drugs, and he says they both went out looking for Jessica.

00:09:38
Speaker 13: Jeremy and Lolo had went out looking for Jessica.

00:09:42
Speaker 5: A founder and argument ensued.

00:09:46
Speaker 1: One of the doors to the middle school had unidentified palm prints sneered on it look like.

00:09:52
Speaker 3: There may and somebody trying to get into into the door or.

00:09:55
Speaker 1: Something which and there was also a clump of hair land nearby.

00:10:02
Speaker 14: And with the clump of hair there, it certainly appeared to have been some type of struggle, perhaps somebody trying to get in or for the door open.

00:10:09
Speaker 6: It may not be, but something could happen, he says. Maybe Jessica fought back.

00:10:16
Speaker 5: Jessica hit Jeremy in the face.

00:10:19
Speaker 2: Jeremy then hit Jessica in the face with the things.

00:10:23
Speaker 1: That would explain why Jessica's body was found with cuts to her face and a broken nose.

00:10:29
Speaker 14: Said it knocked her down when she got up to take off down and he found a piece of metal and hit her in the back of the head, which also would go inside with the corner of the porker.

00:10:38
Speaker 1: Here, Mayfield police aren't discussing the belt fragment much, the one found near Jessica's body, like you heard the prosecution do at Quincy's trial. Instead, they're saying blunt force trauma to the head is what most likely killed Jessica. Now, even though they suspected Jessica had been bludgeoned, they didn't find any evidence of blood spatter, but Mayfield police theorized that was most likely because it had rained those days.

00:11:12
Speaker 11: But with all the rain, it watched its way.

00:11:14
Speaker 15: And then they found later that they were still on the flood there and it drained there, so most of it happened pretty close to it.

00:11:20
Speaker 2: And definitely the burning happened there because the grass was burned.

00:11:23
Speaker 1: What's the either way, the police concluded that Jessica had to have been killed at the school grounds. Then he says the killers pulled her underwear off to make it look like a rape, and they burned her body.

00:11:38
Speaker 4: They burned the body so that they could cover.

00:11:42
Speaker 2: You remember in the DNA evidence.

00:11:44
Speaker 13: And that's why I wanted.

00:11:51
Speaker 1: Detective Tim Fortner got these theories from the testimonies of at least three jailhouse informants who had all shared a cell with Jeremy at some point in two thousand and one.

00:12:02
Speaker 4: Up here and talk to you about the Jessicicern murder down might feel Go ahead and.

00:12:08
Speaker 1: Tell us I've listened to those recordings, and they either say Jeremy admits of various points to attacking Jessica.

00:12:16
Speaker 4: In and back in the hand with stale Hie, and that's what we're telling came about.

00:12:21
Speaker 1: Or they say Jeremy appears worried about any DNA they might find on some cigarette butts the police collected near Jessica's.

00:12:29
Speaker 14: Body, if the DNA could be brought.

00:12:32
Speaker 6: Off a bit now.

00:12:34
Speaker 1: To be clear, I haven't been able to find what physical evidence the police had against Jeremy and Carlos. They found those cigarette butts Jeremy was worried about, but didn't make an official DNA connection to either of them. And I already described the mistakes Mayfield Police made in their investigation. There's a chance that all they had against them was the word of three jailhouse snitches saying Jeremy had some thing to do with it.

00:13:01
Speaker 14: Again, we received several tips Jeremy Adams might be involved.

00:13:04
Speaker 4: Jeremy Adams might be involved.

00:13:06
Speaker 1: Jeremy in turn implicated Carlos as far as he goes. The police always described Carlos as someone who may have helped plan the murder or failed to stop it. On top of that, remember the party Quincy Cross was at the night Jessica was last seen, the one on Chris Drive. Carlos was also at that party. He was arrested for drugs along with Quincy Cross and everyone else on Sunday morning, hours after Jessica was last seen alive. So it's unclear as to when exactly he would have picked up Jessica and helped Jeremy kill her. But I might never have a clear answer because Jeremy and Carlos would never see their day in court and lead up to their trial, the prosecution and police failed to turn over evidence to the defense, including eighteen to twenty audio and video recordings Jeremy and Carlos's attorneys thought could point to their client's innocence, and the prosecutor basically said, we can't find a lot of this evidence.

00:14:18
Speaker 6: The judge was pissed.

00:14:21
Speaker 1: He told law enforcement, quote, I have never seen a case so encumbered with problems, and I hope I never see another one.

00:14:31
Speaker 6: The judge dismissed the.

00:14:33
Speaker 1: Case without prejudice, meaning that Jeremy and Carlos could be charged and tried again. And when the Kentucky State Police took over the investigation, it appears as if they did chase the case against Jeremy for a bit. But then just a year later came Susan Gallbreath.

00:14:54
Speaker 14: So pretty much Susan Galbert ran the investigation.

00:15:00
Speaker 6: But what is her motive?

00:15:01
Speaker 8: Like?

00:15:01
Speaker 5: Why is Susan Barbreath invested on us?

00:15:04
Speaker 4: Because she's fucking her awns Ona Adams, Jeremy's mother.

00:15:09
Speaker 6: That's coming up.

00:15:29
Speaker 1: When Quincy Cross was convicted, Susan Golbreath wrote an email to her journalist friend Tom Mangled, saying quote, I can hardly see from tears falling, this was her crowning moment, years of her labor finally paying off. But now almost two decades later, Susan's own work is being used to try and get Quincy Cross out of prison.

00:15:56
Speaker 9: So I just wanted to tell you I was looking at my timeline and I have around two thousand and four, Susan Galbrith first pops into the picture.

00:16:04
Speaker 1: Miranda Hellman is an attorney and for four years, starting around twenty twenty, Miranda worked with the Kentucky Innocence Project on the post conviction case for the main person found guilty of murdering Jessica Currn Quincy Cross.

00:16:20
Speaker 9: So mid two thousand and four is when I really.

00:16:22
Speaker 1: Miranda's walking me through a timeline she's put together, connecting Susan's involvement in the case to changing stories of the state's main witnesses and law enforcements theories.

00:16:32
Speaker 9: What I did was compare that with the statements of Victorian and Venetia up until that point. So up until late two thousand and three is the last one I have from them, And there is no sexual component, and there is no Quincy. The story is absolutely we left the car party.

00:16:49
Speaker 6: It was Jeremy Adams.

00:16:54
Speaker 1: The Kentucky Innocence Project actually first took on Quincy's case in the early twenty tens, but they had to shelve it because of funding. When Miranda and her team picked it back up, they had their.

00:17:05
Speaker 6: Work cut out for them.

00:17:07
Speaker 1: It's very hard to get a conviction overturned in the state of Kentucky or in most of the country. Really, one of the many hurdles is that Quincy's attorneys have to present new evidence that points to his innocence.

00:17:21
Speaker 9: So it has to be something that wasn't available or should have been discovered at the time of trial, and so the burden is incredibly high. It has to be something that truly is new.

00:17:32
Speaker 1: Then in twenty twenty two, Miranda and her team had a lucky break.

00:17:38
Speaker 9: We've been able to obtain new documents that weren't part of the original discovery or part of the initial investigation. A lot of that is centered around Susan Galbreth.

00:17:47
Speaker 1: They obtained years of emails between journalists Tom Mangold and Susan Goalbreth, which you've been hearing throughout this series. Last episode, those emails helped explain how Susan and suspects and theories found their way into the prosecution's case, and now Miranda says they can give us insight into Susan's motive.

00:18:10
Speaker 9: Welcome to Susan Gabbrick World, whose main goal was always to get Jeremy Adams out of this.

00:18:21
Speaker 1: At Quincy's trial, his attorneys did try to point out Susan's relationship with Donna Adams, Jeremy's mom. They even said both women were invested in finding the quote real killer together, But when questioned by the defense, Susan denies being close to Donna years ago.

00:18:41
Speaker 3: She lived upstairs from me, and that was how I met her, and you know those I did party that. You know, we might party together or something like that, but we would have never hung out.

00:18:54
Speaker 6: She says.

00:18:54
Speaker 1: They were neighbors in the late nineties and they lost touch for a few years, and then you.

00:18:59
Speaker 11: Were kindled relationship with our arms of being a flight.

00:19:04
Speaker 3: You make rekindle sound as though we were like and slow mo should run in towards one another. There was nothing like that at all.

00:19:11
Speaker 6: Nothing.

00:19:11
Speaker 11: When did you reappoint yourself in her?

00:19:13
Speaker 2: What you in two thousand and four?

00:19:15
Speaker 11: Did you consider here in?

00:19:20
Speaker 8: I don't. I don't.

00:19:21
Speaker 3: I really don't think that I would even consider it that.

00:19:25
Speaker 1: But new emails and testimony that the Kentucky Innocence Project obtained and that my team and I have reviewed, tell a different story as to the findings of other people invested in clearing the names of Quincy, Tamra and Jeff.

00:19:41
Speaker 14: Excuse me one second.

00:19:42
Speaker 6: Like private investigator John Poole.

00:19:45
Speaker 15: Have you got to add Johnson working.

00:19:48
Speaker 1: When I first met John in twenty twenty three, he drove.

00:19:51
Speaker 6: Me around Mayfield and he knows everyone.

00:19:55
Speaker 1: We stopped to say hi to some construction workers.

00:19:58
Speaker 14: I figured you're the worker bees. I figured that Ed wouldn't.

00:20:02
Speaker 12: Be doing anything.

00:20:04
Speaker 6: John grew up in Mayfield.

00:20:06
Speaker 1: He left to work as a police officer in California, then came back home in his fifties. Since returning, he's been a three time council member, heavily involved in the community. He's also a dead ringer for the late actor Leslie Jordan.

00:20:22
Speaker 14: Plus, I'm the uncle of Jeffrey Burton. He was one of the people that was charged in the Jessica Current murder.

00:20:30
Speaker 6: Jeff Burton the white boy.

00:20:32
Speaker 1: Susan Goalbreth helped find she made his house the scene of the crime. John has also become a good friend of Darra's.

00:20:42
Speaker 4: I was sitting on his floor three years ago, almost to the date, and we were looking through papers and the light was hitting him so perfectly. I said, why are you still do this? John? Why are you still involved, you know, other than Jeff, and he said, we said fucking vengeance, vengeance over the fucking judicial system and how much it needed to be changed.

00:21:10
Speaker 14: There's no physical evidence in this case that indicates any of them did anything.

00:21:17
Speaker 1: John also believes that Susan Goallbreath played a big role in shaping the case against Quincy, Tamra and Jeff.

00:21:25
Speaker 14: If you look at the record, the prosecution used a story that was developed by Susan Galbert and Susan in any of the stuff that you look at, her goal was to save Jeremy Adams.

00:21:43
Speaker 1: This is a big departure from Susan's publicly stated goal that she was a selfless, everyday citizen called by divine forces to help find justice for Jessica Current. John managed to find a friend of Susan's of over twenty years who often helped her with the case.

00:22:01
Speaker 14: Lacey Gates, gave us some information and tried to clean this up. We even had her down here. She knew that it was wrong.

00:22:13
Speaker 6: Where is she now?

00:22:14
Speaker 14: She is deceased.

00:22:16
Speaker 1: Lacy Gates died in twenty twenty two, but before that she did give an affidavit to the Kentucky Innocence Project, which said I feel that Susan Golbreth directed the police in the wrong direction and the wrong people were convicted. Susan Gaalbreth was friends with Donna Adams, the mother of Jeremy Adams, one of the first persons accused of Jessica's murder. Donna was under the impression that Susan was going to help get Jeremy out of trouble.

00:22:46
Speaker 14: Susan Galbert was able to get the discovery in the Adams case.

00:22:54
Speaker 1: Jeremy signed over his case files to journalist Tom Mangled, and those documents were part of what Tom used to source his first articles on Mayfield and Jessica Curran. Before those articles came out, Susan writes to Tom that Donna was anxious that her son's name still hadn't been cleared.

00:23:12
Speaker 6: Here's my colleague reading the email.

00:23:15
Speaker 5: I have pleaded with her so many times to stay level headed and to wait.

00:23:20
Speaker 1: Remember, the charges alleging Jeremy had killed Jessica in a supposed fight over child support had been dismissed.

00:23:27
Speaker 6: John says, but they.

00:23:29
Speaker 14: Were dismissed without prejudice, and that means the case could have been brought back up at any time. But again it's appeared that Galbert was pushing the other scenario, the one the state used.

00:23:44
Speaker 1: And the scenario Tom Mingled used in his articles. In these stories, Tom states matter of factly that Jeremy was obviously an innocent man, and he repeats that sentiment year later in his BBC retrospective.

00:24:02
Speaker 10: By the end of the first week, we'd established that Jeremy Adams, the local small time criminal, had been wrongly charged by the cops.

00:24:10
Speaker 1: Tom describes a bumbling police department that just wanted to pin the murder on a petty criminal. Tom says the strongest evidence the Mayfield Police had against Jeremy was the alleged confessions he made to those cellmates you heard from earlier. But Jeremy's attorney told Tom that the only reason Jeremy confessed was because Detective Tim Fortner had shown Jeremy pictures of the crime scene.

00:24:36
Speaker 11: They went there to ask him about a murder, and they showed him evidence that no one had really seen before. So of course he's going to implicate himself in some way. Jarmy is a simple minded gentleman. He can be led very easily. He was one of the town criminals, and it was very easy for them to close this case and make themselves look.

00:24:58
Speaker 1: Good, decides Tom Mingled and Susan Goalbreath had a much better suspect.

00:25:07
Speaker 10: The seriously nasty drug dealer called Quincy Cross, whod been arrested just hours after the murder.

00:25:18
Speaker 9: He was a pretty easy mark as well. You know, he had a little bit of a history with the law as far as the drugs went. He was an outsider, which I think is incredibly important to this case. He was not from Mayfield, He had very few ties to Mayfield. It was easy to point the finger at him because he was kind of a nameless, faceless person that was not her best friend's son.

00:25:39
Speaker 1: But what Tom ignores or fails to mention in his stories is that it wasn't just him and Susan out investigating. Susan had help. She conducted part of her investigation alongside Jeremy's mom, Donna, and the mother of his children, Net. According to her emails, they went on at least half a dozen interviews together. She even used NET to collect DNA evidence from people they suspected. After one of Tom's stories accusing Quincy and clearing Jeremy was published in late two thousand and four, Susan wrote him.

00:26:13
Speaker 5: Can you believe it? Jeremy is becoming a celebnow? Who to thunk it?

00:26:19
Speaker 6: And While Susan was more than happy to share information with law enforcement, she didn't want anyone else getting their hands on her correspondence or files. In the lead up to Quincy, Tamra, and Jeff's trials, Susan was worried that defense attorneys wanted to subpoena her computer. She writes, Tom.

00:26:37
Speaker 5: Met with my friends today and was told not to worry about anything concerning my PC. I was told that even if they subpoena my hard drive, as a private citizen, I can do whatever I want to with my computer except break the law.

00:26:53
Speaker 1: Her friends are the KBI agents you met last episode, the ones who would eventually solve Jessica curns More with the help of Susan Gallbroth. Attorney Miranda Hellman says if the defense had had full access to Susan's documents and emails at trial, they could have shown the jurors the full extent of Susan's involvement in accusing Quincy and shifting the blame away from Jeremy, things could have played out differently.

00:27:25
Speaker 9: You couldn't cross examine someone who was actively hiding information from the prosecutors and the defense attorneys and not giving them a fair shot.

00:27:38
Speaker 6: And there's one more thing.

00:27:40
Speaker 1: Even though Susan publicly denied wanting to help Jeremy, that was not the impression Jeremy Adams Scott.

00:27:50
Speaker 8: This is the interview with Jeremy Adams, President or myself detected sam'ste text Tec Police and Attorney's office.

00:27:56
Speaker 1: Just listen to parts of his interview between him and law enforcement in two thousand and five.

00:28:02
Speaker 16: My number one prior is to get this case out of the way.

00:28:05
Speaker 13: You know what I'm saying.

00:28:06
Speaker 1: By this time, Jeremy had actually met Quincy Cross in jail, one of the many times they'd both been locked up on various charges, and Jeremy says he knows Venetia's Stubblefield, the last person to see Jessica alive. He says they'd hooked up once, and he's making the case that he could be of use in the investigation.

00:28:27
Speaker 13: And I believe with all my heart, I know for a fact that if I was out that I'd be able to wire up on them or whatever and get them on tape talking about these things.

00:28:39
Speaker 1: He just needs prosecutors to cut him a deal so he can get out of jail on his other charges.

00:28:44
Speaker 2: Give me see.

00:28:45
Speaker 4: Today and watch me.

00:28:47
Speaker 7: I guarantee you if it's not solved, If it's not solved to sixty days, lock my ass right back up and convict me of the charges.

00:28:57
Speaker 13: That's how much fake.

00:28:58
Speaker 12: I got in myself.

00:29:00
Speaker 1: And part of his pitch is that he can help find the real killer because he's connected in Mayfield.

00:29:06
Speaker 8: I have a.

00:29:07
Speaker 7: Whole team of people that's been in Mayfield for years.

00:29:11
Speaker 12: It's got people.

00:29:12
Speaker 13: Topping out of the way.

00:29:13
Speaker 6: One of them, you know who it is, Susan.

00:29:18
Speaker 16: Susan, Oh, Susan yeah. JN Gomer, Yeah, Yeah.

00:29:22
Speaker 12: She knows people the Lord.

00:29:25
Speaker 7: A whole lot of information that's been found out now came through my girl, Susan and this other guy because they went out there and they personally.

00:29:36
Speaker 1: My girl Susan and the other guy journalist Tom Mingold, who by that time had published two articles saying Jeremy had been wrongly accused.

00:29:46
Speaker 7: What I'm saying is I have a connection to where if I can't give them somebody else. Can you feel what I'm saying?

00:29:55
Speaker 14: Why I haven't think so far there because they were, you know, Susan was working pretty hard with for you apparently, right, I come over from Britain and do this story and all.

00:30:04
Speaker 7: That, right to see, these are a whole lot of things that they can do that I can't do. There's a whole lot of things I can do that they can't do.

00:30:18
Speaker 1: As far as I can tell, law enforcement never takes Jeremy up on his offer to be an informant, but they do maintain a working relationship with Susan Goalbreth. In a phone call with one of those same officers in the years before Quincy's trial, she tells him to hurry and charge Quincy already.

00:30:38
Speaker 4: I mean, there was so much more I'm him than they ever had on Jeremy.

00:30:42
Speaker 8: Yeah, oh I agree, I totally agree.

00:30:45
Speaker 4: Oh my god, I totally.

00:30:46
Speaker 14: Agree with you.

00:30:47
Speaker 8: I agree.

00:30:50
Speaker 14: But you know, but that is right of my control, right.

00:30:53
Speaker 11: Yeah.

00:30:55
Speaker 1: As you know now, Quincy Cross is serving life in prison for the murder of Jessica Currn. Miranda and the folks at the Kentucky Innocence Project have filed state and federal motions looking to vacate Quincy's conviction. The emails between Susan and Tom are part of their case, Miranda says. They show how Susan influenced the investigation beyond what was originally known, revealing how Susan worked alongside two women who had a vested interest in seeing Jeremy's name cleared, his girlfriend and his mom. And they show that Susan fought to conceal her documents from defense attorneys.

00:31:40
Speaker 9: She was the person who punt Quincy Cross in prison. She's the person who handed the police their theory, their investigation, and their star witnesses. What we want to present to the court is that they never had the full story.

00:31:54
Speaker 6: And where is Jeremy Adams. That's after the break.

00:32:20
Speaker 1: The people I've talked to who are invested in clearing Quincy, Jeff and Tamer's names have all pointed to Jeremy Adams as a more obvious suspect in the murder of Jessica Currn, and I want to be fair to him. Based on the evidence I've been able to see, it seems like the Mayfield Police relied heavily on the word of Jeremy's cellmates when they were building the case against him. A lot of wrongful conviction cases I've covered involve the false testimony of jailhouse informants. They often lie to get a better sentencing deal from the prosecution or to get even with another prisoner, so I know better than to trust them uncritically. But the thing is, Jeremy went on to tell more people about his involvement or knowledge surrounding the death of Jessica.

00:33:09
Speaker 14: Current Jeremy Adams kept hanging around my office up there and wanted to talk to me.

00:33:15
Speaker 6: He reached out to private investigator John Pool.

00:33:18
Speaker 14: And so I finally talked to him. In fact, I even gave him a ride to where he was staying at the time, and he claims that he was going to tell me who did it.

00:33:29
Speaker 1: He never did, but Jeremy did tell even more sell meates through the years that he either attacked Jessica or knew who did, and John says Susan often trailed behind Jeremy trying to do damage control.

00:33:48
Speaker 14: Once Susan knew what was going on, she would go to those people and try to talk him in to not saying anything and at or correct their story. So she was a busy little bee.

00:34:03
Speaker 1: According to court filings from the Kentucky Innocence Project. At one point, Jeremy tells the police he was in the car with Jessica the night she was killed, and that same day Susan calls the police to say Jeremy was mistaken. On top of that, he talked to Jessica's family. I asked Jessica's father, Joe Curran about it. From what I understand, Jeremy Adams told you he knows.

00:34:29
Speaker 4: Who did this.

00:34:31
Speaker 2: He wrote letters from prison and jail saying if you'll tell me, well I'm not I'm zience father, I'll tell you who did it. Well, of course he never told you.

00:34:47
Speaker 6: And Jeremy didn't stop there.

00:34:50
Speaker 2: But one incident happened when we saw Hi met Paduca Mall, and he walked and followed my wife and was telling her that he would tell us who done it, you know, and telling her that he didn't do it, and that's what he was saying. But he was telling people on the street that he did it. He was the one who did it. So it was such a you know, you really don't know who's responsible. I've always felt like that he's definitely involved. If he didn't do it, he's definitely involved.

00:35:25
Speaker 1: The Kurrans never let Jeremy have a relationship with their grandson. My producer and I went looking for Jeremy in August of twenty twenty four. We checked out one of his known Mayfield addresses, a modest, one story home in the outskirts of town.

00:35:50
Speaker 5: Hello, we're looking for Jeremy Adams.

00:35:54
Speaker 6: Do you know who that is?

00:35:56
Speaker 8: Yeah, I know, I'm in born that.

00:36:00
Speaker 5: Iss you knew where he was.

00:36:03
Speaker 1: The woman who opens the door is Alice, Jeremy's great aunt. Alice has had a couple of strokes, so it's a little hard for her to talk.

00:36:12
Speaker 6: She says she's been getting his mail for years.

00:36:15
Speaker 12: You mail here comes here every night every night.

00:36:20
Speaker 1: She shows us his medical bills and traffic tickets. But she says she hasn't seen Jeremy in forever?

00:36:27
Speaker 8: Okay?

00:36:28
Speaker 6: Where are his parents?

00:36:30
Speaker 15: Dad?

00:36:30
Speaker 8: Dad?

00:36:31
Speaker 1: His mom, Donna died in twenty nineteen at the age of sixty, most likely from an overdose.

00:36:39
Speaker 8: What is to me?

00:36:40
Speaker 4: Come on in?

00:36:41
Speaker 16: Thank you, Come on out?

00:36:44
Speaker 5: Is anyone else here with you?

00:36:47
Speaker 6: The TV is blasting in the cozy living room.

00:36:49
Speaker 1: It's full of black and white family pictures cluttered with mail magazines.

00:36:54
Speaker 6: And dog food, the things of life alone. Alice sits down in her arm chair and we start to talk, and then she points to a corner.

00:37:06
Speaker 11: Jeremy.

00:37:09
Speaker 1: She says, when Jeremy was little, he used to sit there in her antique chair, banging his head against the wall.

00:37:19
Speaker 5: He was a.

00:37:19
Speaker 1: Troubled child, she says, who grew up to be a troubled man. Drug addiction runs in the family. His mom, Donna, also drank a lot, and Alice says Jeremy never stood a chance. He never had a steady home and got into drugs and drug dealing when he was just a kid, and he could be violent, though never with her. Alice says, he's been in and out of prison or jail a lot, and the few times she's seen him over the years, he's been high and struggling.

00:37:55
Speaker 10: To me, he was right, do you know what kind of drugs?

00:37:58
Speaker 4: Maybe?

00:37:58
Speaker 2: No, it's the mard Yeah, okay.

00:38:06
Speaker 1: One of the last times Alice saw Jeremy, he was sleeping on the street straight.

00:38:13
Speaker 14: I think you look when no water time?

00:38:17
Speaker 5: I bet here Nightville.

00:38:20
Speaker 1: She gave him a warm bed for a few days. Her eyes well up with tears talking about her.

00:38:25
Speaker 6: Nephew, thank you for talking to us. Then we say goodbye, thank you, nice to meet you.

00:38:41
Speaker 1: Jeremy has spoken publicly in recent years. In twenty twenty, he talked about being arrested for Jessica's murder on The Steve Wilco Show, which is kind of like Jerry Springer but somehow trashier.

00:38:55
Speaker 12: For twenty years, I've been accused time and time again of this horrific rhyme that I did not commit, had no involvement whatsoever. And because of the way my case was dismissed, the police didn't go back on on television to say, hey, we charged the wrong man. When they later charged, tried and convicted this other man, they didn't say I'm sorry. They just left it out in the open. Being that I was the one that originally charged in the case. They left it for the community to decide, and it left doubt in the community. That is my purpose for being here today, to clear my name in the eyes of the world.

00:39:34
Speaker 1: He even wrote and self published a book titled Almost Framed The Diary of Jeremy m Adams.

00:39:42
Speaker 4: It's one of the best books ever. The fact that I hasn't want to pulletser is fucking astonishing.

00:39:50
Speaker 6: I've skimmed a PDF, but Darra has the hard copy.

00:39:54
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've had the book for two and a half years and I can't finish it. It's that fucking genius full of emojis.

00:40:06
Speaker 1: In just over one hundred pages, Jeremy relitigates the case.

00:40:11
Speaker 4: He talks about racism and how Jessica's father was so mad because she was gonna have a biracial child.

00:40:20
Speaker 1: He goes further than that. He accuses Joe Kerran of his daughter's murder.

00:40:26
Speaker 4: It talks about how he was framed by the cops. It talks about the night they met. It talks about really nothing.

00:40:39
Speaker 6: It would almost be funny if it weren't so cruel. And it just adds to the noise of an already complicated case where so many people have lied or told half truths, noise Miranda and the Kentucky Innocence Project have had to contend with.

00:40:57
Speaker 9: The truth may just be gone. Us have no idea, but there.

00:41:05
Speaker 1: Are people in this case who have tried to tell the truth or a version of the truth, like Rosie Christ Victoria Caldwell's sister. You heard her at Quincy's trial, recanting on the stand, saying police made her lie and prosecutors punished her for it, charged her with perjury, and sentenced her to three years in prison.

00:41:29
Speaker 15: I mean, nobody's perfect, but Rosie was a good hearted woman who all have started it made it seem like I was just a monster.

00:41:39
Speaker 6: Rosie is forty four years old today.

00:41:41
Speaker 1: She's a mom, and she says she was born to be a singer, but instead she works at the fast food chain Sonic, and Rosie refers to herself in the third person.

00:41:53
Speaker 15: There everybody loves Rosie. I mean Sonics up there in my job can tell you better anybody. I mean the whole Sonics love Rosie. I'm mean any job I'll get lowd Rosie because that's who Rosie really is, a rosy person. My name fits me, It really fits me.

00:42:06
Speaker 1: She's all smiles and her eyes disappear into tiny slits as she talks. She's wearing fuzzy sandals and floral tights. It's a cheerful outfit to match her demeanor. Nothing like the twenty six year old at Quincy's trial who came off as angry, especially at the prosecution.

00:42:26
Speaker 11: But I wasn't.

00:42:27
Speaker 15: It was just like I was trying to. I was mad and angry because even though I lied the day before, I knew what I was saying the next day was the god honest truth I was one, which was that Quincyham didn't have no involvement in the case. They had took me, threatened me, told me that I didn't even need a lawyer, told me they could make it look like I was the one that murdered, just concured if I didn't say their story what they wanted to hear. I mean, then they started talking about I'm gonna take your kids, trom me what to look up?

00:42:56
Speaker 6: They threaten, Yeah, everything take my is make it.

00:43:01
Speaker 15: Look like the murders on me. Told me, I'm gonna get lead to injection and stuff.

00:43:04
Speaker 1: All it has Victoria ever told you the truth of what happened?

00:43:12
Speaker 6: Oh, she told me.

00:43:12
Speaker 15: She's telling the damn lie. She did say that. Victoria told me, you got paid to make up a whole story just to get.

00:43:19
Speaker 16: Rid of this case.

00:43:21
Speaker 6: And get money there and get money.

00:43:23
Speaker 15: Yes, she got paid to get to do this case. Yes she got paid to do it.

00:43:27
Speaker 6: And Rosie stands by her story.

00:43:30
Speaker 15: Tell the truth it's what God wants you to do. I know that.

00:43:33
Speaker 6: I know Jesus name is truth.

00:43:35
Speaker 15: I do know that, and with that being his name, is what you're supposed to do.

00:43:39
Speaker 6: Tell the truth.

00:43:42
Speaker 15: I know it's righteous to do, It's the right thing to do.

00:43:46
Speaker 11: That's all I do know.

00:43:51
Speaker 6: I want to believe Rosie, and I think I do believe Rosie in part because while she was the first person to publicly say that law enforcement made her lie on Quincy, Jeff and Tamra, she wouldn't be the last. That's on the next episode.

00:44:11
Speaker 16: They literally made me say that I took part in it. They literally made me say I had this part I done in it. They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I pour guests on her and everything. They made me say that I took party into having sexual contact with her when she was already dead and everything.

00:44:31
Speaker 15: Yes, but I did do something in the courtroom when I was at testify against Quincy.

00:44:35
Speaker 16: Wow.

00:44:37
Speaker 15: You know how they tell you to read your right hand.

00:44:39
Speaker 4: Yeah, I didn't do that.

00:44:41
Speaker 11: Oh wow, So you were never sworn in Is.

00:44:44
Speaker 14: That what you're saying?

00:44:46
Speaker 4: Yes?

00:44:47
Speaker 15: Oh, wow I would never allow on the Bible.

00:45:03
Speaker 1: Graves County is a production of Lava for Good in association with Signal Company Number One. This show is written and produced by me, Maggie Frieling and senior producer Rebecca Ibarra. Jason Flamm, Jeff Kempler, and Kevin Burtis are executive producers. Our editor is Martina Abraham's Ilunga. Dannia Suleiman is our fact checker. Sound design and mixing by Joe Plored, music created by Wrench. Our theme song is the Gangsta grass version of The One Who's Holding the Star by Leo Schofield and Kevin Herrick. Darrel Woolman is investigative producer. Our head of marketing and Operations is Jeff Cliburn. Ismay Guderama is our social media director, and our social Media manager is Sarah Gibbons. Andrew Nelson is art director, with additional production help from Jackie Pauley, Kara Kornhaber and Kathleen Fink. Be sure to follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and threads at Lava for Good and follow me at Maggie Freeling. And we know there's a lot of names

00:46:05
Speaker 6: For you to keep up with in this series, so for a detailed list of characters, please go to our show notes