Murder: True Crime Stories - SOLVED: Carrie Daugherty, Pt. 1

Episode Date: September 29, 2026

In 2008, 24-year-old Knoxville server Carrie Daugherty was ambushed and killed outside her Tennessee home, a sudden act of violence that shattered the people who loved her. Suspicion soon turned to Mi...cah Johnson, the ex-boyfriend of Carrie's best friend, and the search for him escalated into a dramatic standoff on Knoxville's Henley Street Bridge. In Part 1 of Murder: True Crime Stories, host Carter Roy introduces Carrie, the young woman whose life was cut short in her own driveway, the tangled web of relationships that investigators believe led to her death, and the tense manhunt that ended with a suspect in custody but a motive that raised as many questions as it answered.Head over to our YouTube channel to WATCH our video episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@crimehousestudios If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Murder: True Crime Stories to never miss a case! Want all 2 parts of every case all at once? Join Crime House+ and get both parts of each case dropped at once ad-free. Join at crimehouseplus.com or if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page. Murder: True Crime Stories is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios.🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of Reddit, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Crime House 24/7, and more wherever you get your podcasts!Follow me on SocialInstagram: @CrimehouseTikTok: @CrimehouseFacebook: @crimehousestudiosX: @crimehousemediaYouTube: @crimehousestudios

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi, everyone, it's Carter. Real quick before two days' episode, I want to tell you about another show I think you might like hosted by Vanessa Richardson and forensic psychologist Dr. Tristan Ingalls. It's called Serial Killers and Murderous Minds. Every Monday and Thursday, they take you deep into the psychology of the most chilling murderers and uncover what drives them to kill. Follow serial killers and murderous minds available wherever you listen to podcasts. This is Crime House. Think about the person in your life who lights up every room. The one who remembers your birthday, makes the new kid feel welcome, and can turn prepping for a shift into a party. That was Carrie Dorotie. She was 24 years old, waiting tables at a beloved pizza joint in Knoxville, Tennessee. She'd been a homecoming queen and a cheerleader,
Starting point is 00:01:09 and had grown into the kind of adult who trained for a marathon, on to raise money in her late niece's name. Her co-workers called themselves a family, and Carrie was the heart of it. Then in the early hours of a March morning in 2008, everything changed. Carrie came home from a shift, parked on the street, and started to walk to her own front door. She never made it inside. The neighbor who was outside saw what was happening and called 911. but by the time the police got there, Carrie was already gone.
Starting point is 00:01:48 Everyone who loved her was left with the same two questions. Who could do this to a woman like Carrie Dorty? And once they knew, would it ever make any kind of sense at all? People's lives are like a story. There's a beginning, a middle, and an end. But you don't always know which part you're on. Sometimes the final chapter arrives far too soon, and we don't always get to know the real ending. I'm Carter Roy, and this is Murder, True Crime Stories, a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios.
Starting point is 00:02:34 New episodes come out every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, with Friday's episodes covering the cases that deserve a deeper look. Thank you for being part of the crimehouse community. Please rate, review, and follow the show. and for early add free access to every episode, subscribe to Crimehouse Plus. You'll get part one and part two at the same time, plus exclusive bonus content. To join, go to crimehouseplus.com or tap try free on the Murder True Crime Stories show page on Apple Podcasts. This is the first of two episodes on the 2008 murder of Carrie Dordy, a young waitress who was attacked outside her home, in Knoxville, Tennessee. A quick note before we start, along with a murder at its center.
Starting point is 00:03:23 This episode deals with serious mental illness, the death of a child, and references abuse, sexual assault, and suicide. So please listen with care. And if you or someone you know is struggling, you can call or text 988 the suicide and crisis lifeline anytime. Today, I'll introduce you to carry. The big Tennessee family she came from, the niece she lost far too young, and the way she turned that grief into something good. By 24, she built a whole life in Knoxville, surrounded by people who loved her. And then on an ordinary night in March, someone took it all away, a few steps from her own front door. Next time, I'll take you inside. the investigation in the legal battle that would drag on for 15 years. Because the hardest question
Starting point is 00:04:23 here was never who did it. It was why. And whether the person responsible even understood what they'd done. All that and more coming up. If you knew Carrie, Dorothy, you probably had a story about her. The friends who worked with her still tell one about the mornings. She'd crank up fergy and do lunges across the floor while they set up the bar. Oh, that was Carrie. A little goofy, a little theatrical, always turning the volume up on an ordinary day. But the same friends who tell that story will also tell you there was a serious side to her. Carrie cared about her loved ones and her morals just as much as she cared about making everyone laugh. She was born on Mother's Day in In 1983 in Chattanooga, it's a mid-sized city that wraps around a bend in the Tennessee River,
Starting point is 00:05:29 surrounded by mountains. Her parents, Carol and Steve Dorotie, raised her in a big Catholic family. She had lots of brothers and sisters. This is the kind of house where somebody was always coming or going, and Carrie learned early how to hold a room. We don't know a lot about her early childhood, but some of it wasn't easy. one of her brothers lived with severe mental illness. When he was really struggling, things could get scary at home,
Starting point is 00:05:59 which meant that Carrie grew up understanding something most people never have to. What everyone agrees on is that by high school, Carrie was one of those kids who seemed to be everywhere, doing everything at once. She went to Notre Dame High School, a Catholic school in Chattanooga, where she was a cheerleader. She threw herself into the youth ministry at her church and eventually served on a Diasisian youth advisory council, and she had a gift for making people feel like they belong. Whether you were a freshman, she just met or a teammate she'd known for years. Her senior year, in the fall of 2000, her classmates crowned her homecoming queen.
Starting point is 00:06:41 It was the first homecoming of the new millennium, and her family always liked to say Carrie was its first queen. She was the kind of person nobody worried about. Wherever Carrie landed, she'd be loved. The first place she landed was Alabama. After she graduated in 2001, 18-year-old Carrie went off to Spring Hill College, a small Catholic school down in Mobile, about six hours from home. She gave it two years, then decided it wasn't the right fit. Who knows, maybe it was one particular thing.
Starting point is 00:07:17 Maybe she just missed her family. By the way, in the fall of 2003, Carrie transferred to the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where she studied journalism and electronic media. Now she was a couple hours from Chattanooga instead of six, close enough to drive home for a weekend whenever she wanted. Knoxville suited her. It was a college town built around the University of Tennessee with a downtown that was full of bars and music and people at her own age. she'd end up staying for good. For the next couple of years,
Starting point is 00:07:53 Carrie was a pretty ordinary college student, going to class, working, figuring out who she was. She had her friends, her family a couple hours down the road, and a whole life stretched out in front of her. And then in the fall of 2005, her family got news that stopped all of them cold. Carrie's sister, Wendy, and her husband, Jonathan Ransom had a little girl named Emily. In October 2005, they took her to the doctor
Starting point is 00:08:26 thinking she had a cold she couldn't shake. Instead, the family got the worst news imaginable. Emily had stage four neuroblastoma, a rare aggressive cancer that mostly strikes very young children. Oftentimes, it isn't caught until it's already spread through the body. Emily was two years old. Carrie adored her. The family always said she was Emily's favorite aunt, the one who could always get a laugh out of her. So when Emily got sick, it hit Carrie hard. For four months, that little girl fought with everything she had. Her family started calling her the Pink Power Ranger princess and by every account she lived up to the name she was tough and bright right through the worst of it they did everything they could there were treatments and hospital stays and long drives and the kind of hope
Starting point is 00:09:30 families hold on to with both hands but on February 20th 2006 while Emily was in surgery to remove the tumor she died it broke all of them. And Emily's parents did the only thing that made any sense in the middle of that kind of grief. They took it and aimed it straight at the disease that had taken their daughter. Later that year, Wendy and Jonathan started a foundation in Emily's name, Emily's power for a cure. The mission was twofold. Raised money for neuroblastoma research, especially the experimental treatments and clinical trials that struggle to find funding anywhere else, the other aspect was helping other families caught in the same fight. Carrie threw herself into it. She'd found a way
Starting point is 00:10:25 to turn her grief into something useful, the same way Emily's parents had, and she didn't pick something small. By early 2008, she'd signed up to run the Nashville Marathon that spring, all 26.2 miles of and she was training hard, raising money in Emily's name with every mile. The people who knew her said the cause meant as much to her as anything in her life. The foundation her family built would go on to fund research and help other families for years to come. But in the spring of 2008, for Carrie, it was simpler than that. It was a way to keep her niece close. Not long after Emily died, Carrie stepped back from school.
Starting point is 00:11:15 She left the University of Tennessee in 2006. It's not clear exactly why, and the people who knew her have offered different guesses. Maybe it was the grief of losing Emily. Maybe she just needed room to breathe for a while. What everyone does agree on is that she always figured she'd go back and finish that degree someday. In the meantime, she picked up a job at Barley's tap room, and pizzeria in Knoxville's old city. It was a Knoxville institution.
Starting point is 00:11:45 A big, loud, high-ceilinged room with pizza, a huge beer list, and live music on the weekends. Carrie fit the place like she'd been there for years. She waited tables and sometimes worked behind the bar, and the regulars loved her. Her manager described her the way a lot of people did. Quote, she just brought life into a lot of people. a room. She loved costumes and dressing up and any excuse for a good time, and she pulled her
Starting point is 00:12:15 co-workers into all of it. Halloween was basically her holiday. Before long, that crew had become a tight little family, the kind of co-workers who closed the place down together, then stay in each other's lives long after the job ends. Through Barley's, Carrie got close with a young woman named Amanda Courts, who was around 25 at the time. We don't know a ton about how their friendship started or a lot about Amanda in general. What we do know is that Amanda lived with real daily pain. She had fibromyalgia, which causes widespread aching and deep fatigue, along with the form of reactive arthritis called writer's syndrome. On bad days, ordinary chores that most of us never think twice about were physically hard for her.
Starting point is 00:13:10 But none of that slowed Amanda down, and in early 2007, she met someone new. At first, he seemed like the best thing that had happened to her in years. But before long, he would pull Amanda and Carrie into a nightmare. Neither of them saw coming. Hey, Ontario, come on down to BedmGM, Casino and see what our newest exclusive the Price's Right Fortune Pick has to offer. Don't miss out. Play exciting casino games based on the iconic game show only at BetmGM. Check out how we've
Starting point is 00:13:53 reimagined three of the show's iconic games like Plinko, Clifhanger, and the Big Wheel into fun casino game features. Don't forget to download the BenmGM Casino app for exclusive access and excitement on the Price's Right Fortune Pick. Pull up a seat and experience the Price's Right Fortune Pick, only available at BetMGMGM Casino. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly.
Starting point is 00:14:21 If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connects Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor, free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. You know their names. You know their faces, but you've never heard these stories. On Celebrity Ghost Stories, an A&E original podcast presented by Rewind Studios, you'll hear spooky stories directly from the actors, musicians, and athletes you love in their own words. What do you do when a spirit saves you from the edge of death?
Starting point is 00:15:01 When a single night in a strange hotel ends with you running for the door? From angry spirits to haunted houses to unexplainable magic. These are true first-person accounts told by the stars who lived through them. Follow Celebrity Ghost Stories, available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. In early 2007, 25-year-old Amanda Courts met a University of Tennessee student named Micah Johnson. It seems like there were sparks right away, but things didn't turn romantic immediately. At the time, Amanda was at the tail end of a long-term relationship with a man named Mitch Foke. Then that March, they split up for good, and he
Starting point is 00:15:53 moved out of the house they shared. Within a few months, Amanda and Micah were dating. On paper, Micah was a catch. He was 20 years old, studying aerospace engineering, one of the harder majors on campus, and by all accounts, he was brilliant. Later testing would put his IQ at 133 up in the top 2% or so. He was the smart, quiet type, the kind of guy who could talk your ear off about something technical if you got him going. Amanda was crazy about him, and Carrie was glad to see her friend happy. And for a while, that was the whole story. Amanda had a smart new boyfriend.
Starting point is 00:16:37 Carrie had a good friend and a job. She loved. The three of them ran in the same circle. Everything was fine. What none of them could fully see was that Micah had been quietly struggling for months. Micah had always been a strong student, sharp enough to get into a demanding engineering program. But in his sophomore year at UT back in the fall of 2006, something had started to go wrong. His grade slipped. He lost his focus. he'd forget simple chores, misplaced things, blank on stuff he used to do without thinking twice. Then it got stranger. He became fixated on things he saw on TV, especially politics. At one point, he turned to his own father and asked in all seriousness whether he was the president of the United States.
Starting point is 00:17:38 And it wasn't just the strange idea. his basic thinking was going to. This was a young man had been studying aerospace engineering, and now he couldn't do simple arithmetic. He lost his scholarship and was barely hanging on at UT. By the following summer, he was more disorganized than ever forgetting his keys, losing track of everyday things. Whatever was happening to him, it was picking up speed. It seems like Micah hit all this from Amanda at first, that or he genuinely didn't even understand it was happening. And by the time Amanda noticed something was really wrong, it was September 2007, and things had been escalating for about a year.
Starting point is 00:18:27 That month, Micah more or less stopped eating and sleeping. He started saying things that didn't track, drifting in and out of conversations that only half made sense, and he kept circling back to that same idea that he might be the president. Then that same month, things became violent. Micah was inside Ayers Hall, one of the oldest buildings on the UT campus, when he attacked another student. A young man he had a class with, but barely knew. Came out of nowhere. Micah hit him in the hallway. A witness said he kept swinging, even after the other student was down on the floor. By the time it was over, that student's jaw was broken badly enough that he apparently needed reconstructive surgery.
Starting point is 00:19:20 Then Micah grabbed his backpack and walked away. Later, Micah gave his father a different version. He said a group of guys had been following him around, calling him names. He said the other student had clenched his fist in a way that made Micah think he had a knife, so he swung first. But investigators could find no sign of any of that. As far as they could tell, the attack was completely unprovoked. U.T. expelled him.
Starting point is 00:19:53 He was arrested and charged with aggravated assault, which is a felony. And just like that, the brilliant engineering student was a young man with a criminal case and no school to go back to. after that Micah came apart fast he became convinced the police were watching him he decided there was a camera hidden inside the cable box
Starting point is 00:20:20 recording him so he started sitting off to the side of the room where it couldn't catch him watching TV his father would hear him talking out loud to rooms that were empty it scared the people who loved him This was somebody's son, somebody's boyfriend, a brilliant kid, and he was slipping away somewhere none of them could follow. Amanda called Micah's dad, Gary, for help.
Starting point is 00:20:49 Micah's mother met up with him one afternoon at Knoxville Nature Park and came away convinced that something was seriously wrong. About an hour later, Micah called his father saying he hadn't slept in days. Gary drove over to pick him up when he arrived. Micah was standing right there in the front yard, but he didn't react at all. Gary had to honk the horn just to get his son to look up. That night, Micah started hyperventilating, convinced he was having a heart attack. The next morning, Gary took him to the emergency room at Baptist Hospital. At the hospital, Micah told a nurse he'd been doing, quote,
Starting point is 00:21:33 all these drugs. Gary pushed back on that since he'd been up with his son all night and hadn't seen anything like it, but the drug screen came back positive for marijuana and benzodiazepines, a class of sedatives you might know by the brand names like Xanax or Valium. The ER doctor described Micah as paranoid, agitated, and hallucinating. His thoughts scattered all over the place. He said he was hearing voices. At first, one of the staff wondered whether the drugs alone explained it. The picture was murky enough that they even talked about committing him to a treatment program against his will, but his condition settled enough that he agreed to check himself involuntarily instead.
Starting point is 00:22:26 And the hospital moved him up to its psychiatric unit and started him on antipsychotic medication. The psychiatrist there settled on a working diagnosis of a psychotic disorder, and by the time Michael left, she'd flag the two possibilities underneath it. This could be bipolar illness with psychosis, or it could be the first onset of schizophrenia. Which one it was, nobody could say for sure yet. These are serious, lifelong conditions, and telling us that. them apart and treating them takes time and careful care. Micah stayed a little over a week, then he checked himself out against his doctor's advice and went home to his father with instructions to keep taking his medication. Gary wasn't convinced any of it had taken. Micah still seemed
Starting point is 00:23:25 delusional to him, still seemed to be hearing things that weren't there, and Gary suspected he'd already stopped taking his pills. Over the following weeks, they tried a few different places to get him help. None of it stuck. While Michael was in the hospital, Amanda had ended things with him. She just couldn't take it anymore. And that October, with the two of them broken up, Carrie moved in with her. They settled into Amanda's house on Columbia Avenue in the Oakwood area of North Knoxville.
Starting point is 00:24:02 they talked about Micah a lot and it turned out Carrie understood exactly what Amanda was carrying because she'd lived a version of it herself Carrie told Amanda about the family members she'd grown up with the brother I mentioned earlier and how his illness had sometimes turned frightening to Carrie some of what she was hearing about Micah sounded familiar she knew what it felt like to love someone and be afraid of them at the same time. But by December, Micah seemed like a different person, better, more like himself. He told Amanda, he'd turned a corner, that he was taking his medication, that everything was under control.
Starting point is 00:24:57 He left out the part where he'd checked himself out of the hospital against me. medical advice, and he left out any doubt about whether he was taking his meds at all. Amanda didn't know to ask. She loved him. She believed him, and they got back together. Carrie went along with it. At the time, both women thought Micah seemed back to his old self, the guy from before the assault, and for a few months, life felt almost normal.
Starting point is 00:25:32 Micah took over most of the yard work at the house, the mowing and the raking, since Amanda's health made that kind of thing hard for her. He was hunting for a job and trying to find another school that would take him. He found warehouse work, first at the local newspaper, then at a Coca-Cola warehouse, about 15 minutes away, and he was living with his dad and stepmom a mile or so from the women's house. He started staying over at Amanda's some nights. From the outside, it looked like a young man putting himself back together. And Amanda, who saw him day to day, wasn't catching any of the old warning signs. Carrie wasn't so sure.
Starting point is 00:26:18 She'd been watching Micah too, and she couldn't shake the feeling that she'd seen this somewhere before. At some point, that winter, she sat down and wrote out exactly. how she felt. It reads like a letter to Amanda addressed to her by name, but it seems like Carrie never gave it to her. She just kept it, tucked away in her journal. In it, Carrie finally tells the story she'd been carrying since childhood. She writes that her brother Steve was schizophrenic, and that during his episodes, he'd become convinced that she and two of her siblings were the devil. She writes that one day
Starting point is 00:27:04 their mother walked in and found Steve sitting on top of one of those siblings a little boy who was only three years old until the child had gone unconscious. And then Carrie writes about herself. She says she hadn't seen Steve since the day about 15 years earlier
Starting point is 00:27:26 when he put a plastic bag over her head. She would have been around nine. That was the fear she'd carried her whole life. And in that letter, she put it plainly. Micah gave her the same feeling. In her own words, he terrifies me. She wrote about flashbacks, and she signed off with four words that are almost impossible
Starting point is 00:27:59 to read now. quote, not ready to die. Carrie never showed Amanda that entry. Maybe she didn't want to come between her friend and the man Amanda had decided to trust. Maybe she was waiting for the right moment. She wouldn't get one. Over the years, I've met people whose lives were changed forever in a single moment. In my new podcast before and after, I explore what happens.
Starting point is 00:28:36 After that decisive moment, personal, powerful conversations with Cullen Kaepernick, Jeremy Renner, Gabby Giffords, and others. Join me wherever you get your podcasts. Search before and after with Lester Holt to listen completely free or subscribe to Dateline Premium to unlock new episodes early. By the spring of 2008 to almost everyone around him, Micah Johnson looked like a young man who'd pulled his life back together. He had a job, a girlfriend, and a routine. On March 6th, he turned 21. The next weekend, Micah, Amanda, and Carrie went out to Barley's to celebrate. It was a good night.
Starting point is 00:29:21 Nothing about it stood out. That was the calm before everything. Tuesday, March 18th, started out like any other day. Micah had spent the night at Amanda's and woke up there that morning. Carrie was home too, but she wasn't feeling well and slept most of the day. the three of them hung around the house for a while until Micah had to leave to get ready for his shift at the Coca-Cola warehouse. A little later, Carrie left for work too, and she had the closing shift at Barley's. That night, at about 11, Amanda took something to help her sleep like she did most nights and started getting ready for bed.
Starting point is 00:30:03 Around midnight, her phone rang. It was Micah. He told her about his day and mentioned he was thinking about test driving a car. somebody had for sale. It was late and the medication was pulling her under so they made plans to talk the next day and Amanda hung up. Nothing about the call struck her as strange. He sounded completely normal. Around half past midnight, Kerry clocked out of Barley's. It had been a decent night. She'd made about $80 in tips. She still had on her work clothes, her Barley's t-shirt and a server apron, and her pink Motorola razor on her.
Starting point is 00:30:45 She climbed into her silver Ford Explorer and drove the few minutes back to the house on Columbia Avenue. She parked on the street in front of the house the way she always did. At 1.46 in the morning, a neighbor on the same street was outside and saw it happen. She watched a woman pull up and get out of an SUV, And she watched a man in dark clothing step up and hit that woman in the head, then drag her across the yard, striking her again and again as he went.
Starting point is 00:31:25 The neighbor lost sight of them and called 9-1-1. Inside the house, Amanda slept through nearly all of it. The medication had pulled her deep under, but at one point a noise from the side of the house stirred. her. She got up and looked out the window toward the carport and the driveway, but she couldn't see anything out of place. She figured the wind had knocked over a trash can and went back to bed. The first officer arrived at 1.57 a.m., 11 minutes after the neighbor called 911. In the front yard, out at the curb, he found a young woman. Her body, part of her body, partly underneath an explorer parked on the street.
Starting point is 00:32:15 There was nothing anyone could do by then. It was clear. She was dead. It would be a little while before they knew for certain who she was, but it was Carrie. She was 24 years old. As the sun came up, crime scene technicians slowly worked their way across the yard, marking each piece of evidence and photographing it where it lay,
Starting point is 00:32:43 building a record of the whole scene. What they pieced together told the story of a long, brutal attack. It had started near the side entrance by the carport. There was blood on the driveway and the steps there and a scatter of loose coins on the ground like something had been knocked out of Carrie's hands. From there, a trail of blood ran all the way across the yard to her SUV at the curb, and whatever it happened, it had moved from the side of the house out toward the street, step by step.
Starting point is 00:33:20 Along that trail, thrown into the grass by the hedges, where Carrie's things. Her purse, a bloody jacket, a single shoe. Closer to the vehicle, officers found the other shoe, a set of keys, and two blood-soaked t-shirts. And they found the weapons. A shovel lying next to her body, two broken pieces of brick in the grass, and a length of nylon rope still knotted around Carrie's neck.
Starting point is 00:33:56 The most unsettling part was where those weapons had come from. The shovel was Amanda's own, normally kept under the carport with her other yard, tools out of sight from the street. The bricks came from the property, too. Whoever killed Carrie hadn't brought much with them. They'd used what was already there in the yard and under the carport. Forensic examiners went over the blood in the yard and read it like a map.
Starting point is 00:34:25 They could pick out where something bloody had been dragged, where it touched down, and where the hard blows landed across the driveway and the grass. On the passenger side of the SUV, there was so much blood that it had run downward under its own weight. All of it's outside, in the dark, in the open, a few steps from Carrie's own front door. The autopsy fell to the Knox County Medical Examiner. She later laid out what those weapons had done. Perry's skull was fractured at the base. Most of her wounds were to the head and neck.
Starting point is 00:35:04 and the doctor could tell the strangling came near the end and there were wounds on Carrie's hands and forearms. They were clearly defensive wounds. Carrie had fought back trying to shield herself. It took several minutes for her to die and the attack itself had gone on for more than ten. There was one more piece of evidence at the scene. officers lifted a bloody fingerprints off the handle of the passenger door of Carrie's explorer and sent it off to the state crime lab for analysis. They also noticed her phone was gone.
Starting point is 00:35:47 Two investigators, that pointed to something chilling. Whoever did this had taken it, so Carrie couldn't call for help. And the tip money she'd carried home from Barley's that $80 or so dollars from her, shift was gone too. With all the evidence cataloged, and there was only one thing left to do, wake up the one person who'd been asleep inside the house. The pounding on the door pulled Amanda up out of a dead medicated sleep. She got up, disoriented and still foggy, and opened her front door to find police officers standing on the step. And then they told her the thing. No one could ever brace for.
Starting point is 00:36:34 Her friend, her roommate, Carrie, was dead, just outside in the yard while Amanda slept. They brought Amanda into talk, and as she answered their questions, the shape of a suspect began to come into focus. She told them about her boyfriend, Micah, and about his history. the assault on campus that had gotten him expelled, the months of paranoia, the weak and the psychiatric ward. Poor detectives who just walked that yard didn't take long for suspicion to turn to Micah, they quickly put out a description and named Micah a person of interest. They were looking for a man about six foot three and 170 pounds, driving a red Ford F-150, an older model, with one telltale detail, a passenger door that didn't match the rest of the truck.
Starting point is 00:37:34 An officer named Scott Coffey drove out to the home of Micah's father. Gary let the police search the whole place, but Michael wasn't there. In his bedroom, the window screen had been pulled out and the blinds were half torn off, so he clearly climbed out the window. Micah had been on the move in the hours right after the attack. He had gone back to his. father's house, showered, and stuffed his bloody clothes into a bag. At 252 that morning, barely an hour after Carrie was found, he pulled $500 out of an ATM, then he pointed the truck toward Georgia
Starting point is 00:38:14 before eventually turning back into Tennessee. Over the next day, the people who cared about him started getting phone calls. Amanda badly shaken had gone to stay with her people. parents in Loudoun County, she'd handed her cell phone to her father, Norman, so he could deal with anything that came up. Later that day, the phone rang. It was Micah. Norman told him he was answering Amanda's phone, and when Micah asked to talk to her, Norman refused. Instead, he told Micah to turn himself in over and over for about five minutes. Micah didn't say much back, just quote, I've screwed up,
Starting point is 00:39:03 I've messed up. He was rambling, but he wasn't completely out of it. When Amanda got ready to head back to Knoxville, she walked out to her car and stopped cold. Someone had arranged gravel on it in the shape of a heart with two words spelled out beside it. I'm dead.
Starting point is 00:39:27 Inside, someone had left an unfinished can of beer and a scatter of cigarette butts, and it was clear the car had been gone through. It read like a message, a threat even. Amanda knew Micah had been to her parents' house before, and now she understood exactly what he was capable of. Late that same night, Officer Coffey was back out looking, stopped at an intersection about a mile and a half from Carrie and Amanda Street. He spotted a pickup that matched the one they'd been hunting. He pulled in behind it, confirmed it belonged to Micah, and then waited for a second cruiser to catch up.
Starting point is 00:40:10 Then they switched on their lights. Now, Micah didn't pull over. He ran a red light and kept going out into the Knoxville Knights. The cruisers right behind him. They were closing in on the man who killed Kerry. But catching him was almost the easy part. because the question that would haunt this case wasn't who. They already knew who.
Starting point is 00:40:36 It was why. And whether the man behind the wheel could even begin to tell them. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Carter Roy and this is murder, true crime stories. Come back next time for part two on the murder of Carrie Dorotie and all the people it affected. Murder True Crime Stories is a Crimehouse original, powered by Pave Studios. Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on social media at Crime House on TikTok and Instagram.
Starting point is 00:41:24 Don't forget to rate, review, and follow. Murder True Crime Stories wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly makes a difference. And to enhance your Murder True Crime Stories listening experience, subscribe to Crimehouse Plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get both parts of every story dropped on Tuesday, completely ad-free, no waiting for part two, plus add-free and early access to every show across Crimehouse and bonus episodes every month.
Starting point is 00:41:51 To join, go to Crimehouseplus.com, or if you listen on Apple Podcasts, tap try-free at the top of the Murder True Crime Stories page. We'll be back on Thursday. Murder True Crime Stories is hosted by me, Carter Roy, and is a Crime House original, powered by Pave Studios. This episode was brought to life by the Murder True Crime Stories team. Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benadon, Natalie Protofsky, Lori Marinelli, Sarah Camp, Alyssa Fox, Mara Del Mara Rosa, Claire Swartzlander, and Russell Nash.
Starting point is 00:42:27 Thank you for listening. Happy Halloween, Crime House listeners. I'm Vanessa Richardson. Did you know horror films like Abigail and Sinister, were based on true stories? Join me every Sunday this month on Crime House 24-7 for Crime House of Horrors, where I dive into four stories behind some of our favorite scary movies. From Abigail, The Autopsy of Jane Doe, Sinister, and The Taking of Deborah Logan,
Starting point is 00:43:03 you'll find one thing in common. The truth is scarier than fiction. Listen every Sunday on Crimehouse 24-7 or join Crimehouse Plus for all four right now. ad-free. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or at Crimehouseplus.com. Thanks for listening to today's episode of Murder True Crime Stories. If you're looking for another show to check out, listen to Serial Killers and Murderous Minds. Every Monday and Thursday, Dr. Tristan Ingalls and Vanessa Richardson dig into the most chilling murderers and uncover what drives them to kill. Follow serial killers and murderers and
Starting point is 00:43:46 murderous minds, available wherever you listen to podcasts.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.