Sept. 17, 2025
Something Stinks
Graves County: Chapter 1 | Something Stinks
On August 1, 2000, the body of 18-year-old Jessica Currin was found outside of the middle school in Mayfield, KY. Jessica was a new mom and the daughter of a lieutenant with the fire department. Her case would go unsolved for years, until a local homemaker, a British journalist, and a few local girls came forward with a story that law enforcement would use to convict six people – including one man for life. It’s a good story: an ordinary woman helps solve a crime and bring justice to a small town. Maybe too good to be true.
Key figures in this chapter:
Jessica Currin (1981 - 2000): 18-year-old from Mayfield, KY. A new mom and the daughter of a lieutenant with the fire department.
Susan Galbreath (1960 - 2018): Mayfield, KY homemaker originally from Chicago, IL. Received an “outstanding citizen” award from the Kentucky Attorney General’s office for her help in solving Jessica Currin’s murder.
Tom Mangold: British investigative reporter who covered Jessica’s murder and helped Susan Galbreath with her citizen investigation. She helped find Victoria Caldwell.
Victoria Caldwell: Mayfield, KY local who was 15 at the time of Jessica’s death and would end up being the state’s key witness in the trial of her accused killer. She was also convicted as an accomplice to the crime.
Quincy Cross: A Tennessee man convicted of the kidnapping, rape, and murder of Jessica Currin in a 2008 capital murder trial. Currently serving life in prison without parole. He dated Tamara Caldwell.
Tamara Caldwell: Mayfield, KY local convicted of manslaughter and abuse of a corpse. She took a plea after Quincy Cross’s 2008 trial. Served almost six years. She is Victoria Caldwell’s cousin.
Darra Woolman: She leads the "Department of Collaborators" – a group of folks from all walks of life committed to helping people in prison and connecting them with resources.
For photos and images from this chapter, visit Lava for Good
Graves County is hosted by Maggie Freleng, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and one of the hosts of Lava For Good’s Wrongful Conviction, and is executive produced by Gilbert King.
New episodes of Bone Valley Season 3 | Graves County are available every Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts. To binge the entire season, ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good+ on Apple Podcasts.
Graves County is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.
We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
00:00:00
Speaker 1: Heads up.
00:00:01
Speaker 2: This series contains graphic descriptions of violence. There's a saying I heard on a recent trip to the South, A half truth is a whole lie. And if there's a place that breathes life into that proverb, it's the town of Mayfield in Graves County, Kentucky.
00:00:24
Speaker 1: A horrific murder went unsolved for six years in Mayfield, Kentucky, a town of ten thousand people.
00:00:30
Speaker 3: Then one local resident decided to take matters into her own hands.
00:00:34
Speaker 2: On August first, two thousand, the body of Jessica Current was found outside of the Mayfield Middle School. It appeared as though she'd been beaten and set on fire. Jessica was just eighteen years old, a new mom, and the daughter of a lieutenant with the Mayfield Fire Department, and her case would go unsolved for years.
00:00:57
Speaker 4: When police in Mayfield, Kentucky found a body, Susan Gaalbreth found a purpose. She had to know who murdered Jessica.
00:01:05
Speaker 2: Current, until a local homemaker and a handful of girls came forward with a story, a story that police would use to convict six people, lending Susan galbreath in the newspapers and the radio and on National TV.
00:01:22
Speaker 4: Galbreath was a housewife, married three times and drifting. She had no law enforcement training and she'd never even met Jessica Current. But whatever grabbed her wouldn't let go.
00:01:34
Speaker 5: Somebody had to do something, and if somebody was me, so be it.
00:01:39
Speaker 2: Years later, the Kentucky Attorney General would even honor Susan with an Outstanding Citizen Award for finding the key witness in the Jessica Current case.
00:01:50
Speaker 1: It's a made for TV story.
00:01:52
Speaker 2: Ordinary woman, help solve murder, brings justice to a small town.
00:01:57
Speaker 4: Susan Galbreth was named Citizen of the Year. But the Kentucky Bureau of Investigation and to.
00:02:04
Speaker 6: Know that I had just the slightest part and it just I feel like I was meant to.
00:02:10
Speaker 4: Susan Gallabreath has done more than just proved one person really can make a difference through sheer, persistence and nerve. This Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica.
00:02:20
Speaker 2: Cur Catnip for the press, and who could blame them? It's a good one, maybe too good to be true, because this story will go beyond one woman. It's about the lengths our legal system, our communities, and the press will go in order to find someone to blame. And it's about the tales we tell and choose to believe in pursuit of justice, the repercussions of which have uprooted lives, shattered families, and exposed a deep rot in Kentucky's halls of power. This is Graves County, Chapter one, Something Stinks. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer winning journalist and producer who has spent years reporting on the criminal legal system. That's how I first heard about this case and about Susan Gallbreath. I didn't get a chance to meet Susan in person. She died in twenty eighteen at the age of fifty eight. A lot of what I've learned about Susan comes from her interviews with the press and her own writings emails I've had the chance to review, and from her testimony in the trial for the murder of Jessica Curran.
00:04:25
Speaker 5: When I was a child, I either wanted to be a comedian or a police officer. So I'm neither, of course, But I've just always had a fascination with the law. On things like that.
00:04:40
Speaker 2: Susan Gallbreath was born in Chicago, and moved to Mayfield, Kentucky in her early thirties. She liked living in a small town with a tight knit community, and she had a son she loved. But by the time her fortieth birthday hit, Susan was in a rut. A self described cigarette smoking, busybody. She was on her third marriage to a man who drank too much, and she'd lost her job from an injury. She was aimless. On top of that, she had a string of deaths in her family.
00:05:11
Speaker 7: In nineteen ninety nine. I had the death of my brother, father, and mother, so it was a real rough year for me.
00:05:17
Speaker 2: Here, she is talking to a local public radio station WKMS in twenty thirteen.
00:05:22
Speaker 7: And I think that I've always felt that I was meant to be there today that they've found Jessica's body, and I often refer to it as through her, I somehow got my purpose back, because it was a real rough year in ninety nine.
00:05:42
Speaker 2: In her telling, Susan was sitting at a restaurant on a summer day when she overheard a waitress saying that police had found a body. What happened after that can only be described as spiritual, an epiphany of sorts. She just had to go to the scene of the crime and see it for herself, and what she found horrified and captivated her. She would spend every waking hour wondering what kind of monster could have done such a thing. But time passed and the case went unsolved, and after four years, the police had little to show for their work except for some failed leads and a string of rumors about what had happened to Jessica Curran. That's when Susan says her curiosity turned into an obsession. If the cops weren't going to crack the case, she would she'd play detective and string tidbits of information together chase leads find the truth. But this amateur sleuth needed help, so she started emailing people important people like Oprah and Julia Roberts, anyone who could connect her to resources or give this case much needed attention, but she heard nothing.
00:07:01
Speaker 8: A federal investigation in Brooklyn.
00:07:04
Speaker 2: And then on TV one day she saw a British investigative journalist by the name of Tom mingled.
00:07:10
Speaker 9: Bobbie revealing how they've blind to see the manipulated the truth for forty years.
00:07:14
Speaker 1: So she wrote him as well.
00:07:16
Speaker 6: Date four four two thousand and four from Susan g it chartered that net.
00:07:22
Speaker 2: This is Susan reading part of that email for a radio piece Tom produced for the BBC in twenty twelve. It was a retrospective on the work Susan ended up doing for the case.
00:07:33
Speaker 6: Hello, mister mangle, I am writing concerning a murder in a small town in the state of Kentucky here in the US. The victim a beautiful eighteen year old black girl.
00:07:43
Speaker 2: Tom flew to Kentucky about a month after getting that email in two thousand and four.
00:07:48
Speaker 1: It was the beginning of a.
00:07:49
Speaker 2: Year's long partnership with Susan and the launch of their investigation.
00:07:59
Speaker 1: They were in duo.
00:08:01
Speaker 2: Here are segments on how they describe each other in Tom's radio piece.
00:08:05
Speaker 6: When I first met Tom, I thought he was prim and proper, like he had to stick up his ass. I mean, he was just really formal, you know.
00:08:14
Speaker 9: When I first met Susan, I liked her on site. She's chubby, lively, great sense of humor, sexy, deep voice, and passionate about the one thing she needed to be passionate about the murder of Jessica current.
00:08:26
Speaker 2: Tom, then in his late sixties, said he brought his experience as a seasoned investigative reporter and taught Susan how to parse gossip from truth. They drank bottles of Savignon blanc together, Chase Leeds discuss theories, and eventually they pinpointed a local girl who turned out to be key to solving the case.
00:08:50
Speaker 1: Victoria Caldwell.
00:08:51
Speaker 10: Doris Victoria Conwell and what did people call you?
00:08:55
Speaker 6: Victoria?
00:08:57
Speaker 2: She came forward saying she was an accomplice to the crimes, and she ended up being the state's key witness.
00:09:04
Speaker 11: So in July two thousand, were here, fifteen years old.
00:09:11
Speaker 2: Victoria's account about what happened to Jessica Curran would be the driving force in the conviction of her accused killers.
00:09:19
Speaker 5: Cavin devel Fersi's Quincy Omar Crouch.
00:09:23
Speaker 1: This was the story Victoria told.
00:09:26
Speaker 2: We've edited her statements for length and warning it contains descriptions of physical and sexual violence.
00:09:36
Speaker 5: Im go Victoria bad Will.
00:09:38
Speaker 2: On a summer night in two thousand, Victoria says she was hanging out with a few kids from around town, including Jessica Curran and Venetia Stubblefield, all of them teenagers at the time.
00:09:50
Speaker 1: According to Victoria.
00:09:51
Speaker 2: They eventually ended up in a car with some older kids, all in the early twenties, including Victoria's cousin Tamra, Tamra's boyfriend Quincy Cross, and a guy they need from school named Jeff Burton, the only white person in the group.
00:10:06
Speaker 10: Quincy started passing out the drugs.
00:10:10
Speaker 12: Coke.
00:10:11
Speaker 1: She says, they did cocaine and other drugs in.
00:10:14
Speaker 10: The car, yes, ecstasy.
00:10:18
Speaker 2: Tamra and Quincy were driving in the front with Jessica and they started touching her.
00:10:23
Speaker 10: Quincy and Tamra were rubbing on Jessica's legs. She was telling him to stop and no.
00:10:31
Speaker 5: Did they stop?
00:10:32
Speaker 9: No, he didn't want that.
00:10:36
Speaker 10: Then when we got to the driveway of Jeff's house, Quincy he walked under the seat and he had a bat and he hit her in her head like a a small like little bat.
00:10:58
Speaker 1: She says.
00:10:58
Speaker 2: Quincy reached under this and then hit Jessica in the head with a souvenir bat.
00:11:04
Speaker 10: I'm not really sure how to explain it.
00:11:06
Speaker 2: After that, they drove to Jeff's house and they carried Jessica's unconscious body inside. According to Victoria, Quincy and Jeff raped and beat Jessica with the help of Tamera, and.
00:11:19
Speaker 10: That's when Jessica started to wake up.
00:11:23
Speaker 2: Jessica was in and out of consciousness, actually woke up.
00:11:27
Speaker 10: She was saying like she wanted to go home. She just wanted to go home to her son. She's got her son's ion's name.
00:11:36
Speaker 2: She was pleading for her life and calling out the name of her seven month old son.
00:11:45
Speaker 6: Quincy.
00:11:46
Speaker 10: He hit her.
00:11:48
Speaker 1: He hit her with a.
00:11:49
Speaker 10: Ratchet, and she just knocked back out.
00:11:53
Speaker 1: Victoria says.
00:11:54
Speaker 2: Quincy then started strangling Jessica with his leather belt.
00:11:58
Speaker 10: He was just choking her. She just kept pulling, flowing, pulling on it.
00:12:04
Speaker 12: How she.
00:12:06
Speaker 10: Was he felt like Caro, like gasping for air. Did she yes, yes, yes.
00:12:17
Speaker 1: But it didn't end there.
00:12:20
Speaker 2: Victoria says that after Quincy killed Jessica, he ordered the girls to have sex with her ravaged, lifeless body.
00:12:28
Speaker 10: Told me that they had to do something.
00:12:33
Speaker 2: She describes the sexual acts in lurid detail, but I'm not going to share those specifics here.
00:12:40
Speaker 1: It's gruesome perform sexual.
00:12:43
Speaker 3: Acts on Jessica Current's body.
00:12:45
Speaker 2: Yes, according to the prosecution, this would implicate them all in the murder and ensure their silence after it was all done, Victoria says they wrapped Jessica his body in a blanket and hid her in Jeff's garage for a few days until she started to smell. Then, she says, a few of them drove Jessica's body to the middle school, where they dumped her and set her on fire. Victoria says she took the blanket, Jeff poured the gas, and Venetia lit the match and then let.
00:13:29
Speaker 5: As jury reached a birdie if you had handed to the by the place.
00:13:34
Speaker 2: On April eighth, two thousand and eight, after only three hours and forty five minutes of deliberating, a Kentucky jury convicted Quincy Cross on all charges we The.
00:13:46
Speaker 3: Jury found the defendant guilty of kidnapping, guilty of guilty of ripe and the first guilty of abuse of the guilty of tampering with physical evidence of her instruction number fifteen.
00:13:56
Speaker 2: He was later sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Tamra and Jeff took please and were sentenced to ten and fifteen years, respectively. Venetia and Victoria got lighter sentences for cooperating with the prosecution. Remember, Victoria was the state's key witness. The case would make headlines because it took eight years to find and punish the accused killers, and because of Susan and Tom. Susan stayed on the case and Tom stayed on the story long after the convictions. In an email a few months after the trial, Tom informed Susan he was writing an article on her for the Times of London. He writes, quote, I'll make you famous yet, to which Susan responds quote, I couldn't be happier about this. I can only hope I don't let you down. Tom and Susan would appear in interviews like the one you heard earlier from a public radio station celebrating their feet. Tom told wkm AS that he had received about fifteen film offers from movie studios interested in their story, and they.
00:15:11
Speaker 9: Were all interested in the relationship between an aging British.
00:15:16
Speaker 8: Hack and this lovely young lady originally from Chicago.
00:15:21
Speaker 2: He and Susan ended up signing a contract with BBC Films.
00:15:26
Speaker 8: Don't ask me who's going to play me? Because I wanted Brad Pitt to play.
00:15:31
Speaker 9: That's what I was thinking.
00:15:33
Speaker 8: He's far too old for me. I know. The talk is of Susan sound and type actress to play Susan. It's an interesting story and we have had a remarkable relationship and one that has given me intense pleasure.
00:15:49
Speaker 2: In a perfect world where good guys win and the bad guys are punished.
00:15:54
Speaker 1: This is where the story would end. Role credits to accept this pre call press one to refuse this pre call press too. Thank you for using securists. You may start the conversation now.
00:16:11
Speaker 6: Hello.
00:16:12
Speaker 2: Okay, hey Quincy, Hey, how are you doing. I'm well, how are you doing today?
00:16:17
Speaker 8: Uh?
00:16:18
Speaker 11: I'm just you know, still doing time as well.
00:16:21
Speaker 2: But then again, I wouldn't be here if things worked the way they should. Quincy, what is that like for the world to think here somebody as terrible as a as a murderer.
00:16:35
Speaker 11: It's painful. Yeah, it's very painful, and it's it's and it's something that I've never adjusted to living.
00:16:43
Speaker 2: Back. To understand this story, you need to know the people accused and convicted of Jessica Current's murder.
00:16:52
Speaker 11: My story is not just about me, but it's about Jessica the victim, and it's about Camera and Jeff Burton too. All our story, we was portrayed to be something that we not. So you know, the whole world looked.
00:17:05
Speaker 12: At us different.
00:17:06
Speaker 11: We still do. So you know my story is to you know, to have clear all that up.
00:17:13
Speaker 2: I've gotten to know two of them well, Quincy and Tamera, and from the very beginning they have maintained that the story Victoria told at trial was a lie.
00:17:23
Speaker 3: People still talk about me to this day, but I don't care because I know I feel great and like I know, I didn't do anything. I know I didn't do a thing.
00:17:34
Speaker 2: Other people ensnared in this story have told me the same thing. They did not kill Jessica Current. That's after the break. Mayfield, Kentucky, is in the dead center of Graves County, tucked away in the southwestern corner of the Commonwealth.
00:18:16
Speaker 1: There's more crops than people. Corn, soy and.
00:18:19
Speaker 2: Tobacco fields stretch as far as the eye can see, legacy of a time when African people were bought and sold like chattel to cultivate these same crops. Alcohol laws in Graves County date back to the Dry Crusade or Prohibition era, so there's not many places to gather and grab a drink on a Friday. Folks in Mayfield are damn proud of their winning high school football team, the Cardinals. But other than game night, locals tell me there's not much to do. Just under ten thousand people live in Mayfield. The population hasn't grown in decades, and like in many small towns across the country, lack of activity or opportunity often leads to mischief and petty crime. A lot of it in the county is drug related, people selling or possessing drugs, and a lot of people have kids young in their teens and twenties.
00:19:16
Speaker 1: That was the case for Tamra called well.
00:19:20
Speaker 2: So you were seventeen, you got pregnant, and was there any question about keeping the baby.
00:19:25
Speaker 3: Or were you Oh yeah, I'm keeping it.
00:19:27
Speaker 2: Tamra always knew she wanted to be a mom, so when she got pregnant as a teen with her first child, a boy, Tamora was happy.
00:19:35
Speaker 1: You're like, I'm ready to I'm read yep, I'm ready.
00:19:38
Speaker 11: I'm not getting rid of it.
00:19:39
Speaker 6: I'm ready.
00:19:40
Speaker 2: And when another baby, a daughter, came just two years later, and another one a few years after that, she knew she'd adore those little girls just as much.
00:19:52
Speaker 1: There was love to spare.
00:19:53
Speaker 3: I enjoyed being with my kids because they were my life.
00:19:58
Speaker 2: Tamra also knew that she would didn't need a man to raise the kids, just like her mom and grandmother before her.
00:20:04
Speaker 1: Who is your dad? My mother is my dad.
00:20:08
Speaker 3: She's always been my dad and will always.
00:20:11
Speaker 12: Be like it.
00:20:13
Speaker 2: Men would come and go, but Tamer's family would stay together. That's not to say that some men didn't stay a little while. One of them was Quincy Cross. Before they were both accused of murder, their names tied to a brutal crime. There were just two kids in their early twenties who fell in love. Quincy was from a town just across the border in Tennessee, about a forty minute drive southwest of Mayfield. Quincy had the kind of swagger that comes from being a young man without a care in the world. Unlike Tamra, who says she's always been more of a homebody, content on the couch with her kids, watching soap operas or Jeopardy, Quincy was about boy getting in trouble.
00:21:01
Speaker 11: We was drinking and drugging, hear me.
00:21:04
Speaker 1: Quincy says he and his friends would run the streets.
00:21:07
Speaker 11: It was selling drugs, It was hanging out, laid you know it was you know, of hanging out with female, a whole bunch of female, different females all the time. It was it was no kids, a whole bunch of kids. Things going on, you know what I'm saying. Like I said, drinking and drugging. Man was lose most of the time doing it all man doing what kids do.
00:21:27
Speaker 2: And those things usually landed Quincy in and out of jail. That's actually how Tamar and Quincy met. He was locked up in the same jail as Tammer's brother in Graves County, and in one of her visits, Tamra says she saw Quincy looking at her.
00:21:42
Speaker 1: He was cute, a little short. He's five to four, with big cheeks.
00:21:46
Speaker 2: And a warm, dimpled smile, and she remembers thinking, maybe I talk to him, So she did, and he turned out to be nice as well.
00:21:56
Speaker 1: He was friendly, cute, friendly, and funny.
00:21:59
Speaker 3: Quincy was a comic. Quincy was just a fun person. I enjoyed talking to him.
00:22:05
Speaker 1: And Quincy enjoyed Tamra.
00:22:07
Speaker 11: Timber had a nice heart. Camer had a nice heart. Man Temba was a friend before she was anything else. Man tim was. We was good to hang out with each other. Man she was a good person man for real.
00:22:20
Speaker 2: Tamarra was already pregnant when she got serious with Quincy. She didn't party, so they liked watching movies together, eating pizza. Quincy even moved in with Tamara and her mom for a bit. He was there when Tamara had to have an emergency c section and her youngest girl, Shade.
00:22:35
Speaker 11: Was born before she did. Oh man, I cried, I crad. I was soft man. I ain't gonna trip I crad. I shed some teiars right there. That was a beautiful thing. Yeah, that was a beautiful thing. That was bringing back some good.
00:22:51
Speaker 1: Memories right there, Tamra says Quincy. It was good with the kids.
00:22:58
Speaker 2: She even gave Shade his last name, even though he wasn't the biological dad.
00:23:04
Speaker 3: Even though he didn't have no kids, My kids were his kids.
00:23:09
Speaker 1: He didn't seem to mind the mess that comes with children.
00:23:12
Speaker 3: Literally before he got in the door, before he opened the door, he would change shirts because he knew that Beebe was gonna throw up.
00:23:22
Speaker 6: Yes.
00:23:23
Speaker 2: Phoebe is Shade's nickname with Yes, he was the best. Tamrasis Quincy loved Bebe and her whole family. He was even a pallbearer at her Grandma Doris's funeral. He was fully in her life.
00:23:38
Speaker 3: We were like best friends.
00:23:40
Speaker 2: But after a few years their relationship faded the way relationships do.
00:23:48
Speaker 11: I just had to go back home.
00:23:50
Speaker 1: Back home to Tennessee.
00:23:52
Speaker 11: I just wanted to go back home. Man, Makefield was Makefield is, you have one minute left? It's corrupt down. There are corrupt things long down now, and I figured would have me to come back home.
00:24:07
Speaker 2: Tamar and Quincy broke up around two thousand and five and lost contact for a bit, but he wasn't able to shake Mayfield off for long. A few years after the breakup, in two thousand and seven, he'd return to Kentucky, and even though he'd never get back together with Tamra, their names would be forever linked to each other and to Mayfield's most infamous murder.
00:24:34
Speaker 3: I got a print in two thousand toyo.
00:24:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was in there five years, eight months.
00:24:38
Speaker 3: It's two days, five years, eight months, two days.
00:24:41
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:24:44
Speaker 2: I'm sitting with Tamra at her mom's house in Mayfield. She's bold and bright, with shimmery makeup and colorful braided hair. Tamra says, since she was a kid. She's always had colorful hair. Today it's blue, her favorite. But inside camera is guarded, scarred by prison and the events that led her there.
00:25:07
Speaker 1: I used to be.
00:25:10
Speaker 3: Outgoing.
00:25:12
Speaker 1: I was always a positive one.
00:25:15
Speaker 3: Uh not no more, not like I used to Not like it used to be. It won't never be like it used to be because I can't get I won't never get that time back. I can't never get that time back. I'm taking away from my family for something I even do. If I knew what I know now, then it's been a whole different story. It's crazy when you come home and your kids. Is something wrong with your kids? You can't do anything?
00:26:05
Speaker 9: Could you?
00:26:05
Speaker 3: Locked up? It's hard, but I had to keep the faith because I wanted to go home, because if I didn't keep the faith, I probably wouldn't even be here now.
00:26:29
Speaker 2: I've spent the last two years traveling to Mayfield, talking to people there, sorting through hundreds of hours of law enforcement interviews and interrogations, court transcripts, private investigator findings, and records, trying to figure out if there's any truth to their claims of innocence.
00:26:48
Speaker 1: What would it be like to have your conviction cleared for you? What Oh great, Oh a great deal.
00:26:54
Speaker 3: I can't even get a job because of my conviction.
00:26:59
Speaker 1: What my choice is going?
00:27:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, I won't never get five years, eight months, and two days back, but I deserve something. I want my name clearly, and Jeff name, Cleary and Quincy.
00:27:10
Speaker 1: Out of jail, out of prison. That's all I want, clear my name.
00:27:19
Speaker 2: Two years of sifting through lies, rumors, and stories, picking out any discernible bits of truth, trying to figure out how they were accused in the first place. At times, it's been almost impossible to discern truth from rumor, and it's made me question who can I trust when so many people obscure the truth.
00:27:44
Speaker 1: Now, over the course.
00:27:45
Speaker 2: Of time, I have grown to trust one woman in particular, and she warned me from day one that this case was going to be a hard one.
00:27:54
Speaker 12: Good luck deciphering the fucking lies in this case. My apologies for cussing, but that's what it is. There are so many lies.
00:28:05
Speaker 1: That's after the break.
00:28:22
Speaker 2: In two thousand and four, Susan Gallbreath, the Kentucky housewife who you met at the top of the show, wrote journalist Tom Mangold, asking for help solving the Jessica current case. Almost two decades after that, a woman named Darrel Woolman would contact me and my team saying the man in prison for the crime had been wronged. Much like Susan, Dara is not a detective or a lawyer. She's not even from Mayfield. Yet she has dedicated years of her life to this case. But if Susan helped put Quincy Cross in prison, Dara is dead set on getting him out.
00:29:00
Speaker 12: I don't believe he was there, and I don't believe that he did it, and I don't believe he had anything to cover up, and it's just a gut failing.
00:29:10
Speaker 1: Has your intuition ever led you astray?
00:29:15
Speaker 12: Well?
00:29:15
Speaker 1: I mean, look at the fun towards updated.
00:29:17
Speaker 12: Yeah. Absolutely sorry. My intuition has has led me a lot of times astray.
00:29:28
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty one, she launched an endeavor aimed at helping people in prison.
00:29:34
Speaker 12: I started the Department of Collaborators. I really wanted to call it the Department of Correctors, but I thought like that was too county video. See, you know, I do not have a website. I do have a bank account.
00:29:46
Speaker 2: The Department of Collaborators a group of folks from all walks of life who volunteer their time to finding people they think have been wrongfully convicted and connecting them with folks like me who can give them a voice.
00:30:00
Speaker 12: A group of misfits that can't. I go to this case.
00:30:05
Speaker 2: Dearah got in touch with my colleague Jason Flamm, who's long worked in criminal justice reform, and he passed the case along to me. Darah has asked me point blank to not compare her to Susan Gallbreath, But the irony of it, all the similarities are not lost on me. I'd be crazy not to point them out. And one of them is that I am taken by Dara the way Tom was taken by Susan.
00:30:34
Speaker 1: Darah is a character.
00:30:36
Speaker 2: She's constantly calling and sending me voice messages at all hours.
00:30:42
Speaker 12: So anyway, again, I'm sorry for my monotone voice, talking like I have marbles in my goddamn mouth, but that's just the way I talk tonight.
00:30:53
Speaker 2: Darah is a born and bred Southerner who plays to every stereotype for laughs, like these are the kinds of phrases she's lines off with.
00:31:01
Speaker 12: God, bless you, I say, and fuck Nancy Grice.
00:31:11
Speaker 2: Darah grew up in Mississippi, but lives in a McMansion neighborhood outside of Nashville. Now. My producer, Rebecca and I went to visit in the summer of twenty twenty four. The jungle is a very nice jungle. Darah lives with her mom son and Ludacris.
00:31:30
Speaker 1: Hi, Luda, Chris, you're so cute.
00:31:32
Speaker 2: A dog, not the Rapper, A scruffy white terrier mutt who's always by her side.
00:31:37
Speaker 12: It doesn't identify as dogs.
00:31:39
Speaker 2: Dara is a striking woman in her forties with icy blue eyes and long blonde hair. As we walk past the foyer into what appears to be the sitting room, there are three huge.
00:31:51
Speaker 1: Paintings on the wall.
00:31:52
Speaker 2: What is this? Just you oil paintings of Dara in a revealing mini dress that her mother painted bab really enhanced. Dearra says, the southern blonde stick works. It leads people to underestimate her, but you shouldn't be fooled. She's tenacious and full of moral outrage over what she perceives as a deep injustice. And the proof of Dara's tenacity, where do you have all your documents and stuff?
00:32:23
Speaker 3: All them off?
00:32:24
Speaker 1: Is right downstairs?
00:32:25
Speaker 2: Oh, that's your office, Okay, not medi Dara's home office is a bright room jam packed with tons of memorabilia from the years, like Dolly Parton figurines, Kate Moss's mugshot, and of course documents, filing cabinets full of papers, and binders of CDs containing hours of court proceedings, security footage, interrogations, interviews, everything like emails between Susan and Tom wondering how did someone get her personal emails?
00:32:57
Speaker 1: Who was who was able to get these and some.
00:33:00
Speaker 12: Of special to be part of discovery. I mean she was a witness.
00:33:04
Speaker 9: She was a witness.
00:33:05
Speaker 2: That makes sense, and she's giving me full access. Dara hasn't collected all of this alone. In the department of collaborators. There's a person who gathers all the data, one who organizes it, and there's Dara, the connector, staying in touch with everyone involved. And it's grown past a little volunteer job. Dera says, it's become personal.
00:33:30
Speaker 12: The truth of the matter is is that I fell in love with Quincy's family. They've fallen in love with me.
00:33:39
Speaker 2: And with all the other people who've been touched by this case.
00:33:42
Speaker 12: Camera Jeffrey, you know like, that's the truth of when it comes to Quincy Cross's case. It's not about solving the murder of Jessica Kern because at the end of the day, too in La, I think I can fucking solve it. I'm just trying to get a man's wrong blame prison now, and I'm trying to get the other two good. It's exonerated.
00:34:17
Speaker 2: So that's what Dara wants, and what I want is to get it right. For a few reasons, I'm a white girl from New York parachuting into this community in the South where the victim and most of the accused are black. I'm painfully aware of the stereotype white lady saves the day, Susan Dara, and we've heard this from people in town who are wary of outsiders. I don't want to give them more reasons to distrust people like me. On top of that, a few years ago, I got it really wrong covering what I was convinced was a wrongful conviction out of Alliance, Ohio. I dedicated a year of my life and twenty podcast episodes trying to find out if a man was in prison unjustly, only to learn midway that he'd most likely done it, and my instincts were wrong. A lot of listeners commended my honesty, but I also got slammed for hurting the victim's family by dragging all this up. I felt like a failure and went on hiatus for a few months, dug a hole and burrowed in it, licking my wounds. My mistake is always in the back of my mind. But I'm not the first journalist with doubts about their own work, and it turns out I'm not the first journalist with doubts about the convictions in this case. When Susan Golbreth died in twenty eighteen, Tom Mangled wasn't able to fly from England for the funeral, but he wrote Susan's family an email expressing his condolences. He called Susan a quote life force. He wrote that Susan's enthusiasm for the investigation infected him and eventually infected law enforcement, and it was quote wholly because of her drive and cunning that the perpetrators were caught and sentenced.
00:36:18
Speaker 1: Publicly.
00:36:18
Speaker 2: Tom was and continues to be certain that the case Susan helped bring forward, and the one he covered for years was not only right but righteous. But privately I found a different story, one that plants the seed of doubt.
00:36:36
Speaker 1: This is from Susan to Tom and.
00:36:39
Speaker 2: Sitting with my producer Rebecca going through hundreds of pages of documents we got from Darra and from court filings. They include years of Tom Mangle's emails from Susan, law enforcement and many other people in Mayfield.
00:36:55
Speaker 6: This emails between Tom Mangel and Lacey Gates, a friend of Susan Galbraith.
00:36:58
Speaker 7: Yeah, I thought she was working with Mangled and galbrit.
00:37:02
Speaker 2: These specific emails are from around the time Tom was preparing to release yet another piece on Susan, four years after Quincy, Tamra and Jeff were convicted. It's the radio documentary you heard earlier from the BBC titled Something Rotten in Mayfield. In it, he rehashes the story of Susan helping defind Jessica's killers, and he features Victoria Caldwell retelling her version of events. Yet this is an email he sent to Susan's friend a few months before the piece aired.
00:37:36
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
00:37:40
Speaker 2: This is from Tom to Lacey in twenty twelve. January twenty twelve, Lacy I'm just being to wonder, this is but a tiny worm of an idea in my wine soaked brain that there is a teeny weeny, it'sy bitsy chance that we've got this whole fucking murder story wrong and that there may have been a huge miscarriage of Justine, a renowned journalist talking about a case that he helped solve that went all the way to the Kentucky Attorney General that sent six people to prison, and he's saying, there's an itsy bitsy chance that they got this whole fucking murder story wrong.
00:38:28
Speaker 1: This season on Graves County. I mean, you should hear all the stuff that goes around, and you know some of it might be as true as it comes. You just can't never tell what's rammored and what's not.
00:38:43
Speaker 2: You look so for.
00:38:44
Speaker 3: Thinned faking those kings rocking in the chair and telling their lie.
00:38:50
Speaker 1: They accused a lot of innocent people. They hurt their families, they hurt their friends hips.
00:38:56
Speaker 3: Don't let nobody ever tell you get closure, because you'll always miss a person like that.
00:39:01
Speaker 10: The rest of your live.
00:39:03
Speaker 2: So it sounds like a lot of people have come forward saying I know who did this, but no one has said who did it?
00:39:09
Speaker 11: That's correct.
00:39:10
Speaker 4: Why I don't know some of them that I've dealt, whether it's involved in this or perpetual liars.
00:39:15
Speaker 10: So I did not know her, and I did not kill her or raid or burn or any of that other stuff that y'all said, Marka, y'all gotta work the hell up.
00:39:23
Speaker 9: Bad things happens to good people and small towns.
00:39:34
Speaker 2: Braves County is a production of Lava for Good in association with Signal Company Number One. This show is written and produced by me Maggie Freeling and senior producer Rebecca Ibara. Jason Flamm, Jeff Kempler, and Kevin Burtis are executive producers. Our editor is Martina Abraham's Ilunga. Dania Suleman is our fact checker. Sound design and mixing by Joe Plord. Music created by Wrench. Our theme song is the Gangstagrass version of The One Who's Holding the Star by Leo Schofield and Kevin Herrick.
00:40:07
Speaker 1: Darrel Wolman is investigative producer.
00:40:10
Speaker 2: Our head of marketing and Operations is Jeff clyburn is Ismay Guarderama 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 for you to keep up with in this series, so for a detailed list of characters, please go to our show notes
Speaker 1: Heads up.
00:00:01
Speaker 2: This series contains graphic descriptions of violence. There's a saying I heard on a recent trip to the South, A half truth is a whole lie. And if there's a place that breathes life into that proverb, it's the town of Mayfield in Graves County, Kentucky.
00:00:24
Speaker 1: A horrific murder went unsolved for six years in Mayfield, Kentucky, a town of ten thousand people.
00:00:30
Speaker 3: Then one local resident decided to take matters into her own hands.
00:00:34
Speaker 2: On August first, two thousand, the body of Jessica Current was found outside of the Mayfield Middle School. It appeared as though she'd been beaten and set on fire. Jessica was just eighteen years old, a new mom, and the daughter of a lieutenant with the Mayfield Fire Department, and her case would go unsolved for years.
00:00:57
Speaker 4: When police in Mayfield, Kentucky found a body, Susan Gaalbreth found a purpose. She had to know who murdered Jessica.
00:01:05
Speaker 2: Current, until a local homemaker and a handful of girls came forward with a story, a story that police would use to convict six people, lending Susan galbreath in the newspapers and the radio and on National TV.
00:01:22
Speaker 4: Galbreath was a housewife, married three times and drifting. She had no law enforcement training and she'd never even met Jessica Current. But whatever grabbed her wouldn't let go.
00:01:34
Speaker 5: Somebody had to do something, and if somebody was me, so be it.
00:01:39
Speaker 2: Years later, the Kentucky Attorney General would even honor Susan with an Outstanding Citizen Award for finding the key witness in the Jessica Current case.
00:01:50
Speaker 1: It's a made for TV story.
00:01:52
Speaker 2: Ordinary woman, help solve murder, brings justice to a small town.
00:01:57
Speaker 4: Susan Galbreth was named Citizen of the Year. But the Kentucky Bureau of Investigation and to.
00:02:04
Speaker 6: Know that I had just the slightest part and it just I feel like I was meant to.
00:02:10
Speaker 4: Susan Gallabreath has done more than just proved one person really can make a difference through sheer, persistence and nerve. This Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica.
00:02:20
Speaker 2: Cur Catnip for the press, and who could blame them? It's a good one, maybe too good to be true, because this story will go beyond one woman. It's about the lengths our legal system, our communities, and the press will go in order to find someone to blame. And it's about the tales we tell and choose to believe in pursuit of justice, the repercussions of which have uprooted lives, shattered families, and exposed a deep rot in Kentucky's halls of power. This is Graves County, Chapter one, Something Stinks. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer winning journalist and producer who has spent years reporting on the criminal legal system. That's how I first heard about this case and about Susan Gallbreath. I didn't get a chance to meet Susan in person. She died in twenty eighteen at the age of fifty eight. A lot of what I've learned about Susan comes from her interviews with the press and her own writings emails I've had the chance to review, and from her testimony in the trial for the murder of Jessica Curran.
00:04:25
Speaker 5: When I was a child, I either wanted to be a comedian or a police officer. So I'm neither, of course, But I've just always had a fascination with the law. On things like that.
00:04:40
Speaker 2: Susan Gallbreath was born in Chicago, and moved to Mayfield, Kentucky in her early thirties. She liked living in a small town with a tight knit community, and she had a son she loved. But by the time her fortieth birthday hit, Susan was in a rut. A self described cigarette smoking, busybody. She was on her third marriage to a man who drank too much, and she'd lost her job from an injury. She was aimless. On top of that, she had a string of deaths in her family.
00:05:11
Speaker 7: In nineteen ninety nine. I had the death of my brother, father, and mother, so it was a real rough year for me.
00:05:17
Speaker 2: Here, she is talking to a local public radio station WKMS in twenty thirteen.
00:05:22
Speaker 7: And I think that I've always felt that I was meant to be there today that they've found Jessica's body, and I often refer to it as through her, I somehow got my purpose back, because it was a real rough year in ninety nine.
00:05:42
Speaker 2: In her telling, Susan was sitting at a restaurant on a summer day when she overheard a waitress saying that police had found a body. What happened after that can only be described as spiritual, an epiphany of sorts. She just had to go to the scene of the crime and see it for herself, and what she found horrified and captivated her. She would spend every waking hour wondering what kind of monster could have done such a thing. But time passed and the case went unsolved, and after four years, the police had little to show for their work except for some failed leads and a string of rumors about what had happened to Jessica Curran. That's when Susan says her curiosity turned into an obsession. If the cops weren't going to crack the case, she would she'd play detective and string tidbits of information together chase leads find the truth. But this amateur sleuth needed help, so she started emailing people important people like Oprah and Julia Roberts, anyone who could connect her to resources or give this case much needed attention, but she heard nothing.
00:07:01
Speaker 8: A federal investigation in Brooklyn.
00:07:04
Speaker 2: And then on TV one day she saw a British investigative journalist by the name of Tom mingled.
00:07:10
Speaker 9: Bobbie revealing how they've blind to see the manipulated the truth for forty years.
00:07:14
Speaker 1: So she wrote him as well.
00:07:16
Speaker 6: Date four four two thousand and four from Susan g it chartered that net.
00:07:22
Speaker 2: This is Susan reading part of that email for a radio piece Tom produced for the BBC in twenty twelve. It was a retrospective on the work Susan ended up doing for the case.
00:07:33
Speaker 6: Hello, mister mangle, I am writing concerning a murder in a small town in the state of Kentucky here in the US. The victim a beautiful eighteen year old black girl.
00:07:43
Speaker 2: Tom flew to Kentucky about a month after getting that email in two thousand and four.
00:07:48
Speaker 1: It was the beginning of a.
00:07:49
Speaker 2: Year's long partnership with Susan and the launch of their investigation.
00:07:59
Speaker 1: They were in duo.
00:08:01
Speaker 2: Here are segments on how they describe each other in Tom's radio piece.
00:08:05
Speaker 6: When I first met Tom, I thought he was prim and proper, like he had to stick up his ass. I mean, he was just really formal, you know.
00:08:14
Speaker 9: When I first met Susan, I liked her on site. She's chubby, lively, great sense of humor, sexy, deep voice, and passionate about the one thing she needed to be passionate about the murder of Jessica current.
00:08:26
Speaker 2: Tom, then in his late sixties, said he brought his experience as a seasoned investigative reporter and taught Susan how to parse gossip from truth. They drank bottles of Savignon blanc together, Chase Leeds discuss theories, and eventually they pinpointed a local girl who turned out to be key to solving the case.
00:08:50
Speaker 1: Victoria Caldwell.
00:08:51
Speaker 10: Doris Victoria Conwell and what did people call you?
00:08:55
Speaker 6: Victoria?
00:08:57
Speaker 2: She came forward saying she was an accomplice to the crimes, and she ended up being the state's key witness.
00:09:04
Speaker 11: So in July two thousand, were here, fifteen years old.
00:09:11
Speaker 2: Victoria's account about what happened to Jessica Curran would be the driving force in the conviction of her accused killers.
00:09:19
Speaker 5: Cavin devel Fersi's Quincy Omar Crouch.
00:09:23
Speaker 1: This was the story Victoria told.
00:09:26
Speaker 2: We've edited her statements for length and warning it contains descriptions of physical and sexual violence.
00:09:36
Speaker 5: Im go Victoria bad Will.
00:09:38
Speaker 2: On a summer night in two thousand, Victoria says she was hanging out with a few kids from around town, including Jessica Curran and Venetia Stubblefield, all of them teenagers at the time.
00:09:50
Speaker 1: According to Victoria.
00:09:51
Speaker 2: They eventually ended up in a car with some older kids, all in the early twenties, including Victoria's cousin Tamra, Tamra's boyfriend Quincy Cross, and a guy they need from school named Jeff Burton, the only white person in the group.
00:10:06
Speaker 10: Quincy started passing out the drugs.
00:10:10
Speaker 12: Coke.
00:10:11
Speaker 1: She says, they did cocaine and other drugs in.
00:10:14
Speaker 10: The car, yes, ecstasy.
00:10:18
Speaker 2: Tamra and Quincy were driving in the front with Jessica and they started touching her.
00:10:23
Speaker 10: Quincy and Tamra were rubbing on Jessica's legs. She was telling him to stop and no.
00:10:31
Speaker 5: Did they stop?
00:10:32
Speaker 9: No, he didn't want that.
00:10:36
Speaker 10: Then when we got to the driveway of Jeff's house, Quincy he walked under the seat and he had a bat and he hit her in her head like a a small like little bat.
00:10:58
Speaker 1: She says.
00:10:58
Speaker 2: Quincy reached under this and then hit Jessica in the head with a souvenir bat.
00:11:04
Speaker 10: I'm not really sure how to explain it.
00:11:06
Speaker 2: After that, they drove to Jeff's house and they carried Jessica's unconscious body inside. According to Victoria, Quincy and Jeff raped and beat Jessica with the help of Tamera, and.
00:11:19
Speaker 10: That's when Jessica started to wake up.
00:11:23
Speaker 2: Jessica was in and out of consciousness, actually woke up.
00:11:27
Speaker 10: She was saying like she wanted to go home. She just wanted to go home to her son. She's got her son's ion's name.
00:11:36
Speaker 2: She was pleading for her life and calling out the name of her seven month old son.
00:11:45
Speaker 6: Quincy.
00:11:46
Speaker 10: He hit her.
00:11:48
Speaker 1: He hit her with a.
00:11:49
Speaker 10: Ratchet, and she just knocked back out.
00:11:53
Speaker 1: Victoria says.
00:11:54
Speaker 2: Quincy then started strangling Jessica with his leather belt.
00:11:58
Speaker 10: He was just choking her. She just kept pulling, flowing, pulling on it.
00:12:04
Speaker 12: How she.
00:12:06
Speaker 10: Was he felt like Caro, like gasping for air. Did she yes, yes, yes.
00:12:17
Speaker 1: But it didn't end there.
00:12:20
Speaker 2: Victoria says that after Quincy killed Jessica, he ordered the girls to have sex with her ravaged, lifeless body.
00:12:28
Speaker 10: Told me that they had to do something.
00:12:33
Speaker 2: She describes the sexual acts in lurid detail, but I'm not going to share those specifics here.
00:12:40
Speaker 1: It's gruesome perform sexual.
00:12:43
Speaker 3: Acts on Jessica Current's body.
00:12:45
Speaker 2: Yes, according to the prosecution, this would implicate them all in the murder and ensure their silence after it was all done, Victoria says they wrapped Jessica his body in a blanket and hid her in Jeff's garage for a few days until she started to smell. Then, she says, a few of them drove Jessica's body to the middle school, where they dumped her and set her on fire. Victoria says she took the blanket, Jeff poured the gas, and Venetia lit the match and then let.
00:13:29
Speaker 5: As jury reached a birdie if you had handed to the by the place.
00:13:34
Speaker 2: On April eighth, two thousand and eight, after only three hours and forty five minutes of deliberating, a Kentucky jury convicted Quincy Cross on all charges we The.
00:13:46
Speaker 3: Jury found the defendant guilty of kidnapping, guilty of guilty of ripe and the first guilty of abuse of the guilty of tampering with physical evidence of her instruction number fifteen.
00:13:56
Speaker 2: He was later sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Tamra and Jeff took please and were sentenced to ten and fifteen years, respectively. Venetia and Victoria got lighter sentences for cooperating with the prosecution. Remember, Victoria was the state's key witness. The case would make headlines because it took eight years to find and punish the accused killers, and because of Susan and Tom. Susan stayed on the case and Tom stayed on the story long after the convictions. In an email a few months after the trial, Tom informed Susan he was writing an article on her for the Times of London. He writes, quote, I'll make you famous yet, to which Susan responds quote, I couldn't be happier about this. I can only hope I don't let you down. Tom and Susan would appear in interviews like the one you heard earlier from a public radio station celebrating their feet. Tom told wkm AS that he had received about fifteen film offers from movie studios interested in their story, and they.
00:15:11
Speaker 9: Were all interested in the relationship between an aging British.
00:15:16
Speaker 8: Hack and this lovely young lady originally from Chicago.
00:15:21
Speaker 2: He and Susan ended up signing a contract with BBC Films.
00:15:26
Speaker 8: Don't ask me who's going to play me? Because I wanted Brad Pitt to play.
00:15:31
Speaker 9: That's what I was thinking.
00:15:33
Speaker 8: He's far too old for me. I know. The talk is of Susan sound and type actress to play Susan. It's an interesting story and we have had a remarkable relationship and one that has given me intense pleasure.
00:15:49
Speaker 2: In a perfect world where good guys win and the bad guys are punished.
00:15:54
Speaker 1: This is where the story would end. Role credits to accept this pre call press one to refuse this pre call press too. Thank you for using securists. You may start the conversation now.
00:16:11
Speaker 6: Hello.
00:16:12
Speaker 2: Okay, hey Quincy, Hey, how are you doing. I'm well, how are you doing today?
00:16:17
Speaker 8: Uh?
00:16:18
Speaker 11: I'm just you know, still doing time as well.
00:16:21
Speaker 2: But then again, I wouldn't be here if things worked the way they should. Quincy, what is that like for the world to think here somebody as terrible as a as a murderer.
00:16:35
Speaker 11: It's painful. Yeah, it's very painful, and it's it's and it's something that I've never adjusted to living.
00:16:43
Speaker 2: Back. To understand this story, you need to know the people accused and convicted of Jessica Current's murder.
00:16:52
Speaker 11: My story is not just about me, but it's about Jessica the victim, and it's about Camera and Jeff Burton too. All our story, we was portrayed to be something that we not. So you know, the whole world looked.
00:17:05
Speaker 12: At us different.
00:17:06
Speaker 11: We still do. So you know my story is to you know, to have clear all that up.
00:17:13
Speaker 2: I've gotten to know two of them well, Quincy and Tamera, and from the very beginning they have maintained that the story Victoria told at trial was a lie.
00:17:23
Speaker 3: People still talk about me to this day, but I don't care because I know I feel great and like I know, I didn't do anything. I know I didn't do a thing.
00:17:34
Speaker 2: Other people ensnared in this story have told me the same thing. They did not kill Jessica Current. That's after the break. Mayfield, Kentucky, is in the dead center of Graves County, tucked away in the southwestern corner of the Commonwealth.
00:18:16
Speaker 1: There's more crops than people. Corn, soy and.
00:18:19
Speaker 2: Tobacco fields stretch as far as the eye can see, legacy of a time when African people were bought and sold like chattel to cultivate these same crops. Alcohol laws in Graves County date back to the Dry Crusade or Prohibition era, so there's not many places to gather and grab a drink on a Friday. Folks in Mayfield are damn proud of their winning high school football team, the Cardinals. But other than game night, locals tell me there's not much to do. Just under ten thousand people live in Mayfield. The population hasn't grown in decades, and like in many small towns across the country, lack of activity or opportunity often leads to mischief and petty crime. A lot of it in the county is drug related, people selling or possessing drugs, and a lot of people have kids young in their teens and twenties.
00:19:16
Speaker 1: That was the case for Tamra called well.
00:19:20
Speaker 2: So you were seventeen, you got pregnant, and was there any question about keeping the baby.
00:19:25
Speaker 3: Or were you Oh yeah, I'm keeping it.
00:19:27
Speaker 2: Tamra always knew she wanted to be a mom, so when she got pregnant as a teen with her first child, a boy, Tamora was happy.
00:19:35
Speaker 1: You're like, I'm ready to I'm read yep, I'm ready.
00:19:38
Speaker 11: I'm not getting rid of it.
00:19:39
Speaker 6: I'm ready.
00:19:40
Speaker 2: And when another baby, a daughter, came just two years later, and another one a few years after that, she knew she'd adore those little girls just as much.
00:19:52
Speaker 1: There was love to spare.
00:19:53
Speaker 3: I enjoyed being with my kids because they were my life.
00:19:58
Speaker 2: Tamra also knew that she would didn't need a man to raise the kids, just like her mom and grandmother before her.
00:20:04
Speaker 1: Who is your dad? My mother is my dad.
00:20:08
Speaker 3: She's always been my dad and will always.
00:20:11
Speaker 12: Be like it.
00:20:13
Speaker 2: Men would come and go, but Tamer's family would stay together. That's not to say that some men didn't stay a little while. One of them was Quincy Cross. Before they were both accused of murder, their names tied to a brutal crime. There were just two kids in their early twenties who fell in love. Quincy was from a town just across the border in Tennessee, about a forty minute drive southwest of Mayfield. Quincy had the kind of swagger that comes from being a young man without a care in the world. Unlike Tamra, who says she's always been more of a homebody, content on the couch with her kids, watching soap operas or Jeopardy, Quincy was about boy getting in trouble.
00:21:01
Speaker 11: We was drinking and drugging, hear me.
00:21:04
Speaker 1: Quincy says he and his friends would run the streets.
00:21:07
Speaker 11: It was selling drugs, It was hanging out, laid you know it was you know, of hanging out with female, a whole bunch of female, different females all the time. It was it was no kids, a whole bunch of kids. Things going on, you know what I'm saying. Like I said, drinking and drugging. Man was lose most of the time doing it all man doing what kids do.
00:21:27
Speaker 2: And those things usually landed Quincy in and out of jail. That's actually how Tamar and Quincy met. He was locked up in the same jail as Tammer's brother in Graves County, and in one of her visits, Tamra says she saw Quincy looking at her.
00:21:42
Speaker 1: He was cute, a little short. He's five to four, with big cheeks.
00:21:46
Speaker 2: And a warm, dimpled smile, and she remembers thinking, maybe I talk to him, So she did, and he turned out to be nice as well.
00:21:56
Speaker 1: He was friendly, cute, friendly, and funny.
00:21:59
Speaker 3: Quincy was a comic. Quincy was just a fun person. I enjoyed talking to him.
00:22:05
Speaker 1: And Quincy enjoyed Tamra.
00:22:07
Speaker 11: Timber had a nice heart. Camer had a nice heart. Man Temba was a friend before she was anything else. Man tim was. We was good to hang out with each other. Man she was a good person man for real.
00:22:20
Speaker 2: Tamarra was already pregnant when she got serious with Quincy. She didn't party, so they liked watching movies together, eating pizza. Quincy even moved in with Tamara and her mom for a bit. He was there when Tamara had to have an emergency c section and her youngest girl, Shade.
00:22:35
Speaker 11: Was born before she did. Oh man, I cried, I crad. I was soft man. I ain't gonna trip I crad. I shed some teiars right there. That was a beautiful thing. Yeah, that was a beautiful thing. That was bringing back some good.
00:22:51
Speaker 1: Memories right there, Tamra says Quincy. It was good with the kids.
00:22:58
Speaker 2: She even gave Shade his last name, even though he wasn't the biological dad.
00:23:04
Speaker 3: Even though he didn't have no kids, My kids were his kids.
00:23:09
Speaker 1: He didn't seem to mind the mess that comes with children.
00:23:12
Speaker 3: Literally before he got in the door, before he opened the door, he would change shirts because he knew that Beebe was gonna throw up.
00:23:22
Speaker 6: Yes.
00:23:23
Speaker 2: Phoebe is Shade's nickname with Yes, he was the best. Tamrasis Quincy loved Bebe and her whole family. He was even a pallbearer at her Grandma Doris's funeral. He was fully in her life.
00:23:38
Speaker 3: We were like best friends.
00:23:40
Speaker 2: But after a few years their relationship faded the way relationships do.
00:23:48
Speaker 11: I just had to go back home.
00:23:50
Speaker 1: Back home to Tennessee.
00:23:52
Speaker 11: I just wanted to go back home. Man, Makefield was Makefield is, you have one minute left? It's corrupt down. There are corrupt things long down now, and I figured would have me to come back home.
00:24:07
Speaker 2: Tamar and Quincy broke up around two thousand and five and lost contact for a bit, but he wasn't able to shake Mayfield off for long. A few years after the breakup, in two thousand and seven, he'd return to Kentucky, and even though he'd never get back together with Tamra, their names would be forever linked to each other and to Mayfield's most infamous murder.
00:24:34
Speaker 3: I got a print in two thousand toyo.
00:24:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was in there five years, eight months.
00:24:38
Speaker 3: It's two days, five years, eight months, two days.
00:24:41
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:24:44
Speaker 2: I'm sitting with Tamra at her mom's house in Mayfield. She's bold and bright, with shimmery makeup and colorful braided hair. Tamra says, since she was a kid. She's always had colorful hair. Today it's blue, her favorite. But inside camera is guarded, scarred by prison and the events that led her there.
00:25:07
Speaker 1: I used to be.
00:25:10
Speaker 3: Outgoing.
00:25:12
Speaker 1: I was always a positive one.
00:25:15
Speaker 3: Uh not no more, not like I used to Not like it used to be. It won't never be like it used to be because I can't get I won't never get that time back. I can't never get that time back. I'm taking away from my family for something I even do. If I knew what I know now, then it's been a whole different story. It's crazy when you come home and your kids. Is something wrong with your kids? You can't do anything?
00:26:05
Speaker 9: Could you?
00:26:05
Speaker 3: Locked up? It's hard, but I had to keep the faith because I wanted to go home, because if I didn't keep the faith, I probably wouldn't even be here now.
00:26:29
Speaker 2: I've spent the last two years traveling to Mayfield, talking to people there, sorting through hundreds of hours of law enforcement interviews and interrogations, court transcripts, private investigator findings, and records, trying to figure out if there's any truth to their claims of innocence.
00:26:48
Speaker 1: What would it be like to have your conviction cleared for you? What Oh great, Oh a great deal.
00:26:54
Speaker 3: I can't even get a job because of my conviction.
00:26:59
Speaker 1: What my choice is going?
00:27:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, I won't never get five years, eight months, and two days back, but I deserve something. I want my name clearly, and Jeff name, Cleary and Quincy.
00:27:10
Speaker 1: Out of jail, out of prison. That's all I want, clear my name.
00:27:19
Speaker 2: Two years of sifting through lies, rumors, and stories, picking out any discernible bits of truth, trying to figure out how they were accused in the first place. At times, it's been almost impossible to discern truth from rumor, and it's made me question who can I trust when so many people obscure the truth.
00:27:44
Speaker 1: Now, over the course.
00:27:45
Speaker 2: Of time, I have grown to trust one woman in particular, and she warned me from day one that this case was going to be a hard one.
00:27:54
Speaker 12: Good luck deciphering the fucking lies in this case. My apologies for cussing, but that's what it is. There are so many lies.
00:28:05
Speaker 1: That's after the break.
00:28:22
Speaker 2: In two thousand and four, Susan Gallbreath, the Kentucky housewife who you met at the top of the show, wrote journalist Tom Mangold, asking for help solving the Jessica current case. Almost two decades after that, a woman named Darrel Woolman would contact me and my team saying the man in prison for the crime had been wronged. Much like Susan, Dara is not a detective or a lawyer. She's not even from Mayfield. Yet she has dedicated years of her life to this case. But if Susan helped put Quincy Cross in prison, Dara is dead set on getting him out.
00:29:00
Speaker 12: I don't believe he was there, and I don't believe that he did it, and I don't believe he had anything to cover up, and it's just a gut failing.
00:29:10
Speaker 1: Has your intuition ever led you astray?
00:29:15
Speaker 12: Well?
00:29:15
Speaker 1: I mean, look at the fun towards updated.
00:29:17
Speaker 12: Yeah. Absolutely sorry. My intuition has has led me a lot of times astray.
00:29:28
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty one, she launched an endeavor aimed at helping people in prison.
00:29:34
Speaker 12: I started the Department of Collaborators. I really wanted to call it the Department of Correctors, but I thought like that was too county video. See, you know, I do not have a website. I do have a bank account.
00:29:46
Speaker 2: The Department of Collaborators a group of folks from all walks of life who volunteer their time to finding people they think have been wrongfully convicted and connecting them with folks like me who can give them a voice.
00:30:00
Speaker 12: A group of misfits that can't. I go to this case.
00:30:05
Speaker 2: Dearah got in touch with my colleague Jason Flamm, who's long worked in criminal justice reform, and he passed the case along to me. Darah has asked me point blank to not compare her to Susan Gallbreath, But the irony of it, all the similarities are not lost on me. I'd be crazy not to point them out. And one of them is that I am taken by Dara the way Tom was taken by Susan.
00:30:34
Speaker 1: Darah is a character.
00:30:36
Speaker 2: She's constantly calling and sending me voice messages at all hours.
00:30:42
Speaker 12: So anyway, again, I'm sorry for my monotone voice, talking like I have marbles in my goddamn mouth, but that's just the way I talk tonight.
00:30:53
Speaker 2: Darah is a born and bred Southerner who plays to every stereotype for laughs, like these are the kinds of phrases she's lines off with.
00:31:01
Speaker 12: God, bless you, I say, and fuck Nancy Grice.
00:31:11
Speaker 2: Darah grew up in Mississippi, but lives in a McMansion neighborhood outside of Nashville. Now. My producer, Rebecca and I went to visit in the summer of twenty twenty four. The jungle is a very nice jungle. Darah lives with her mom son and Ludacris.
00:31:30
Speaker 1: Hi, Luda, Chris, you're so cute.
00:31:32
Speaker 2: A dog, not the Rapper, A scruffy white terrier mutt who's always by her side.
00:31:37
Speaker 12: It doesn't identify as dogs.
00:31:39
Speaker 2: Dara is a striking woman in her forties with icy blue eyes and long blonde hair. As we walk past the foyer into what appears to be the sitting room, there are three huge.
00:31:51
Speaker 1: Paintings on the wall.
00:31:52
Speaker 2: What is this? Just you oil paintings of Dara in a revealing mini dress that her mother painted bab really enhanced. Dearra says, the southern blonde stick works. It leads people to underestimate her, but you shouldn't be fooled. She's tenacious and full of moral outrage over what she perceives as a deep injustice. And the proof of Dara's tenacity, where do you have all your documents and stuff?
00:32:23
Speaker 3: All them off?
00:32:24
Speaker 1: Is right downstairs?
00:32:25
Speaker 2: Oh, that's your office, Okay, not medi Dara's home office is a bright room jam packed with tons of memorabilia from the years, like Dolly Parton figurines, Kate Moss's mugshot, and of course documents, filing cabinets full of papers, and binders of CDs containing hours of court proceedings, security footage, interrogations, interviews, everything like emails between Susan and Tom wondering how did someone get her personal emails?
00:32:57
Speaker 1: Who was who was able to get these and some.
00:33:00
Speaker 12: Of special to be part of discovery. I mean she was a witness.
00:33:04
Speaker 9: She was a witness.
00:33:05
Speaker 2: That makes sense, and she's giving me full access. Dara hasn't collected all of this alone. In the department of collaborators. There's a person who gathers all the data, one who organizes it, and there's Dara, the connector, staying in touch with everyone involved. And it's grown past a little volunteer job. Dera says, it's become personal.
00:33:30
Speaker 12: The truth of the matter is is that I fell in love with Quincy's family. They've fallen in love with me.
00:33:39
Speaker 2: And with all the other people who've been touched by this case.
00:33:42
Speaker 12: Camera Jeffrey, you know like, that's the truth of when it comes to Quincy Cross's case. It's not about solving the murder of Jessica Kern because at the end of the day, too in La, I think I can fucking solve it. I'm just trying to get a man's wrong blame prison now, and I'm trying to get the other two good. It's exonerated.
00:34:17
Speaker 2: So that's what Dara wants, and what I want is to get it right. For a few reasons, I'm a white girl from New York parachuting into this community in the South where the victim and most of the accused are black. I'm painfully aware of the stereotype white lady saves the day, Susan Dara, and we've heard this from people in town who are wary of outsiders. I don't want to give them more reasons to distrust people like me. On top of that, a few years ago, I got it really wrong covering what I was convinced was a wrongful conviction out of Alliance, Ohio. I dedicated a year of my life and twenty podcast episodes trying to find out if a man was in prison unjustly, only to learn midway that he'd most likely done it, and my instincts were wrong. A lot of listeners commended my honesty, but I also got slammed for hurting the victim's family by dragging all this up. I felt like a failure and went on hiatus for a few months, dug a hole and burrowed in it, licking my wounds. My mistake is always in the back of my mind. But I'm not the first journalist with doubts about their own work, and it turns out I'm not the first journalist with doubts about the convictions in this case. When Susan Golbreth died in twenty eighteen, Tom Mangled wasn't able to fly from England for the funeral, but he wrote Susan's family an email expressing his condolences. He called Susan a quote life force. He wrote that Susan's enthusiasm for the investigation infected him and eventually infected law enforcement, and it was quote wholly because of her drive and cunning that the perpetrators were caught and sentenced.
00:36:18
Speaker 1: Publicly.
00:36:18
Speaker 2: Tom was and continues to be certain that the case Susan helped bring forward, and the one he covered for years was not only right but righteous. But privately I found a different story, one that plants the seed of doubt.
00:36:36
Speaker 1: This is from Susan to Tom and.
00:36:39
Speaker 2: Sitting with my producer Rebecca going through hundreds of pages of documents we got from Darra and from court filings. They include years of Tom Mangle's emails from Susan, law enforcement and many other people in Mayfield.
00:36:55
Speaker 6: This emails between Tom Mangel and Lacey Gates, a friend of Susan Galbraith.
00:36:58
Speaker 7: Yeah, I thought she was working with Mangled and galbrit.
00:37:02
Speaker 2: These specific emails are from around the time Tom was preparing to release yet another piece on Susan, four years after Quincy, Tamra and Jeff were convicted. It's the radio documentary you heard earlier from the BBC titled Something Rotten in Mayfield. In it, he rehashes the story of Susan helping defind Jessica's killers, and he features Victoria Caldwell retelling her version of events. Yet this is an email he sent to Susan's friend a few months before the piece aired.
00:37:36
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
00:37:40
Speaker 2: This is from Tom to Lacey in twenty twelve. January twenty twelve, Lacy I'm just being to wonder, this is but a tiny worm of an idea in my wine soaked brain that there is a teeny weeny, it'sy bitsy chance that we've got this whole fucking murder story wrong and that there may have been a huge miscarriage of Justine, a renowned journalist talking about a case that he helped solve that went all the way to the Kentucky Attorney General that sent six people to prison, and he's saying, there's an itsy bitsy chance that they got this whole fucking murder story wrong.
00:38:28
Speaker 1: This season on Graves County. I mean, you should hear all the stuff that goes around, and you know some of it might be as true as it comes. You just can't never tell what's rammored and what's not.
00:38:43
Speaker 2: You look so for.
00:38:44
Speaker 3: Thinned faking those kings rocking in the chair and telling their lie.
00:38:50
Speaker 1: They accused a lot of innocent people. They hurt their families, they hurt their friends hips.
00:38:56
Speaker 3: Don't let nobody ever tell you get closure, because you'll always miss a person like that.
00:39:01
Speaker 10: The rest of your live.
00:39:03
Speaker 2: So it sounds like a lot of people have come forward saying I know who did this, but no one has said who did it?
00:39:09
Speaker 11: That's correct.
00:39:10
Speaker 4: Why I don't know some of them that I've dealt, whether it's involved in this or perpetual liars.
00:39:15
Speaker 10: So I did not know her, and I did not kill her or raid or burn or any of that other stuff that y'all said, Marka, y'all gotta work the hell up.
00:39:23
Speaker 9: Bad things happens to good people and small towns.
00:39:34
Speaker 2: Braves County is a production of Lava for Good in association with Signal Company Number One. This show is written and produced by me Maggie Freeling and senior producer Rebecca Ibara. Jason Flamm, Jeff Kempler, and Kevin Burtis are executive producers. Our editor is Martina Abraham's Ilunga. Dania Suleman is our fact checker. Sound design and mixing by Joe Plord. Music created by Wrench. Our theme song is the Gangstagrass version of The One Who's Holding the Star by Leo Schofield and Kevin Herrick.
00:40:07
Speaker 1: Darrel Wolman is investigative producer.
00:40:10
Speaker 2: Our head of marketing and Operations is Jeff clyburn is Ismay Guarderama 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 for you to keep up with in this series, so for a detailed list of characters, please go to our show notes
