Companion post to our two-part Crime Clueless episode series On the morning of December 16, 2000, Denise Williams watched her husband leave their home on Centennial Oaks Circle in Tallahassee, Florida. It was 3am. He was headed to Lake Seminole — a sprawling reservoir straddling the Georgia-Florida line — to duck hunt before dawn, […]
At the Lake By 4am: The Story of Mike Williams Read More »
For decades, the domestic violence movement has run on a familiar script: the abuser is bad, the survivor should leave, and the system’s job is to punish after the fact. It’s a script that’s shaped everything from police response to funding priorities to the questions we, as a culture, instinctively ask when we hear about
Does She Feel Safer? A Conversation with SafeNest’s Liz Ortenburger Read More »
Room 260: The Unsolved 1980 Double Murder at the Amana Holiday Inn On September 12, 1980, two people checked into Room 260 at the Amana Holiday Inn in Williamsburg, Iowa. They had driven 265 miles from St. Joseph, Missouri, for a secret weekend together. By the next afternoon, both were dead — killed in one
Room 260: The Morticians’ Convention Murders Read More »
Two Women, One Name, and a Mystery That Still Doesn’t Make Sense A normal morning… that never ended normally On October 12, 2000, Mary Lou Morris left her home just before sunrise. It was routine. Predictable. Safe. A quiet goodbye to her husband, Jay. A drive to work. A day that should have unfolded like
The Mary Morris Murders Read More »
“I’ve Got Her”: The Haunting Case of Dorothy Jane Scott On a quiet Wednesday night in May 1980, Dorothy Jane Scott walked out of a hospital in Orange County, California — and disappeared into the darkness. Her car would be found hours later, burned in an alley. Her body would not be found for four
“I’ve Got Her”: The Haunting Case of Dorothy Jane Scott Read More »
A Killer Caught on Camera: The Murder of Missy Bevers Before sunrise on April 18, 2016, Missy Bevers arrived at a church in Midlothian, Texas, to do something she loved: lead a 5AM fitness bootcamp class. Within minutes, she would be dead. And the person responsible had already been inside the building — wandering the
A Killer Caught on Camera: The Murder of Missy Bevers Read More »
A Shadow on Surveillance: The Jennifer Kesse Case On January 24, 2006, Jennifer Kesse failed to show up for work at Central Florida Investments in Orlando. By midday, concern had turned into alarm. Jennifer was dependable, close with her family, and in regular contact with friends. Silence was not normal for her. Within days, her
A Shadow on Surveillance: The Jennifer Kesse Case Read More »
How DNA from a Piece of Chewing Gum Solved a 26-Year-Old Cold Case Just days before Christmas in 1992, a beloved elementary school teacher in Pennsylvania was brutally murdered in her own home. For more than two decades, her killer walked free. The case of Christy Mirack would haunt investigators and the Lancaster community for
Justice Finally For Christy Mirack Read More »
A Light in the Dark: The Murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier On a quiet stretch of the Irish coastline, where wind-swept cliffs meet the Atlantic and the days in December end early in a misty gray hush, a woman came to find peace — and met with unimaginable violence. Sophie Toscan du Plantier, a
A Light in the Dark: The Murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier Read More »
50 Stabs in Broad Daylight: Who Killed Penny Bell? It was a bright, ordinary Thursday morning in June of 1991 when forty-three-year-old Penny Bell left her Buckinghamshire home, climbed into her powder-blue Jaguar, and told the builders working on her renovations that she was “running late for an appointment.” It was the last thing anyone
50 Stabs in Broad Daylight: Who Killed Penny Bell? Read More »
