My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - My Favorite Murder Presents: The Fall Line - Season 9 - Episode 1

Episode Date: June 24, 2020

My Favorite Murder presents the first episode of The Fall Line’s ninth season. This season, they investigates the cases of a missing teenager, LeRyan Nicholson, and an unidentified homicide victim, both set against one of the worst tornadoes that Nashville, TN has ever seen. Listen and subscribe to The Fall Line on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We wanted to take a moment to share some of the important work that the Fall Line podcast is doing to cover overlooked cold cases within marginalized communities in the southeast. Their latest season highlights the cases of missing teenager Lorraine Nicholson and an unidentified homicide victim both set against one of the worst tornadoes that Nashville, Tennessee has ever seen. So keep listening to hear their story beginning with episode one, an unidentified man. And then please go to the Fall Line feed and you can hear episode two, Son of Nashville, that's out right now. And then please go to thefalllinepodcast.com and follow the show at Fall Line podcast on Twitter and Instagram and subscribe to the Fall Line on

Stitcher, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. We hear it exactly right. We're so proud to have this show on our roster. So please check it out. Thanks so much. This is the first episode in a three-part series. It discusses crime scenes, graphic injury, autopsy and violence. Listener discretion is advised. This is the Fall Line. From the archives of the United States National Weather Service, the following is directly excerpted from reports of the 1998 Nashville tornado. Quote, an historic tornado outbreak of at least 13 tornadoes struck Middle Tennessee on April 16,

1998. Many of these tornadoes were strong or violent and tracked long distances, killing four people and injuring nearly 100 people while causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damage. The most infamous tornado during the outbreak struck downtown Nashville, blowing out numerous windows and skyscrapers and causing the collapse of some older buildings. This tornado outbreak was unusual in several respects. The event lasted nearly the entire day with the first round of severe weather beginning very early around 4 a.m. Central Standard Time and the second and more significant round of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes occurring during the afternoon and evening. The tornado went through downtown Nashville at 3.40 p.m. and on toward East

Nashville, Donaldson and Hermitage. The tornado blew out many windows on office buildings. The nation's bank office towers were one of the hardest-hit buildings in Nashville. 30 private airplanes were damaged at Cornelia Fort Airport. E-35 buildings in downtown Nashville were red-tagged, meaning these buildings were structurally unsound. At least 300 homes were damaged in East Nashville. Many homes lost a good part of their roofs. Trees were uprooted. Telephone poles were knocked down. St. Ann's Episcopal Church, which is well over 100 years old, received major damage. Uprooted trees, damaged roofs to many homes, was the story across Donaldson and Hermitage.

Numerous windows were blown out at the Gaylord Building in Donaldson. About half the trees, that is over a thousand trees, were blown down at Andrew Jackson's home, the Hermitage. Mayor Phil Bredesen closed downtown Nashville on Friday, April 17. Many workers had an unscheduled holiday. The downtown area was reopened Monday, April 20. End quote. Everyone knows a little something about Nashville. The home of country in blue grass, northeast of Memphis, where rock and roll and rhythm in blues were born. Though both might claim it, it's Nashville that gets the title of Music City. Maybe more

rhinestone than diamond of Tennessee, a state the name derived from the Cherokee town of Tennessee. Nashville sits in the middle region of the state on rich soil. It's over 500 square miles, and one of the largest cities by landmass in the southeast. In terms of population, Nashville proper is home to over half a million. Little Richard lived in Nashville for years. Holding, as the Tennessee newspaper describes, quote, long residencies in the famed R&B clubs on Jefferson Street. There's Dolly Parton, Justin Timberlake, Young Buck, Carrie Underwood. The list of stars who are from or who live in Nashville, who can sometimes be spotted downtown where tourist snap pictures of the city's walk of fame,

they seem endless. Online vacation guides are crowded with memorabilia shops to peruse, restaurants serving Nashville hot chicken, and links to book a seat at the Grand Ole Opry, or to download a map of Music Row. Nashville is also home to Tennessee State University, Fisk University, and Meharry Medical College, all three historically black colleges and universities. The latter two were founded in the decade after the Civil War. And there's also Vanderbilt, named after an American millionaire who provided its initial endowment. His name is all over town, including the various Vanderbilt medical facilities that serve the city. It's a music town, a college town, an everlasting tourist attraction, and a city that's faced

numerous natural disasters. Nashville has seen floods, a collapsed reservoir, tornadoes, fire and heat waves, blizzards, and earthquakes. When it comes to states of emergency, Nashville, Tennessee has been host to more than its fair share of trouble. 1998 was a particularly bad year. On April 15th and April 16th of that year, deadly tornadoes swept through the southeast. Much of the damage was concentrated in Tennessee and Mississippi. On April 16th at about 5 p.m., downtown Nashville was hit. According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, quote, a tornado roared down Music Row, sending tourists running for cover. That tornado, quote, touched down in Centennial Park before cutting a path clean

through downtown Nashville. The damage was extensive, uprooted trees, crushed power lines, residential homes, government buildings. The AJC reported that the tornado even, quote, ripped the seal off the state flag. It hit retail stores, honky-tonks, and the football stadium, where residents saw parts of the structure, quote, being tossed around like popsicle sticks. A reporter for the Tennessean described the aftermath as chaotic. Lights down, residents driving recklessly through intersections strewn with debris. At least 100 people were injured, and one was killed, a student from Vanderbilt University. Per the Jackson Sun, he was, quote, crushed underneath the tree in Centennial Park.

According to the article, there had been no tornado siren to warn residents to take cover. All told, Nashville faced roughly $7 million worth of damage. Different media outlets gave varying totals for the cost and the number of injured, but they all agreed the city was seriously impacted. A state of emergency was declared. The Boston Globe reported that then Vice President Al Gore went down to Tennessee to view the aftermath. East Nashville, the hardest hit, saw massive recovery and cleanup efforts in the days following the storm. A 2013 Tennessee in retrospective recalls that the former Nashville mayor, Phil Bresden, quote, personally directed traffic as cleanup trucks rolled through. The destruction would take weeks

to assess, contain, and repair. And it wasn't limited to Nashville. Much of Tennessee have been hit. In the following weeks, Tennessee news was dominated by that storm. The repairs, the stretched thin public services, the first responders. And maybe that's why, one of the reasons why, the body found in North Nashville just a few days before the tornadoes hit, got so little press. That discovery came on Monday, April 13th, 1998, a cool, clear morning in Nashville. It was around 8 a.m. that someone called the police to report the smoke. The caller lived on Mary Street, a dead-end road in North Nashville. The street runs up against Interstate 265, where patchy woods meet the road barrier. And back then, there were a few vacant lots at

the end of the road, too. So no direct neighbors where the street ran into the embankment. According to the Tennessean, that particular spot was known as a convenient place to abandon stripped cars. Mary Street was reportedly popular with sex workers, too. And it wasn't unusual for residents to see cars on their street at all hours. Per the Tennessean, residents had heard a car early on the morning of the 13th, that around 5 a.m. Nothing remarkable there. As noted, the street saw traffic. But as the sun rose, it became evident that something had been left behind, something burning. According to a Crime Stoppers bulletin published later that summer, a Mary Street resident saw a rolled-up beige carpet at the end of her road. It was still smoldering.

And wrapped inside that charred material was a body. The victim was so profoundly burned that, per the Tennessean, first responders could not guess at race, gender, or age, or cause of death. The fire hadn't spread, but kerosene sprayed on the carpet had created a very intense heat. And yet, no one had heard a thing. As reporter John Yates pointed out, the traffic from Highway 265 would probably have drowned out, quote, more suspicious sounds. Police arrived and the scene was photographed and processed, but it would take a medical examination to determine more about the victim. The police report is brief, quote, the body was found in a prone face-up position at the dead end of Mary Street in North Nashville. At the time of this report, the body could not be

identified, having been burnt beyond recognition. The body was transported to FSC for further examination. The case remains open as of April 13, 1998, at 1500 hours. There were two articles, at least that we've found, published on the discovery of this victim. They are also brief. The Tennessean's initial report didn't contain the information about the carpet. Likely that detail hadn't been released to the press at the time of publication. Perhaps there would have been a follow-up as soon as the coroner's report was in had there not been a dramatic change to the Nashville news cycle. The Tennessee tornadoes came and the case disappeared from the local papers. There was much to report on in the state and in Mississippi and beyond, and so that

report from April 14 remained the only spring coverage of the body found at Mary Street. In that report, there were virtually no identifying details, nothing to help a family recognize their missing loved one in the description. Only upon the publication of the Crime Stoppers Bulletin in July was more known about the victim. According to the bulletin, the Mary Street victim was a black male between 18 and 25 years old. His body had been profoundly burned and post-mortem. Examiners were able to give an approximate height of about 511 in a weight range of 150 to 160 pounds. Though not in the paper, a source who has seen the autopsy told us that the cause of death was listed as blunt force trauma to the head. And according to our source, a toxicology report

was run on the victim. The results showed that no controlled substances were in his system. The examiner was able to distinguish some details of the young man's clothing, a pullover shirt, blue jeans, a maroon, CPOs, zipper style jacket with YKK displayed on it, and sandals. The clothing details were specific enough that someone, hopefully, could have recognized them. But no identification came. Eventually, the unidentified victim's remains would either need to be interred, cremated, or stored for testing. In Nashville, unidentified persons are generally buried. Every city has so-called potter's fields or cemeteries or areas where public burials are conducted. These public burials are funded by the city because of a

decedent's lack of funds, unknown identity, or unclaimed status. Historically, criminals might also be buried in potter's fields, sometimes, like other citizens, and unmarked plots that might or might not be recorded in a log. These public burial grounds usually exist within or adjacent to traditional cemeteries where there are plots that are also sold privately. In the 20th and 21st centuries, Nashville's indigent or popper burials have occurred in various cemeteries and on-county-owned land throughout the city. In some cases, there are not individual grave markers, whether the decedent's identity was known or unknown. Now, the process is overseen by metro social services, specifically indigent burial and

cremation services. The eligibility for assistance is outlined on their website. The office works to provide plots, caskets, and grave markers for residents of Davidson County or those who died while in Nashville. The Tennessee newspaper has spotlighted the program on a few occasions and its program manager, a woman named Carol Wilson. Metro Bordeaux Cemetery is one of the sites of Nashville's indigent burials. A 2014 Tennesseean article describes the area as industrial and the graveyard is home to 1,000 people who were interred via metro social services. Maps show that the entrance to the cemetery is off the main road on the way to the main building of a local water treatment plant. The Tennesseean notes that metro social services made use of

Bordeaux Cemetery from 1986 until 2003. Bordeaux has attracted a number of fine-to-grave contributors who have photographed nearly 1,000 of the markers in the cemetery, both the indigent burial section and in the main burial area. One such photo on the website shows the entrance to the potter's field where the nameplates are flush with the ground. That section is marked by a granite memorial bearing the following words. Bordeaux Cemetery. Rest with us here at this stone where poverty and suffering are not known. Dedicated to the deceased citizens of Nashville, Davidson County, who rest with us here. It was in Bordeaux that the unidentified victim found on Mary Street in April of 1998 was buried. Unlike many victims who we've covered, his remains were not cremated.

Upon his internment, a marker was placed, John Doe 19. Per the Tennesseeans, Brian Haas quote, he was the 19th unidentified man buried in the Bordeaux Cemetery. He lies in plot 555, a grave overlooking the Whites Creek wastewater treatment plant. We are not sure of the precise day of John Doe 19's burial. The tornado came just three days after his body was found and there would have been an autopsy and required records to file. And all of that would have been slowed down by the city's storm damage. But based on information from social services, we know the internment happened sometime in May, assuming that John Doe 19 was local to the city. Exactly how many young black men were missing that April in Nashville? How much could did the storm impact

the public's awareness that a body had been found? Did anyone miss the news due to a lack of power that would have signaled that the man could be their missing son, or brother, or friend? Per the 2000 census, David County had an African American population of roughly 27%. Young black men in John Doe 19's age range of 18 to 25, they numbered in the thousands. We can't say precisely how many young adult black males were reported missing in 1998. There aren't public records of cleared cases and, as our audience knows, most missing persons reports are eventually closed. But we can access the cases that are still open, the cold ones now present as entries in public databases. When the parameters are limited to a five-year span,

NamUs lists exactly four missing black men from the greater Nashville area. If you further narrow the search to 1998, NamUs returns exactly one case. The missing person in question is a young man named Marcus Rutledge, who was last seen by his family in June of 1998. So he couldn't have been John Doe 19, but his family and authorities feared that he too was a homicide victim. Marcus was 23 years old at the time of his disappearance and a senior at Tennessee State University, where he majored in biology. According to the Charlie Project, he'd actually planned on a career as a veterinarian, which is why his family was so concerned when they found his dog locked in an apartment bathroom without food or water. It just wasn't something that Marcus would

do and there were no signs that he'd gone on a trip. Though his car was eventually found across town, Marcus remained missing. While unsolved disappearances were comparatively rare in Nashville, there was plenty to keep law enforcement busy. The 1990s were hard on the city and the effects of crime hit some communities harder than others. All told, there were 99 homicides in Nashville in 1998. John Doe 19 was unusual in that his identity remained unknown, but he shared three common factors with a number of the year's other homicide victims. He was young, he was black, he was male. According to a long-term study conducted by the Tennessee Department of Health, which covered the years 1995 to 2002, quote, among 15 to 34-year-old African American males,

homicide was the leading cause of death, responsible for 34% of deaths in this age group. The study also found that across the board, black men and boys had the lowest life expectancies of populations living in the metropolitan areas of Tennessee. A 2018 study found that across the United States, quote, non-Hispanic black men were nearly 10.4 times more likely than non-Hispanic white men to die by homicide in the U.S. That reality isn't reflected in the media that we consume. Though white women are at the forefront of true crime entertainment, they're statistically much less likely to be murdered, both in Tennessee and across the nation. Per the Tennessee Department of Health study on the state's population, quote, based on 2001 to 2003 data, African American

males age 15 to 24 die from homicide at a rate that is more than 31 times that of white females. When it came to covering the city's victims, Nashville's local paper actually had much more coverage than in many cases we've researched. In the 1990s, the Tennesseean ran regular features on unsolved homicides. And based on what we saw, the paper seems to have highlighted diverse victims and families affected by rising violence. 1995 and 1997 were Nashville's worst years, though homicides were comparatively high in 1996 and 1998. Leaders were concerned, and the police were stretched thin. And there was the worry as a tourist town of developing a reputation. As one city officials told the Tennesseean in 1997, quote, nobody wants to see music city become murder city.

In 1997, the Tennesseean reported that some big cities were seeing a decrease in crime, but Nashville wasn't so lucky. The city was facing with the paper described as quote, a killing almost every third day. Reporter John Yates, who covered crime for the Tennesseean throughout the 1990s, interviewed detectives who said by 1997, they were sometimes quote, juggling five murder cases at once. According to Yates, the city put various plans into action from citizen committees to participation in a national program called Officer Next Door. Per Yates 1997 article on the subject, the program encouraged law enforcement officers to buy homes in high crime areas at quote, half market value. In some neighborhoods, law enforcement provided retailers with emergency beepers to summon police.

In October 1998, Tennesseean article mentioned something called flex teams, which were small groups of officers that could be dispatched quickly by precinct captains to combat neighborhood crime. And in 1998, Metro Nashville Police expanded what they called their murder squad. Along with increased homicides, case clearance rates had also fallen, a cause of concern for the Metro Nashville Police Department. Nashville had begun the decade with a higher than average solve rate. The Tennesseean reported it at 87%, but by 1997, that percentage had fallen to quote, just under 70. And as reporter John Yates pointed out, case loads had doubled in that time. He interviewed a Metro Nashville captain who pointed out a problem that was facing every growing city,

what the captain called quote, mystery murders. Though he doesn't elaborate, the concept is a common truth discussed in true crime circles. The more people, the more roads and the more access, the lower the likelihood that a victim can be traced to a suspect in a neat, straight line. So Nashville saw major growth in part due to the arrival of the Houston Oilers football team, who relocated to Nashville in 1995, but the decade was also hard. As we said in 1998, the year John Doe 19 was found, there were 99 murders. Of those homicides, 21 would still be unsolved by January of 1999. The Tennesseean provided a long feature article on those unsolved homicides with each victim

discussed by name. This piece, also by reporter John Yates, includes John Doe 19 and the years other unidentified victim, a woman shot and left in the Cumberland River. They were listed along Nashville citizens, the majority of whom were shot. In many cases, burglary or robbery are listed as the motive, though many are labeled as quote, motive unknown. An elderly couple, Clayton and Norris Smith, were shot in their home by a man in an army type uniform. A young woman named Carolyn Fisher was strangled and left along Interstate 40. The skeletal remains of a missing mother, a 44-year-old Donna Farr, were discovered in a wooded area. Terrence Teasley, 21, was shot, no suspects.

Kevin Carter, 21, shot, motive unknown. Jermaine Banks, 26, shot, robbery. And the list goes on. The victims show no pattern of particular intent, different races, ages, areas of town, but for each case marked motive unknown, there's an example of that mystery murder phenomenon. No clear trail to follow, perhaps no answers forthcoming. Of the 21 then unsolved homicides, five took place in April, but only two occurred within a week of the tornado. There was John Doe 19 on April 13th, and then there was Jeffrey A. Davis, who was shot on April 17th. Davis was found on Garfield Street, just about half a mile away from Mary Street, where John Doe 19's body was recovered.

Both victims were found close to I-265. Davis was found bleeding on the sidewalk and later died at Vanderbilt Hospital. To the best of our knowledge, Davis's murder remains unsolved. With the victim known as John Doe 19 though, detectives were looking at what were essentially two different cases, identifying the victim and catching the suspect. We were able to speak with retired Nashville detective Larry Flair, who worked on the department's murder squad in the 1990s. For a brief time, he was actually the lead detective on John Doe 19's case. We asked him to walk us through how they would have approached the case of an unidentified homicide victim, especially in the days that came before the tornado. He told us that pre-planning was essential, that the murder squad had a number of procedures in place to help them quickly gather as much information as possible.

He also walked us through use of a regional teletype system, essentially NCIC, but focused on a particular state. In this case, Tennessee. Well, in my career, when we first formed our squad in Nashville, we actually put all of our heads together and got a checklist. And the checklist consists of at least 150 different things. Everything from date and approximate time that we felt at the time of being notified all the way through the other 150 or 60, including weather, temperature, outside. All types of samples are extracted from if we're outside. All types of forensic stuff that is gathered by our forensic team and such. All the way down to once, if it was determined on an unidentified person that we felt was missing, or we found out that somebody was on the missing person report,

and that's where we would follow up. And when you've got a body with no identification, you keep that right up front on the front page. Let's do everything we got, and you get someone ID with paperwork on DLs or something like that. It may not even be there. So you treat each one of these victims as if they're practically, possibly not the person you feel that they are. They could be an unidentified individual. So that's the teamwork that we had at the Nashville PD during that era. And the unidentified cases that I worked, I depended tremendously on the organization that's called R-O-C-I-C.

That's a regional organization crime information center. And we, as detectives that utilize the R-O-C-I-C, we would author a complete, actual part of everything that we knew of the unidentified person. We would pour that into their system. And their system, along with their analyst, would then complete searches with any other type of situation that might match up. Now, in this particular case, we didn't get anything back on this victim. There's an entire file on that and that alone with the R-O-C-I-C. Fortunately, it was, they had a regional office there in Nashville, which made it much easier and we gained a relationship with those different professionals over there. So there just weren't missing young adult black males who met the age and physical criteria at the time?

Not at that time because each and every hit that we would get that would be close when we would follow up on it. That's my memory is that they were definitely not in the criteria where it could have been in either in Nashville or the age group or, you know, different things of that nature. So everything that we put in, we weren't able to get anything of value, but it helped us cancel so many others as well. Larry told us that they would have employed N-C-I-C-2 to run national and sometimes even international checks. They would have had the basic victim description back from the corner on an average case within a day or two and sometimes in as little as seven hours. The official report would come much later, but as with the Glen County Jane Doe, the medical examiner would have prioritized giving law enforcement the basics they needed to begin sorting through missing persons reports. So with that in mind, the first check through the system would have likely come on April 14th, though we can't be certain. Detective Larry Flair left the homicide squad in July of 1998, so he can't speak to how the case eventually unfolded, but he was involved in the retrieval of evidence, evidence that Metro Nashville would explore over the next two decades.

And the murder squad would have worked John Doe 19's case throughout the spring of 1998, but would have also experienced the same shutdowns as the rest of the city when the tornado hit on April 16th. How much did the storm impact the search for the victim and the killer? In a 2013 article on the case, law enforcement relayed the effort to Tennessee reporter Brian Haas. Haas reported that, quote, Sergeant Gary Kemper, who now leads Metro's cold case unit, said detectives worked feverishly. They developed persons of interest, even went out of state to conduct interviews, but the case went cold in 2001, and they never identified John Doe 19, end quote. Now, there have been a few studies that concern the combination of natural disaster and crime, but most focus on crimes that occur after a disaster, and who is most vulnerable and which predators might take advantage of long term chaos, like the multiple serial killers operating in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. What's much harder to quantify, though, is how a natural disaster might affect an ongoing case. We can't offer a study on that phenomenon, but we do know of a single specific example from the week of the Nashville tornado.

There was a missing persons report filed on April 15, 1998, two days after John Doe 19 was found, one day before the tornado hit. The report identified the missing person as Lorraine Nicholson of North Nashville. He was described as an 18 year old black male. According to the incident report, Lorraine was last seen by his mother Sylvia on April 12, 1998. The report mentions that he was living with his uncle on Jefferson Street, but that's not quite right. He was actually staying with his mother and regularly visited his uncle's apartment. His mother and uncle reported that they'd last seen him on Sunday afternoon when he left the house on foot. The responding officer noted that Lorraine was on, quote,

medication to treat schizophrenia and, quote, known to smoke marijuana. We don't know why the latter is included unless it was discussed in response to a routine question about medications and substance issues. Lorraine Nicholson was a native of Nashville, where he'd grown up attending its public schools and participating in its civic programs. His name appeared in the local paper a few times before that April when he disappeared. At Pearl Cone High School, he'd been a talented athlete running track and placing in several races that were reported in the regional sports section. He was 15 then, and a lot would change over the next three years. The police department's report lists Lorraine as six foot one and 150 pounds with black hair and brown eyes. His mother and uncle said he was last seen in a white shirt, blue jeans, black Nike's and a black hat.

There's not mention of a jacket or what style of Nike's, sneakers or slip-on sandals that Lorraine had on. If you'll recall, John Doe 19 was described as a black male, 18 to 25, approximately 5'11", and somewhere around 150 pounds. John Doe 19's clothing was badly damaged, but the medical examiner was able to make out blue jeans, sandal-style shoes and a maroon jacket. We don't have access to the report, so we can only say the shirt was pullover style, meaning without buttons. Most likely that meant a t-shirt. Minor discrepancies aside, the descriptions of Lorraine Nicholson and John Doe 19 were similar. Certainly similar enough to suggest a comparison should be made. For a few days, Lorraine's case was open alongside John Doe 19's. Lorraine went missing on the 12th and was reported as such on the 15th.

John Doe 19 was found on the 13th, less than a day after Sylvia, Lorraine's mother, said she'd last seen him. Lorraine's case would have been active for about 24 hours before the Nashville tornado hit. So there were four days before his case was closed that a comparison might have been made. If anyone was actively working cases at that time when a state of emergency had been declared. There is an addendum to Lorraine's missing persons report on a separate page that provides some vital additional information. On April 20th, 1998, a person called the Metro Nashville Police Department and reported that Lorraine Nicholson had returned home. His case was summarily, quote, closed by exception. After April 20th, 1998, there was no missing persons report to compare to John Doe 19, whose identity was still being sought.

Of his family, only Lorraine's mother and uncle knew he was missing that week in April of 1998. They were not contacted when the case was closed. And Lorraine's younger sister, Amira, and his step sister, Candice, they weren't sharing a home with him at that time, and they weren't aware of his daily comings and goings. Lorraine's father, who lived out of state, was similarly unaware of his son's daily movements. And Candice and Amira, they didn't know that a missing persons report had been filed in the first place. So they didn't know it had been closed either, five days after Lorraine's mother reported his absence. And they didn't know the woman who'd phoned Metro Nashville Police. Per the police report, the caller had identified herself as Holleen Venable and claimed she was a neighbor of Lorraine's.

She was no relation to his family. We know that when there's an unidentified victim, law enforcement starts close to home, looking through the city's own missing persons reports. Nashville had certainly done that and would do that in the future. In fact, we came across a number of articles discussing attempts and other cases to match human remains to missing persons reports. One in particular that stood out was the skeleton of a man found in 2001. Once those bones were discovered, they were quickly compared to the medical records of a missing local man, Rodney Woodard. Rodney was reported missing by his girlfriend in 1997. When the skeletal remains were discovered in 2001, police conducted two DNA tests but were unable to make a match. Although Rodney Woodard met the parameters of our name as search, a black male who disappeared in the years directly surrounding 1998, he didn't appear in the results.

He does have one mention on the Charlie project, but we can't find any documents on his case past 2001. It's unclear whether his disappearance is still unsolved. And as far as other open cases go, there was another man who might have been compared to the skeletal remains found in 2001, Marcus Rutledge, the Tennessee State senior we mentioned earlier in the episode. Whether he was compared, we can't say, but we know the remains would not be compared to Lorraine Nicholson. After all, his case would have been closed for several years. And as for John Doe 19, Metro Nashville police would still be seeking the homicide victims identity the next year and the next and the next. It would be 15 years until the cold case of John Doe 19 collided with the detective work of two sisters who had been asking and eventually looking for their missing brother, Lorraine. They hadn't spoken to him since April of 1998. Amira, who was just 12 that year, felt his loss keenly and also felt sure that her big brother wouldn't have abandoned her. Here's what she told us in an interview this spring.

Because I'm telling you, it's unlike him to not call anybody. He would have reached out to one of us. You know, one or the other would have heard from him by now all this time. He would have called somebody he didn't even show up. I knew something was definitely wrong, because the year that he went missing 98. My sister, my dad's daughter was graduating from high school, and they had the graduation on the football field at Pearl Come. He loved that school, you know, and I'm sure that he knew that she was graduating because they would have been graduating in the same year. And I looked for him in that crowd. I'm like, I know I'm gonna see him standing somewhere. I can't wait to get to this graduation. And I looked and looked and he never showed a never saw him. Even up until my graduation, when I graduated in 2004 from high school, I just knew he was gonna be there. I was gonna see him. He's gonna pop up after all these years. Never saw him. Next time on the fall line, we'll bring you part two in the series on Lorraine Nicholson. We began again in 1998 with the story of Lorraine and his sisters and the strange call that closed his case and how it all intersected with the unidentified victim known as John Doe 19.

How his sisters, Amira and Candice, became citizen detectives who wouldn't take no for an answer. We'd like to thank all the listeners who have taken time to support our sponsors, leave us reviews or support our show directly on Patreon. We couldn't do it without you. Special thanks to Angie Dodd. Thanks also to Olivia Lind of Flat Rock and Something's Not Right, who connected us with Lorraine Nicholson's family. Angie and her co-host Tashana covered his case on Something's Not Right. Thanks to Eric Kelly of Southern Fried True Crime for reading the National Weather Service report that you heard at the top of the episode. And to Vincent of Gone Cold for reading the inscription from the Bordeaux Cemetery. Please check out both shows. They are dear friends and they are putting out great work. The Fall Line is created by Laura Norton and Brooke Hargrove and is produced and mastered by Moira Curry. Written, researched and hosted by Laura Norton with interviews by Brooke Hargrove. Research assistants are Kim Fritz, Jessica Ann, Lex Weathers and Brian Waters. Content advisors are Brandy C. Williams, Vic Kennedy and Liv Fallon. The music is by RJR. You can find our merch in the exactly right Podswag store.

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