Gone South

In 1999, two teenage girls, J.B. Beasley and Tracie Hawlett, were found shot in the trunk of a Mazda in Ozark, Alabama, a small town in the Wiregrass region of the Deep South. With no suspect and a police department already accused of corruption, locals suspected a cover-up. Twenty years later, genetic genealogy led to Coley McCraney, a Dothan truck driver and church deacon with no criminal record. Journalist Matt Kessler spent years investigating the case and reporting on the trial. His new book, The Wiregrass, argues McCraney may be innocent.This week on Gone South, Kessler walks us through the case: a contaminated crime scene, a missing car, thousands of undigitized files, and a whistleblower cop’s allegations. He also shares his own theory of what happened that night, and why he believes DNA alone isn’t enough to convict a man of murder.Subscribe to our newsletter: ⁠https://jedlipinski.substack.com/⁠ Connect with Jed Lipinski:⁠https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/

It started with a stolen parrot named Mango, who liked to dance to Doja Cat. When reporter Aidan McCahill wrote a quick, quirky story about the theft for The Advocate, he had no idea it would lead him down a monthslong rabbit hole into Magnolia Wilds, a Louisiana animal preserve already under fire from federal regulators — and its founder, Gabe Ligon, who'd just been arrested at a Texas airport on a felony theft charge.What Aidan found was a menagerie of chaos: porcupines and capybaras escaping their enclosures, animals mauled and trampled to death, kids bitten by otters during $215 swim sessions, and employees quietly bringing kangaroos and lynxes home at night. Behind it all was Ligon himself — a libertarian showman who insisted he loved his animals even as the USDA, his business partners, and his own former staff told Aidan a very different story.Subscribe to our newsletter: ⁠https://jedlipinski.substack.com/⁠ Connect with Jed Lipinski:⁠https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/

Part One left off with detectives certain that groundskeeper Brandon Nodier killed pet cemetery owner Dorothy Thompson — but unable to prove it. In Part Two, we dig into an even wilder theory: that Dorothy's own mother, Grace, may have shot two of Dorothy's husbands dead on the cemetery grounds. Because decades earlier, Grace had already gotten away with killing once — fleeing an insane asylum, a Kansas City murder charge, and a fortune in missing gambling money to reinvent herself as a New Orleans flower-shop owner and hymn composer.Then, 24 years after Dorothy's murder went cold, an anonymous phone call cracks the case wide open. Detective John Doran hears from two men with chilling, firsthand accounts of what really happened to Dorothy Thompson — and sets a plan in motion to catch her killer.Subscribe to our newsletter: ⁠https://jedlipinski.substack.com/⁠ Connect with Jed Lipinski:⁠https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/

In 1985, two fishermen pulled a body wrapped in 200 pounds of chains from the Mississippi River. It was Dorothy Thompson, 63, who ran a strange and beloved roadside attraction outside New Orleans called the Azalea Original Pet Cemetery — final resting place for thousands of dogs, cats, and the occasional cheetah. Dorothy's disappearance opened up a murder investigation that quickly ran into a problem: almost everyone around her had a motive.There was a groundskeeper who'd allegedly swindled her out of her property days before she vanished. Rumors that Dorothy herself had killed two of her four husbands, both found dead on the cemetery grounds. And a mother, Grace, whose own past in Kansas City hinted she might know a thing or two about getting away with murder. In Part One of this two-part episode, we dig into the tangled, decades-long history of one family's blood-soaked pet cemetery.Subscribe to our newsletter: ⁠https://jedlipinski.substack.com/⁠ Connect with Jed Lipinski:⁠https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/

In 1982, 16-year-old Roxanne Sharp was raped and murdered in the woods outside Covington, Louisiana. Her case went cold for over 40 years, derailed early on by a serial killer's false confession. Then two Louisiana State Police officers walked into radio host Charles Dowdy's studio with a pitch: help us keep this case alive. The result was Charles's first true-crime podcast, Who Killed Roxanne?, made in real-time alongside an active police investigation.One year after the show aired, police arrested four men in connection with Roxanne's murder. Charles tells us how a small-town radio show host ended up standing at a press conference that closed a four-decade-old case — and what it's like to help solve the very story you set out to tell.Subscribe to our newsletter: ⁠https://jedlipinski.substack.com/⁠ Connect with Jed Lipinski:⁠https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/

Part One left off with Jema Heffernan taking in a man named Javon Donahue — and Javon nearly strangling her to death. In Part Two, that single act of violence hardens into a decade-long "hostage relationship": Javon controls her money, her car, her ability to leave, and every time she manages to get away, he finds her.In 2017, after a four-hour standoff that ends with Javon forcing the gun into her own hand, Jema shoots him, and survives being shot herself. What follows is a botched cover-up, a shallow grave, and a trial where prosecutors argue that a decade of documented abuse doesn't excuse the killing. Jema is convicted and sentenced to 10 years. Justine van der Leun tells us what happened next, including the day, seven years later, she was there to pick Jema up.Subscribe to our newsletter: ⁠https://jedlipinski.substack.com/⁠ Connect with Jed Lipinski:⁠https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/⁠

Lloyd Lockridge:Journalist Justine van der Leun set out to find the untold stories of women serving murder sentences after surviving years of abuse — women whose only official record reads "guilty," with no mention of what came before. She mailed 10,000 letters to incarcerated women across the country and got back more than a thousand replies. One came from Jema Heffernan, a mother of three serving 10 years for killing her husband, Javon Donahue.Jema's childhood in a military family took a dark turn after she was raped at 13 — and her small Missouri town turned on her, not her attacker. Years later, she took in a man freshly out of prison as a favor to a friend, never imagining he'd become a father figure to her daughter, and then the man who nearly strangled her to death in her own living room. In Part One of this two-part episode, Jema tells us how a "roommate situation" spiraled into a relationship she never chose.Subscribe to our newsletter: ⁠https://jedlipinski.substack.com/⁠ Connect with Jed Lipinski:⁠https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/

In the mid-1960s, McDonald's sued a tiny Mobile, Alabama fast-food chain called Colonel Dixie — over golden arches, green sidewalks, red and white trash cans, and a stolen operations manual. Colonel Dixie won on the trademark claim and went on to become a beloved local institution, famous for the Dixie Dog. But the brand still carries a whiff of scandal, because in 1983 its co-founder, Paul Leverett, was convicted of hiring a hitman to murder his wife.Elizabeth "Liz" Leverett was killed while her husband drove their children around Mobile in a carefully constructed alibi. She had decided that week to file for divorce. The case went cold — until a burglary across town led investigators to a pawn shop owner, a stolen diamond hidden in a necktie, and an x-ray taken years earlier. Lagniappe journalist Kevin Lee tells us how it unraveled.Subscribe to our newsletter: ⁠https://jedlipinski.substack.com/⁠ Connect with Jed Lipinski:⁠https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/

Jacklean Davis was the first Black woman to make homicide detective in the New Orleans Police Department. She grew up in Central City, inspired by a Black patrol officer known on the street as Christy Love, and she rose fast — cracking the 1986 case of a killer who had been hiding in plain sight, presenting himself to detectives as a witness. Ebony asked whether she was the best homicide detective in the city's history. Whoopi Goldberg looked into playing her.Her colleagues shredded her case files and stuffed dog waste in her desk. Then, in 2002, a dispute over a $5,000 security detail at an Essence Fest after-party became a federal extortion case, and Jackie went to prison in Tallahassee. Journalist Ethan Brown, who spent months with her and thousands of pages of her records, tells us how her rise and fall tracked the NOPD's own — and why a prosecutor's anonymous internet comments would later cast a shadow over her conviction.

Len Davis was a New Orleans police officer known in the Desire projects as Robocop and the Desire Terrorist. In 1994 he ordered the murder of Kim Groves, a 32-year-old mother of three who had filed a brutality complaint against him — and he's since been called the most corrupt cop in the city's history. What brought him down was Operation Shattered Shield, and at the center of it was an undercover FBI agent posing as a high-level drug dealer, known only as J.J.His name is Juan Jackson. He was one of roughly 300 Black agents in an FBI of 11,000 when he entered the Academy in 1983, trained under Joe Pistone of Donnie Brasco fame, and spent two decades undercover — as a hitman for hire in Chinatown, an arms dealer, a money launderer, and a drug kingpin in Waterbury, Connecticut. He tells us how he got Len Davis to strip to his underwear in a wired hotel room at the New Orleans Hilton, and why, testifying for two and a half weeks, he couldn't stop smiling.Subscribe to our newsletter: ⁠https://jedlipinski.substack.com/⁠ Connect with Jed Lipinski:⁠https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/

In 2019, John Fenley was 39, newly separated, and living in one of his mother's rental apartments in Provo, Utah. Searching LoopNet for the biggest building at the lowest price, he found a 220,000-square-foot warehouse on 17 acres in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, listed at $375,000. He assumed the price was a typo. He had never been to Arkansas. He bought it anyway — and then bought Murfie, a bankrupt Wisconsin startup, inheriting roughly a million CDs belonging to strangers.What followed was copper thieves, a pandemic lockdown that stranded his shipping containers, a running battle with Pine Bluff's zoning office, and a feud with Go Forward Pine Bluff, the tax-funded nonprofit he believed was blocking him at every turn. Then an $890,000 windfall landed in his bank account, and he bought 74 parcels at a tax auction, making him one of the largest landowners in town. Writer Max Read dubbed him "The Man Who Bought Pine Bluff, Arkansas." Four years later, he's still there.Subscribe to our newsletter: ⁠https://jedlipinski.substack.com/⁠ Connect with Jed Lipinski:⁠https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/

In 1996, a pipe bomb packed with masonry nails exploded in Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park, killing two people and injuring more than a hundred. The FBI's first suspect was Richard Jewell, the security guard who'd found the bag and helped clear the area. By the time he was cleared 88 days later, investigators had no idea who they were looking for. Columnist John Archibald had covered the Olympics that summer, never imagining the bomber would come to his own city.On January 29, 1998, a bomb hidden in a FedEx box exploded outside a Birmingham abortion clinic, killing an off-duty police officer and gravely wounding nurse Emily Lyons. This time someone saw the bomber walk away — a UAB student named Jermaine Hughes, who followed him to a gray Nissan pickup with North Carolina plates. The name that came back was Eric Robert Rudolph. Within hours he vanished into the Nantahala National Forest, where he'd stay for five years while locals put up signs reading "Run, Rudolph, Run."Subscribe to our newsletter: ⁠https://jedlipinski.substack.com/⁠ Connect with Jed Lipinski:⁠https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/

In October 1997, a vault supervisor named David Ghantt loaded $17 million into a van and drove out of a Loomis Fargo warehouse in Charlotte, North Carolina. It was the second-largest cash heist in American history. It took him about an hour, working alone. He stole two of the facility's three security tapes. The third one kept rolling.What followed was five months of botched getaways, wild spending sprees, an FBI wiretap, and a murder plot hatched at a Halloween party. Reporter Jeff Diamant, who covered the case for the Charlotte Observer and interviewed nearly every co-conspirator, tells the story of the crime that came to be known as the Hillbilly Heist — and how a crew that studied Goodfellas managed to ignore every lesson in it.Subscribe to our newsletter: ⁠https://jedlipinski.substack.com/⁠ Connect with Jed Lipinski:⁠https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/

Paul Skalnik was a cop turned con artist turned jailhouse informant. Over two decades, he provided testimony or information in more than 40 criminal cases, trading confessions he claimed to have overheard for reduced sentences and early release. Prosecutors in Florida's Pinellas County knew what he was. They used him anyway. Four of the men he testified against were sent to death row. At least one of them, Jim Dailey, is almost certainly innocent — and after more than 30 years, he's still there.Journalist Pam Colloff spent 20 years at Texas Monthly before joining ProPublica and the New York Times Magazine, where her investigation into Skalnik won the National Magazine Award and helped halt an execution. In this episode, Pam tells the story of a con man who married nine women, posed as an oilman, a lawyer, and an FBI agent — and discovered that his most profitable scam was the criminal justice system itself.Pam Colloff's new book is "Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast" https://www.amazon.com/dp/0593230868?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallbackSubscribe to our newsletter: ⁠https://jedlipinski.substack.com/⁠ Connect with Jed Lipinski:⁠https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/

n 1985, Charles McCrory was convicted of murdering his wife in their small Alabama hometown — a brutal crime scene with no blood on him, no witnesses, and no physical evidence tying him to the house. What sent him to prison for life was a celebrity forensic dentist who testified that two small marks on Julie's arm were a bite mark made by Charles's teeth.Forty years later, that same dentist has recanted. The science behind bite-mark evidence has been thoroughly discredited. And there are reasons to believe another man — one the police knew about from the beginning — should have been the prime suspect all along. Speaking with Charles himself from inside an Alabama prison, and with his attorney Mark Loudon-Brown, this episode asks how a wrongful conviction can outlast the evidence that built it.Subscribe to our newsletter: ⁠https://jedlipinski.substack.com/⁠ Connect with Jed Lipinski:⁠https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/

When the federal case against Jim Sullivan was dismissed in 1992, Lita McClinton's family thought they'd lost their last chance at justice. They were wrong — but it would take another fourteen years, a tip from a receptionist in a Texas refinery town, an international manhunt, and a four-year fugitive run through Costa Rica and Thailand before Lita's killer finally stood trial.In the second of a two-part series, writer Deb Miller Landau picks up the story where Part 1 left off: with a wealthy man getting away with murder. She walks us through the trucker who admitted to pulling the trigger, the prosecutor whose phone call may have tipped off the killer, the resort in Cha-Am where the FBI finally caught up with Jim Sullivan, and the verdict that came nearly twenty years after Lita McClinton answered her doorbell.Deb Landau's book is "A Devil Went Down to Georgia: Race, Power, Privilege, and the Murder of Lita McClinton​":https://www.amazon.com/Devil-Went-Down-Georgia-Privilege/dp/1639366830Subscribe to our newsletter: ⁠https://jedlipinski.substack.com/⁠ Connect with Jed Lipinski:⁠https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/⁠

In January 1987, Lita McClinton answered her doorbell in one of Atlanta's wealthiest neighborhoods and was shot dead by a man holding a white flower box with a pink rose. She was 35, the daughter of one of Atlanta's most prominent Black families, and on her way to court that morning for a pivotal hearing in her divorce from her white millionaire ex-husband, Jim Sullivan. Police were sure Jim had ordered the hit. They just couldn't prove it.Writer Deb Miller Landau first reported on the case for Atlanta Magazine in 2004 — and never let it go. In this episode of Gone South, she walks us through her years-long investigation: an interracial marriage that began in 1970s Macon, a $2 million mansion on Palm Beach, a sloppy hit, a payphone call traced to a Georgia rest stop, and the long, twisting road to justice for Lita McClinton.Deb Landau's book is "A Devil Went Down to Georgia: Race, Power, Privilege, and the Murder of Lita McClinton​":https://www.amazon.com/Devil-Went-Down-Georgia-Privilege/dp/1639366830Subscribe to our newsletter: ⁠https://jedlipinski.substack.com/⁠ Connect with Jed Lipinski:⁠https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/⁠

In 1954, Dallas executed a 19-year-old Black man named Tommy Lee Walker for the rape and murder of a young white woman near Love Field. Walker had no criminal record, eight alibi witnesses placing him across town at the time, and he recanted his confession the moment he was returned to his cell. None of it mattered. Three months after his arrest, a jury sentenced him to die in the electric chair.Seventy years later, Innocence Project attorney Chris Fabricant set out to do something that had never been done before: exonerate a man who'd already been put to death. Jed talks with Fabricant about the coerced confession, the junk-science polygraph, the racial panic that swept Dallas in 1953, and what it took to finally clear Tommy Lee Walker's name.Subscribe to our newsletter: ⁠https://jedlipinski.substack.com/⁠ Connect with Jed Lipinski:⁠https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/

In 2016, nine men tied to the College of Charleston's Kappa Alpha fraternity were arrested in what police initially described as a 40,000-pill Xanax bust. The real number was closer to three and a half million, along with cocaine, LSD, weed, luxury watches, a fleet of cars, and a grenade launcher. The crew had spent years pressing counterfeit pills in rented beach houses and shipping them across the country in Skittles bags, fueling an unregulated drug economy that ran straight through one of the most beautiful college campuses in America.Jed talks with journalist Max Marshall, author of the book "Among the Bros," about how he embedded himself in this world, his hundreds of hours of late-night phone calls with an imprisoned ringleader, and what the case reveals about American fraternities and the lives of the men inside them. Max Marshall's book is "Among the Bros: A Fraternity Crime Story" https://shorturl.at/ynPGOSubscribe to our newsletter: ⁠https://jedlipinski.substack.com/⁠ Connect with Jed Lipinski:⁠https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/

When Australian comedian John Safran flew to Rankin County, Mississippi to confront a white nationalist named Richard Barrett with a surprise DNA test, he had no idea the man would be killed eleven months later — by a 22-year-old Black neighbor he'd hired to do yard work. Safran returned to Mississippi to write his first true-crime book, expecting a clear-cut story about racism and a perfect victim. What he found instead was something stranger: a town built on things left unspoken, a killer who scammed him for gift cards from jail, and a relationship between victim and killer that defied the assumptions he'd brought with him. Jed talks with Safran about his book "Murder in Mississippi," the ethics of crime reporting, and what an outsider notices about the South that the rest of us miss. John Safran's book is "Murder in Mississippi"  https://www.amazon.com/Murder-Mississippi-John-Safran/dp/034913426X Subscribe to our newsletter:  ⁠https://jedlipinski.substack.com/⁠  Connect with Jed Lipinski:⁠ https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/⁠ https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/⁠ ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/

In 2003, Dennis Perry was convicted of the 1985 murders of Harold and Thelma Swain at Rising Daughter Baptist Church in Spring Bluff, Georgia. He was innocent. He would spend the next 20 years, six months, and ten days behind bars.This episode of Gone South tells the Georgia Church Murders story through Dennis's eyes — from his arrest and interrogation by detective Dale Bundy, to his trial, his two life sentences, and the years he spent inside Jimmy Autry State Prison waiting for someone to believe him.It's also the story of Brenda Perry, the woman who knew Dennis his whole life, married him in a prison chapel, and never stopped fighting for his freedom. After reporter Josh Sharpe of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution exposed the truth and the Georgia Innocence Project secured his release, Dennis was fully exonerated. This is what survival looks like. Subscribe to our newsletter:https://jedlipinski.substack.com/ Connect with Jed Lipinski:https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/

In 1985, Harold and Thelma Swain were shot and killed during Bible study at Rising Daughter Baptist Church in Spring Bluff, Georgia. The double murder went unsolved for years — until a man named Dennis Perry was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to two life terms for a crime he almost certainly didn't commit. In 2019, Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Josh Sharpe began investigating the case for the Georgia Innocence Project. What he found was damning: a botched investigation, unreliable witnesses, and a key suspect — Eric Sparre — whose alibi turned out to be completely fabricated. This episode of Gone South follows Sharpe's six-month investigation into the Georgia Church Murders, the wrongful conviction of Dennis Perry, and the evidence pointing to the man many believe actually pulled the trigger. Based in part on Sharpe's book, The Man No One Believed. Subscribe to our newsletter:⁠https://jedlipinski.substack.com/⁠ Connect with Jed Lipinski: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/

New Orleans. 1918. A killer the papers call “The Axeman” breaks into homes at night, mostly targeting Italian grocers, and attacks with an axe taken from inside the house. No robbery. No clear motive. Just terror. The case is never officially solved.In this episode of Gone South, former Times-Picayune editor James Karst walks Jed Lipinski through what the archives actually show: the earliest attacks, the infamous Axeman letter demanding jazz music, and the overlooked suspect Joseph Mumfre, a Black Hand linked extortionist whose name keeps resurfacing. Subscribe to our newsletter:⁠https://jedlipinski.substack.com/⁠ Connect with Jed Lipinski: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/

A unaccredited private school in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana became a national sensation when its students began landing acceptances at Harvard, Stanford, and other Ivy League universities. The viral videos were inspiring. The story seemed almost too good to be true. It was.New York Times reporters Katie Benner and Erica Green investigated T.M. Landry and uncovered a years-long college admissions fraud: fabricated transcripts, invented extracurriculars, and personal essays built on trauma the students never experienced. Behind it all was the school's charasmatic and manipulative founder, Mike Landry.This episode explores the rise and fall of T.M. Landry, the college admissions scandal it exposed, and who really pays the price when a system built to exclude finally gets gamed. Subscribe to our newsletter:⁠https://jedlipinski.substack.com/⁠ Connect with Jed Lipinski: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/ Katie Benner and Erica L. Green's book is "Miracle Children: Race, Education and a True Story of False Promises": https://www.amazon.com/Miracle-Children-Education-Story-Promises/dp/1250759102

Patterson Hood grew up in Florence, Alabama — a deeply conservative, Bible Belt town where his father was quietly making history. David Hood was a session bassist for the Muscle Shoals rhythm section, recording with Aretha Franklin, the Rolling Stones, and Wilson Pickett at a time when it wasn't always safe to go to dinner with the artists you were recording with. Patterson learned early not to mention his dad's job at school. When people asked what church his father attended, he changed the subject.Decades later, Patterson co-founded Drive-By Truckers — a band that has spent 25 years wrestling with Southern identity, racism, abuse of power, and what it means to be American. In this conversation, he talks about growing up progressive in the Deep South, why he thinks a Black and white soul band should replace the Confederate flag as the symbol of the South, and what he hopes listeners will make of his songs 20 years from now. Subscribe to our newsletter:⁠https://jedlipinski.substack.com/⁠ Connect with Jed Lipinski: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/

Before the Civil Rights Movement's major victories of the 1960s, a pro wrestler named Sputnik Monroe was already integrating Memphis, Tennessee one arena at a time. Born Roscoe Brumbaugh in Dodge City, Kansas, Monroe became one of the most beloved figures in Memphis wrestling history, counting Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash among his friends and fans. This episode of Gone South tells the story of how Monroe — a white heel wrestler with a bleached streak in his hair and a gift for provocation — used his fame to desegregate the Ellis Auditorium, challenge Jim Crow on Beale Street, and form one of the first interracial tag teams in the South. He was arrested repeatedly for socializing in Black nightclubs. He didn't stop. Featuring interviews with music historian Robert Gordon, wrestling journalist Steve Johnson, and Jerry Phillips (son of Sun Studio founder Sam Phillips) plus archival audio of Monroe himself. A story about race, rebellion, and one of the most unlikely civil rights figures the South ever produced. Check out Robert Gordon's book It Came From Memphis https://tinyurl.com/yys8pxdhSteve Johnson has written many fine books about wrestling history, includingThe Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame: The Heelshttps://tinyurl.com/28h6nacm​Follow Jerry Phillips on Facebookhttps://www.facebook.com/p/Jerry-Phillips-61559154401992/ Subscribe to our newsletter:⁠https://jedlipinski.substack.com/⁠ Connect with Jed Lipinski: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/

After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was a city of wreckage, rumors, and strange things washing up where they didn’t belong. When transplant Skip Henderson buys a battered table lamp at a post-storm rummage sale, along with a set of drums and an Allen Iverson jersey, the seller casually drops a chilling line: “That’s a Nazi lampshade.” At first, it feels like just another piece of post-Katrina chaos. But when Skip takes a closer look at the lampshade’s translucent, veined material, the object starts to haunt him. He ships it from friend to friend, trying to get it out of his life until it lands with veteran journalist Mark Jacobson, who can’t let the mystery go. In this episode of Gone South, host Jed Lipinski follows the lampshade’s bizarre journey from the Lower Ninth Ward to DNA labs, Holocaust institutions, and a decades-old urban legend where the truth may be even harder to pin down than the myth. Subscribe to our newsletter:⁠https://jedlipinski.substack.com/⁠ Connect with Jed Lipinski: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/ Follow Marc Jacobson on Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/markjacobson48/Marc's book: The Lampshade: A Holocaust Detective Story from Buchenwald to New Orleanshttps://www.amazon.com/Lampshade-Holocaust-Detective-Buchenwald-Orleans/dp/1416566287/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

In 1903, South Carolina’s most powerful journalist is gunned down in broad daylight, and the shooter is the lieutenant governor. Narciso Gonzalez, editor of The State newspaper in Columbia, spent years attacking the Tillman machine: “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman, the architect of South Carolina’s post-Reconstruction political order, and Ben’s volatile nephew James Tillman, a rising politician with a reputation for drinking, gambling, and vendettas. On January 19, 1903, that feud turns into a street-corner assassination outside the State House. From Red Shirts intimidation and the Hamburg massacre, to Ben Tillman’s state-run liquor “dispensary” system and the riots it sparked, to a murder trial engineered to let the shooter walk, we trace the bloodline politics and raw violence behind the killing with writer Jack Hitt (This American Life, Uncivil). It’s a story about press power, political revenge, and how a state’s myths, and its laws, get written when the loudest voice in the room can be silenced with a gun. Subscribe to our newsletter:⁠https://jedlipinski.substack.com/⁠ Connect with Jed Lipinski: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/ Listen to Jack Hitt on This American Life https://www.thisamericanlife.org/archive?contributor=8770Read some of Jack Hitt's best magazine stories on Longform.orghttps://longform.org/archive/writers/jack-hitt

New Orleans is no stranger to political scandal, but the federal case against Mayor LaToya Cantrell isn’t a classic bribes-and-kickbacks story. It’s a story about a relationship, power, and the alleged misuse of public resources. Times-Picayune columnist Stephanie Grace traces Cantrell’s rise from post-Katrina neighborhood leader to the first woman elected mayor, and what went wrong in her second term. Prosecutors say Cantrell and NOPD officer Jeffrey Vappie, her security guard, used city funds and access to a city-owned apartment overlooking Jackson Square and official travel to spend time together, then tried to cover it up. Cantrell has denied wrongdoing. Subscribe to our newsletter:⁠https://jedlipinski.substack.com/⁠ Connect with Jed Lipinski: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/

Most people know the phrase “Remember the Alamo.” Fewer know what actually happened there or why Texans still fight over it. Jed Lipinski talks with journalist and historian Bryan Burrough, co-author of Forget the Alamo, about the real story behind the 1836 battle and how the Alamo became a political myth. They trace the Texas Revolution back to Mexican Texas, American immigration, and the central conflict over slavery, then unpack how figures like Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, and William Travis were turned into legend, and why revisionist history has sparked backlash ever since. Subscribe to our newsletter:https://jedlipinski.substack.com/Connect with Jed Lipinski:https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/ ​Bryan Burrough is the co-author of Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Mythhttps://www.amazon.com/Forget-Alamo-Rise-Fall-American/dp/1984880098

Murder at the U follows the murder of Bryan Pata, senior defensive tackle for the University of Miami. More than a decade later, with Bryan’s family desperately searching for answers, the case found its way to a team of ESPN reporters. Now, a suspect has emerged, and he is none other than one of Pata’s teammates. This new season tells the story of a shocking, high-profile murder investigation and what happened when a team of reporters tried to get to the bottom of who killed Bryan Pata.

In 2012, historian Karen Cox is digging through the Mississippi State Archives when an archivist tells her, “If you want to know about Natchez, you need to look at Goat Castle.” Cox expects a ghost story. What she finds is stranger and darker: a 1932 murder that turned into a national Southern Gothic spectacle. The victim was a reclusive former Southern belle. The suspects were her eccentric neighbors, a failed concert pianist and an aging socialite, living in a decaying mansion overrun with goats. Newspapers dubbed them the Wild Man and the Goat Woman, and tourists flocked to Natchez to gawk. But beneath the spectacle was the real tragedy: Emily Burns, a young Black woman forced into the story and ultimately blamed, while the white suspects became local celebrities. Sent to Mississippi’s brutal Parchman prison, Emily was erased from the public record. Cox set out to write her back in and to expose what Goat Castle reveals about justice in the Jim Crow South. Subscribe to our newsletter:https://jedlipinski.substack.com/Connect with Jed Lipinski:https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/Karen Cox is the author of Goat Castle: A True Story of Murder, Race, and the Gothic South:https://www.amazon.com/Goat-Castle-Story-Murder-Gothic/dp/1469661438

At a 2024 House Judiciary oversight hearing, an exchange about racially motivated violence goes viral after FBI chief Kash Patel appears to stumble over a question about the 2015 Charleston church massacre. The moment sparks a grim question: how does a tragedy this defining slip out of view? Jed Lipinski revisits what happened at Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church when 21-year-old Dylann Roof sat in on Bible study, then opened fire and killed nine Black parishioners. With New Yorker writer Jelani Cobb and Charleston native Jack Hitt, we trace the deeper history Roof targeted: Denmark Vesey, the long shadow of Confederate “heritage,” and the symbols that still shape South Carolina’s public life. From the Confederate flag’s removal to today’s backlash, this is a story about memory, denial, and what the country chooses to learn, or forget. Subscribe to our newsletter:⁠https://jedlipinski.substack.com/⁠ Connect with Jed Lipinski: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/

On September 9, 2023, a road-rage encounter in South Carolina turns into a nine-mile chase and ends with 33-year-old Scott Spivey dead on a rural back road. Police quickly call it self-defense under Stand Your Ground. But Scott’s sister, Jennifer Foley, doesn’t buy it. As the case is closed and sealed off, she starts building her own timeline, until a civil lawsuit forces the release of the evidence file: thousands of documents, photos, body-cam and dash-cam footage, and recorded phone calls that suggest the official story was shaped from the start. Wall Street Journal reporter Valerie Bauerlein and attorney Mark Tinsley follow the trail into a world of conflicts of interest, missing (or buried) evidence, and a system that treats the shooter as the victim. Subscribe to our newsletter:⁠https://jedlipinski.substack.com/⁠ Connect with Jed Lipinski: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/

Wall Street Journal reporter Valerie Bauerlein, who covered the Alex Murdaugh murder trial gavel to gavel, explains why the most revealing part of the Murdaugh saga isn’t Alex at all. It’s the 100-year legal dynasty that made him possible. We go back to Hampton County, South Carolina, a post–Civil War “burned county” built to enforce White Rule, and follow three generations of Murdaugh power: Randolph Murdaugh Sr., the solicitor who learned how to bend the system; “Buster” Murdaugh, a charismatic, ruthless prosecutor tied to bootlegging and alleged jury tampering; and Randolph Murdaugh III, the smoother operator who kept the machine humming, until cameras and modern technology started capturing what used to happen in the shadows. From the family’s early courtroom tactics and railroad lawsuits to the 2019 boat crash that killed Mallory Beach and the frantic hospital damage-control captured on security footage, this is the story of how a dynasty built its power and how it finally collapsed from the inside. Subscribe to our newsletter:https://jedlipinski.substack.com/ Connect with Jed Lipinski: ​https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/

Gone South, the Edward R. Murrow award-winning podcast, is back for a fifth season. Join host Jed Lipinski as he investigates new southern-based stories each week.

Nearly six decades after Pauline Pusser’s murder, Tennessee investigators finally reveal what really happened. The TBI’s new findings suggest Walking Tall sheriff Buford Pusser staged the ambush that made him famous — and may have killed his wife. Host Jed Lipinski follows the fallout in Adamsville as investigators, locals, and lifelong believers wrestle over one question: what happens when a legend falls? Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

In 1967, Sheriff Buford Pusser said gunmen ambushed his car, killing his wife Pauline and inspiring the Walking Tall legend. Nearly six decades later, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation exhumed Pauline’s body after learning no autopsy was ever done. Reporter Jed Lipinski travels to Adamsville, Tennessee, where new witnesses and old secrets threaten to upend the myth of Buford Pusser. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

In the 40th and final episode of Season 4, Jed Lipinski answers questions about the making of Gone South. Find us on ⁠Facebook⁠, ⁠Instagram⁠, ⁠TikTok⁠ and ⁠Twitter⁠. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, ⁠Gone South with Jed Lipinski⁠.

After a federal witness is gunned down on his mother‘s doorstep, investigators began unraveling a murder conspiracy at the heart of operation sideswipe. In this episode, Reporter Mike Perlstein walks us through a dramatic bond hearing and the shocking details that finally brought two key players to justice. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

Dozens of fake car crashes. Millions in bogus injury claims. And a murder that stunned federal investigators. This episode tells the story of ‘Operation Sideswipe’, the federal probe that uncovered a widespread fraud ring operating on Louisiana highways. Part one of a new two-part series. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

In Part 2, Greg Leon faces trial for the Valentine’s Day shooting. As new attorneys take over, and witness tampering allegations surface, a once-sympathetic defendant watches his case - and his fate - slip out of his hands. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

Greg Leon, a prominent Mexican restaurant owner in South Carolina, became a federal informant in a local corruption probe. This episode traces his rise, his ties to law enforcement, and the events that unfolded after he discovered his wife with another man on Valentine’s Day. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

10 inmates escape from Orleans Parish Prison, located in the heart New Orleans. At the time this episode was released, two are still at large, and one has taken to social media to plead his innocence. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

Dick Harpootlian has defended and prosecuted some of South Carolina’s most high-profile cases. But none left a deeper mark than the murder trial of serial killer PeeWee Gaskins. From prison phone taps to a homemade bomb, Harpootlian recounts the case that still haunts him, and helped define his career. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

When corrupt New Orleans cop Len Davis tried to reject a presidential commutation, his longtime attorney Pat Fanning wasn’t surprised. In this episode, Fanning recalls their unlikely relationship, how he came to defend a man already on Death Row, and what it revealed about the city, the system, and the man behind the headlines. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

When valuable sculptures begin disappearing from iconic New Orleans cemeteries, a rookie detective is put on the case. His investigation would uncover a bizarre underworld of heroin addicts and antique dealers. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

Jed discusses the second season of Bone Valley with writer and host, Gilbert King.

After acquiring secretly recorded audio of Felix Vail, Jerry Mitchell approaches a Louisiana prosecutor named Hugo Holland who takes on the case. Hugo makes additional breakthroughs in the investigation, and nearly 51 years after his first wife's death, Felix stands trial. Find us on ⁠Facebook⁠, ⁠Instagram⁠, ⁠TikTok⁠ and ⁠Twitter⁠. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, ⁠Gone South with Jed Lipinski⁠.

After discovering a shocking audio interview with Felix Vail's son, reporter Jerry Mitchell publishes his story detailing mutliple alleged murders. The case stalls -- until a reader in Texas contacts Jerry Mitchell with a plan to approach Felix in person.

When Annette Craver Vail vanished on a cross country trip with her much older husband Felix, her mother feared the worst. But what began as a desperate search for her daughter slowly uncovered a troubling pattern - two other women close to the same man had also disappeared. Find us on ⁠Facebook⁠, ⁠Instagram⁠, ⁠TikTok⁠ and ⁠Twitter⁠. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, ⁠Gone South with Jed Lipinski⁠.

In Part 2, Dickie Lynn and Ricou DeShaw’s smuggling operation grows more ambitious and more dangerous. As one partner walks away, the other goes all in, leading to prison time, an escape, and a years-long fight for freedom.Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

Dickie Lynne and Ricou DeShaw are best friends, spending their youth navigating the labyrinthine creeks and waterways of the Florida Keys. But as both men struggle to find their way in life, the opportunity to smuggle drugs becomes irresistible. ***Gone South has been nominated for a Webby Award, but we need your VOTE! It takes 10 seconds, all you have to do is click HERE. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

In the third and final part of “Finding Angie,” the person who may hold the key to the case is suddenly free. Will he finally talk - or will the truth about Angie’s disappearance remain buried forever?***Gone South has been nominated for a Webby Award, but we need your VOTE! It takes 10 seconds, all you have to do is click HERE. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

With the search for Angie at a standstill, the arrival of paralegal Mary Jane Marcantel injects a much-needed boost. As she digs into Joey Smith’s past, she uncovers fraud, fear, and a disturbing pattern of violence, leading to a break the family never expected***Gone South has been nominated for a Webby Award, but we need your VOTE! It takes 10 seconds, all you have to do is click HERE. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

When a Louisiana woman goes missing, her sister suspects the husband. But her suspicions are more accurate than she ever could have imagined. ***Gone South has been nominated for a Webby Award, but we need your VOTE! It takes 10 seconds, all you have to do is click HERE. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

When Neil White is convicted on bank fraud charges, he's sent to arguably the most unusual prison in the United States. ***Gone South has been nominated for a Webby Award, but we need your VOTE! It takes 10 seconds, all you have to do is click HERE. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

A man is caught sneaking into Nashville’s new $200 million jail and stealing keys. But when investigators search the facility, they uncover something far more disturbing - hidden weapons, secret caches, and a plan no one saw coming. What was really going on inside the jail?***Gone South has been nominated for a Webby Award, but we need your VOTE! It takes 10 seconds, all you have to do is click HERE. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

A new, state of the art prison is nearing completion in downtown Nashville. But just as the prison is about to open, a set of keys goes missing. And they were taken for a reason. ***Gone South has been nominated for a Webby Award, but we need your VOTE! It takes 10 seconds, all you have to do is click HERE. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

The investigation of Scott Rogers comes to a shocking conclusion, leading to a reckoning in the Baton Rouge community, and closure for Rogers's victims. ***Gone South has been nominated for a Webby Award, but we need your VOTE! It takes 10 seconds, all you have to do is click HERE. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

Rannah and Mary Jane take their case to a federal prosecutor, enlisting a low-profile investigator and survivors to expose Scott Rogers’s past. As they gather evidence, a shocking discovery raises the stakes. ***Gone South has been nominated for a Webby Award, but we need your VOTE! It takes 10 seconds, all you have to do is click HERE. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

In Part 1 of this three-part story, Baton Rouge PR consultant Rannah Grey receives an anonymous email with shocking details about a local celebrity. Nervous about tipping off the suspect, she teams up with an unconventional investigator and begins building her case. ***Gone South has been nominated for a Webby Award, but we need your VOTE! It takes 10 seconds, all you have to do is click HERE. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

Dean Ripa painted with Salvador Dali, sung with Tommy Dorsey's Orchestra, and bonded with William Burroughs. But his true passion was collecting, handling, and studying the world's most venemous snakes. Ripa's Seprentarium in Wilmington, North Carolina was the site of captivating presentations and, ultimately, unimaginable tragedy. ***Gone South has been nominated for a Webby Award, but we need your VOTE! It takes 10 seconds, all you have to do is click HERE. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

In this special edition episode, Jed interviews brothers Chapman and Maclain Way on their new Netflix documentary series, "The Kings of Tupelo.”

After dismantling a major drug operation in New Orleans, DEA Agent Skip Sewell turns his attention to an elusive cartel boss whose unconventional background defies expectations.***Gone South has been nominated for a Webby Award, but we need your VOTE! It takes 10 seconds, all you have to do is click HERE. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

Concerned citizens in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana follow a trail of corruption that starts small and ends with a shocking revelation.***Gone South has been nominated for a Webby Award, but we need your VOTE! It takes 10 seconds, all you have to do is click HERE. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

Mobile, Alabama’s biggest cold case reopens when Jim Barber, a police officer and adjunct professor, re-examines the 1980 murder of college freshman Katherine Foster. ***Gone South has been nominated for a Webby Award, but we need your VOTE! It takes 10 seconds, all you have to do is click HERE. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

A promising you tech entrepreneur arrives in Opelika, Alabama, promising to make it, "The Silicon Valley of The South."  And that was a hard promise to keep. ***Gone South has been nominated for a Webby Award, but we need your VOTE! It takes 10 seconds, all you have to do is click HERE. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

As a Louisiana defense attorney, Pat Fanning thought he'd seen it all. That was until Harold "H" Landry, who shot the husband of a woman he'd been sleeping with, walked into his office claiming he'd done absolutely nothing wrong. H's trial came to a shocking conclusion, but it was really just the beginning. ***Gone South has been nominated for a Webby Award, but we need your VOTE! It takes 10 seconds, all you have to do is click HERE. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

A recent New Orleans resident becomes immersed in the city's LBGTQ history. But his commitment rises to a whole new level when he makes inroads on an obscure cold case known as "The Hammer Murders.”***Gone South has been nominated for a Webby Award, but we need your VOTE! It takes 10 seconds, all you have to do is click HERE. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

New evidence emerges that casts doubt on the legend of Buford Pusser. The story behind the ambush that killed his wife, Pauline, may not be what it seems. As buried secrets surface, Mike Elam's discoveries may finally force the truth out of the shadows.***Gone South has been nominated for a Webby Award, but we need your VOTE! It takes 10 seconds, all you have to do is click HERE. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

Buford Pusser is an iconic American law enforcement figure. The film series "Walking Tall," most recently starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, is based on Pusser's life as a cop. But recent revelations are turning Pusser's legacy on its head.***Gone South has been nominated for a Webby Award, but we need your VOTE! It takes 10 seconds, all you have to do is click HERE. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

A promising math and science student at the University of Georgia has an interesting side gig. He runs a hedge fund for his fraternity brothers which rakes in massive returns. But with the reward comes a massive risk. ***Gone South has been nominated for a Webby Award, but we need your VOTE! It takes 10 seconds, all you have to do is click HERE. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

As Reconstruciton-era politics in New Orleans empowers blacks and angers ex-confederates, an Afro-Creole Detective named Jean-Baptiste Jourdain sets out to solve the kidnapping of a white baby.***Gone South has been nominated for a Webby Award, but we need your VOTE! It takes 10 seconds, all you have to do is click HERE. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

True-crime author Diane Fanning stumbles upon the case of Julie Rea, convicted of murdering her son. As she uncovers flaws in the prosecution’s argument, Fanning interviews a serial killer Tommy Lynn Sells. With new evidence in hand, she wonders if her discovery could exonerate an innocent woman.***Gone South has been nominated for a Webby Award, but we need your VOTE! It takes 10 seconds, all you have to do is click HERE. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

The point of view switches from Batman to Darryl Smith. Darryl gives us his side of the story and explains how one goes from being a promising young med student to a prolific meth manufacturer.***Gone South has been nominated for a Webby Award, but we need your VOTE! It takes 10 seconds, all you have to do is click HERE. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

DEA Agent Steve Peterson, nickname "Batman," hunts down a prolific meth manufacturer in Atlanta. But as he closes in on his prey, Steve is stunned by the meth maker's identity. This is the real life "Breaking Bad."***Gone South has been nominated for a Webby Award, but we need your VOTE! It takes 10 seconds, all you have to do is click HERE. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

When Jimmy Cox arrived at the Lousiana State Penetentiary (AKA "Angola") to serve two life sentences, he had one goal in mind: escape. And that's exactly what he did. But while escaping Angola was impressive, escaping his own past would prove a greater challenge.***Gone South has been nominated for a Webby Award, but we need your VOTE! It takes 10 seconds, all you have to do is click HERE. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

Gone South, the Edward R. Murrow award-winning podcast, is back for a fourth season. Unlike previous seasons, writer and host Jed Lipinski brings listeners new episodes every week with no end in sight. Each episode of Gone South Season 4 tells a different story about one of the South's most interesting crimes.

Many who knew Ortiz were shocked to hear about his crimes. Had this seemingly kind family man always had a dark side, or did something turn him into a killer? As those involved in the case would discover, the answer isn’t so simple.Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

As disconcerting details about Ortiz’s life stack up in the interrogation room, the investigators know they have the right guy. But after he confesses, they quickly learn just how much they didn’t know.Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

After escaping a man named David, Erika Peña leads the cops to the man’s house where they find a troubling scene. Troopers attempt to arrest David on the other side of town, but he bolts and a frantic foot chase ensues.Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

When a second body is found near the first crime scene, Laredoans start to fear the perpetrator could be a serial killer.Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

The investigation takes to the streets of Laredo, where peers of the victim suggest possible suspects and motives.Binge Gone South Season 3: The Sign Cutter Exclusively on Audacy: https://go.audacy.com/gone-south-season-3Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

After discovering a woman’s body on a desolate road on the outskirts of Laredo, the police come to a chilling revelation: the killer they’re looking for may be one of the people working on the case.Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

A rancher in Laredo, Texas discovers a woman’s body shot execution-style on the side of the road. When authorities identify her as a local sex worker, their investigation takes them into the darkest corners of the city, triggering a manhunt for a serial killer.

After years of denial, Biloxi strip club owner Mike Gillich agrees to help the government solve the Sherry murders. His cooperation reveals the true trigger man and the people responsible for the killings, including former Biloxi Mayor, Pete Halat. But as a new trial unfolds, Pete maintains his complete innocence. A Special Thanks to Celia Tisdale and the Mississippi Department of Archives & History

To build a case against a Kirksey Nix and his collaborators, Agent Keith Bell and Captain Randy Cook descend into the criminal underworld. A trial results in convictions, but the Sherry murders have yet to be solved.

In the wake of inmate Bobby Joe Fabian’s stunning allegations, Pete Halat and Kirksey Nix strongly deny their involvement in the murders. But a new sheriff’s investigator suspects they know more than they’re letting on.

After trying to solve the case herself, the Sherry's oldest daughter hires a notorious Mississippi private eye named Rex Armistead. His connection to an Angola inmate and Dixie Mafia killer soon breaks the case wide open.

FBI agent Keith Bell discovers a link between the murders and a Biloxi strip club owner. But a bizarre prison scam conducted by Kirksey Nix may have even bigger implications.

While many believe Margaret Sherry was targeted for political reasons, Biloxi police suspect the killer was one of Vince’s disgruntled clients. But as missteps in the investigation pile up, the Sherry family wonders: Were the cops somehow involved?

Kirksey Nix, the supposed leader of the Dixie Mafia, has been described as a psychopathic killer. Jed connects with Kirksey in prison in an effort to set the record straight.

While investigating the death of Margaret Coon for Season One, Jed learns about a notorious gang of criminals that terrorized the South in the 1960s and 70s.

Welcome to Season Two of Gone South, the Edward R. Murrow Award-winning documentary podcast.Starting in the sixties, a loose-knit confederation of traveling criminals known as the Dixie Mafia terrorized every state from Georgia to Oklahoma. Its hundreds of members, unofficially headquartered in Biloxi, Mississippi, specialized in scams, heists and murder. Their alleged leader — the estranged son of a prominent Oklahoma politician — was a skilled and charismatic outlaw named Kirksey Nix.When Nix was sentenced to life in prison at Angola for a murder he committed in New Orleans, the Dixie Mafia was thought to be extinct. But fifteen years later, a sitting criminal court judge named Vincent Sherry and his wife Margaret, a mayoral candidate for the city of Biloxi, were assassinated. As the case ran cold, authorities were forced to confront a disturbing reality: the Dixie Mafia was not done yet.Gone South is an Audacy Original produced in association with Jed and Tom Lipinski.

Two women with intimate knowledge of the leading suspect come forward, and Jed receives new information about the night Margaret Coon was killed.

As investigators dig up information on a new suspect, they uncover a baffling series of events that occurred in a condo across the street from where Margaret’s body was found.

Margaret's homicide case lands in the lap of a decorated ex-DEA agent, leading him down the same path as previous investigators. But a bizarre incident involving an infamous Beau Chene resident exposes an overlooked suspect.

Nearly a decade after Margaret's murder, the investigation has gone ice cold. But there was a secret side to Margaret’s life that may hold the key to finding her killer.If you have tips or information that you’d like to share related to the unsolved murder of Margaret Coon or other relevant topics, you can call us at (650) 746-GONE or email us at GoneSouthPodcast@gmail.com.