Small Town Murder - Murder Breadcrumb Trail - Tullahoma, Tennessee

Episode Date: April 9, 2026

This week, in Tullahoma, Tennessee, when the body of a young woman is found burning in a barrel, on the side of the road, police use her distict tattoos to identify her, but they'll need more than that to find her killer. Her longtime boyfriend seems to be the obvious suspect, but his alibi is strong. In the end, a lucky break, and a slim connection to a friend of the victim are enough to lead detectives to lifelong criminal, who has recently stepped into the world of murder. The problem is, he shoudl; have already been in jail!   Along the way, we find out that where George Dickel whiskey is made, that being an innocent, and doing everythimg right, doesn't protect you from murder, and that if someone has already been in trouble for 21 felonies, it's not a stretch that he may also do number 22!!   New episodes, every Wednesday & Friday nights!! Check us out on VIDEO Wednesday and Friday evenings on Netflix! www.netflix.com/smalltownmurder Go to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things Small Town Murder, Crime In Sports & Your Stupid Opinions!   Follow us on... instagram.com/smalltownmurder facebook.com/smalltownpod   Also, check out James & Jimmie's other shows, Crime In Sports & Your Stupid Opinions on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts!!

This week, in Tullahoma, Tennessee, a body found burning in a barrel in the middle of nowhere freaks the whole area out. But who could have done this? The teenagers who called it into the police, a random local, a serial killer on the loose, welcome to Small Town Murder. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder. Yay! Yay, indeed, Jimmy. Yay, indeed. My name is James Petrogalo.

I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wiseman. Thank you folks so much for joining us today on another really weird crazy wild edition of Small Town Murder as usual. We got some just insane stuff for you. It's every week, I go, how are we going to have top? We did last week. How are you going to do it, James? There's always crazier stuff out there.

There's always crazy stuff out there's always crazy stuff. Oh, another rabbit. It's all that. I didn't do any of this, by the way. This is just happening in the world and we're just finding it. We wish it would stop. Honestly, we really wish not our show, but we wish. All the murder would stop.

There's plenty that's happened. We could do this show for 50 years based on what's already occurred. So definitely. Before we start, definitely, head over to shut up and give me murder.com. Get your tickets for upcoming live shows. The next shows available that have tickets available for them are May 2nd in Denver. There's still some seats for that. And very few left for Royal Oak, Michigan on May 30th as well.

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all ready to go, and then you get new ones every other week, one crime in sports, one small town murder, and you just get all of it. Every damn thing we put out. And this week is no different. For this week,

which you're going to get, for crime in sports, we're going to talk about, we're going to have the old-timey articles and ads and stuff like that again, because this is like a horrible, tragedies and murders and... It's ridiculous what they disclosed.

Crazy ads and say, oh, the descriptions of these things are amazing. And then for Small Town... And they'll docks you in the newspaper. Oh, absolutely. Everybody that talks. Here's his address. Here they are. Then for Small Town Murder, we are going to talk about the Corey Richens murder,

where she murdered her husband, poisoned him, and then wrote a book about grief for her children. And among other wild things. Is that what we call that poisoning? Is that poisoning? It's technically poisoning. That's yeah, that's technically how they put it with poisoning with street drugs that she found from her maid. It's a crazy story.

We'll talk about that and more. Patreon.com slash crime in sports. And in addition to that, you also get all the shows we put out crime in sports, your stupid opinions, and of course, Small Tower Murder, all ad free with your Patreon. And then you get a shout out at the end of the show too. Jimmy will mispronounce your name, even though he wants to get it right. We promise that. So that said, disclaimer time. This is a comedy show.

We're certainly, we're comedians and jokes are going to happen and also horrible murder happens because that's the name of the show. You'd be a little weirded out if no murder happened. Small town murder and you tune in and everybody's fine. It's just a nice story. That'd be weird. But we're tipped up to the tools. Yeah, that was a really, that was a heartwarming tale. That's strange.

But yeah, that's all going to happen. But at the same time, you go, well, how do you mix murder and comedy? I think it takes the edge off a little bit, honestly, and makes it a little less creepy and a little less weird. And what we do is we don't make fun of the victims or the victims' families. Oh, why, James? Because we're assholes. But we're not scumbags.

That's how that goes. So that sounds good to you. You're going to hear one hell of the wild story. If you think true crime and comedy should never, ever, ever mix, then I don't know. Maybe we're not for you. But I say give it a shot, because we might be. Either way, no complaint and later. Let's just say that.

or you'll end up on your stupid opinions. There are other show. So that said, I think it's time, everybody, to sit back, clear the lungs, arms to the sky, and let's all shout. Shut up and give me murder. Let's do this, everybody. Okay. Let's go on a trip, shall we? Let's do it.

We're going down to Tennessee this week. Okay. I'm drinking my sun drop here in honor of Tennessee, because that's a lot of Tennessee, because that's A teeny tiny wild cherry Pepsi. This is like a mixer, and that's kind of what that shit's made for, too. Yeah, yeah, all the sun drop, yeah, you could mix that with anything. It would kill the flavor of it. It's great.

Yeah, it's a booze mixer. Absolutely. That's how they started. Mountain Dew was started as a mixer. Yeah, yeah, it's a whiskey whiskey. That's right. They'll never taste the whiskey with this shit. Jesus.

So much sugar. So much sugar. We're going to Tullahoma, Tennessee. Where exactly? We're heard of that joint here. Tullahoma, South Central Tennessee. down by kind of the Alabama border there.

Way down there. Yeah, it's about an hour 20 to Nashville and about an hour 20 to Huntsville, Alabama. So right in between those two. About three hours to Selmer, Tennessee. Yeah. Our last Tennessee episode, episode 651, My Ugly Came Out.

Remember that one? My Ugly came out. Like, I guess so. Look at you with all the drinks today. I like it. You are going to be so hydrated. over here. I had to kind of give a wash of that sun drop.

Just goes to sugar. I could like feel it boring into my skull. It's good though. Push the sugar down. Had to like clear some sugar out. This is in coffee and Franklin counties both, but all of this pretty much takes place in coffee county, but the town technically lingers into Franklin. Area code.

Yeah. Spelled different than coffee like the drink? No, no, no, coffee. Yeah. Coffee County. Oh, real? Yeah, there's coffee. It's not Green Mile.

No, no. It's double F, double E coffee. Sounds the same, but spelled different. It would spell different. Yeah, no, no. This is area code 931. They have a motto and a nickname. Is that right?

Yeah. Now, their nickname is the same nickname as we've come across at least 10 different cities with this nickname. But their motto is Tennessee's Rising Star. Is that right? Which I don't get that. This place is in the middle of nowhere, which. Yeah, it's a, hmm. I've never heard of it.

You've got to rise a little higher, guys. That's what I mean. And then the nickname is the Queen City, which it's not even a city, number one. It's a town. And Queen City is Charlotte first. And then I've heard others too. But Charlotte is a big city. And that's Queen City.

And named after Queen Charlotte. There you go. That's why it's the Queen City. I don't know Queen Tullahoma, but I assume she sat upon the throne for many decades and the people thrived. That's all I can think. Now, history of this town was founded in 1850s. as a work camp. So, you know, it's full of joy when it was founded as a work camp.

That's not good. Along the new Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad, its name derived. Now, there's two different possibilities of where they got the name, Tullahoma. One, it says it derived from the Choctaw phrase, Tle Homa, which means red rock. Now, there's an alternate explanation here saying that the name, The name is that Peter Dechard, who donated the land for the railroad right of way and was therefore given the right to name two stations along the line, named one Dechard after himself, and the other as Tulcahoma with a K, and it was later changed to Tullahoma. I guess that was the name of Dechard's favorite horse, which had been named for a Choctaw chief captured by Dechard's grandfather. So either way it goes...

Oh my God. Either way it goes back to it's a Choctaw name. That's all we know. Everything's horrifying. Everything is all. This is all terrible. It's a work camp. His grandfather captured an Indian Jeep and named his horse after him.

This is all weird. It's all weird. There was also a town called Tullahoma in Mississippi, which later changed its name to Grenada. So I don't know. We don't know. More horror. More horror. Do you want to hear even more?

George Dickel Whiskey is made just north of here. This is Dickel country, everybody. This is the Dickel Hood. Dickel Hood runoff. There's runoff in the water. Watch out. And Jack Daniels is distilled 12 miles away in Lynchburg. And you know, we talked about Dickel in an episode, and I was unaware of how fucking popular it is.

Oh, it's usually popular. Jack Daniels has such a much better branding operation, marketing campaign. And Dickles better. It is, I don't know. Dickle's a better, it's a better whiskey. Yeah. They're all pretty shitty, honestly. It's, I mean, it's whiskey.

It's fucking. I mean, there's some good whiskeys, but those aren't, those aren't among them. It'll make you all crooked. That's the idea. That's all it is. Little Richard died here in 2020. I don't know why he was here when he died in Tullahoma. That's an odd thing to think, right?

This place is fascinating already. It's insane. Let's talk about some reviews here. We've never been in this place. What do we know about it? No. Here's five stars. Tullahoma is a small town with big city qualities. They all say it.

They all say. Especially, and then the one star says the opposite. They have no amenities. Especially in restaurant choices. It's a real thriving. They don't, they don't. They just leave it with that. No specifics.

They're just like. Feels like a big city around here. It's just a culinary road. On the border and all. Yeah. We go. We just got our citizens. sells an El Pollo Loco.

So that's real. We got a Taco Johns. Yeah. Ooh, Taco Johns. I have always loved the energy that the high school athletics events bring to the city. So that right there.

If high school sports is the source of your energy, that's a problem. Here's five stars. Wouldn't leave this town even if my life depended on it. Two exclamation points. If I could.

Oh, man. I've lived here since the day I was born. Everybody says they're so ready to leave home and go to a big city, but I love it right here where I am. Not to country, not too city. It's amazing. It's a little bit country. It's a little bit rock and roll. Yeah, that's what it sounds like.

I can't leave. Talk himself into staying. Here's three stars. We don't have much crime in our area, but every once in a while, it's something going on. Something gets, it's something going on. We'll talk about the crime because it's a lot in this time. And then finally one star, and this is a wordy one, but it's pretty worth it. Here we go.

The crime here is at its worst. Again, we'll talk about it. So we have one person saying, no crime, this person saying it's a cesspool. It's just horrifying. You have so many people struggling to survive that they will literally do anything to survive. I have seen people ride lawnmowers dragging trash cans on wheels down the street, stopping to steal, porch plants so they can sell them to make money. What?

There's about five things to unpack there. First of all, the riding lawn mowers. That's the most conspicuous crime I've ever heard. There is nothing louder than a rolling garbage can, number one. Nothing louder. Yeah, except for a riding lawnmower. Things behind you. That's real sneaky to pop up and grab a porch plant.

Then you're going to sell it. I got this fern. Like, who's buying porch plants? the street. Feels like, we do go door to door. It was like, we could go hijack a helicopter and steal potted planes.

Are you at your damn mind? That would be so loud. I know what we need. I got a John Deer. Wow. The police are everywhere, and by everywhere, I mean they like to pull up

and congregate from their cars. So they just like to hang out. They're useless when it comes to actually needing their services. They always push you off saying there's nothing they can do. It's a civil matter. Yeah. When neighbors are fighting. and they're like, let's one of y'all kills each other.

Ain't my problem. Y'all can work with that. That's a civil matter. Okay, a neighbor putting their gun to my head is not really a civil matter in my eyes. See, yeah, this is personal. What? This is, you know, something happened. They didn't just observe the town.

This person has a personal beef. It's obvious here. The judicial system is so messed up. Instead of getting offenders help, they just keep putting them in jail, giving them outrageous fines. And so the offenders have nothing to do rather than turn back to the, the drug game or stealing. Obviously, the porch plant business is a up-and-comer.

The drug game. The drug game or stealing to be able to pay the crazy fines in such small times. This is a horrible place dubbed as meth capital. That's all capital writers, by the way. Who dubbed it that? I think the guy who put a gun to his head. It's like, say it's the meth capital. It's a meth capital.

It's a meth capital. People in this town, population, 20,000. $1,500.99. So not a huge, not a small in the middle here. 51.3% women, which is well above the average for a town of 20,000 people. A lot of women here. 40.1 is the median age. So that's a little bit older than the national average, not much.

It's 53% married. It's kind of a lot of family action, but then there's a lot of people single with children also. So it's interesting. race in this town, 87.1% white, 3.6% black, 1.3% Asian, and 4.5% Hispanic. Religion in this town, as you might imagine in rural Tennessee, 52.6. It's a little bit higher than the national average, but the number one religion with a bullet is Baptist at 23.5%. As we know, Baptists are the Catholics of the South, obviously. So we have that. unemployment here, a little bit under the national average, but the median household income also under the national average. Median household income here, rest of the country, it's 69,000 and change. Here it is 52,411.

So not too great. That's a little bit tough, but maybe it's cheap to live here. Let's find out. Cost of living here, 100 would be average par. Here it's 82. All right. Which is pretty cheap. About the same.

But median home cost here, $240. $34,300, which is... That's pretty steep. Yeah, cheaper than the national average, but steep for... If you're only... If you're making 50 grand. So if we've convinced you, damn it, you have got way too many plants on your porch, and you need them to be stolen.

You have a garbage cat on wheels. A surplus of points at us. You got way too many daffodils. We have for you. The Tullahoma, Tennessee... Real Estate Report. Okay, house number one here is a two-bedroom, two-bath, 1-2-bath, 1-20-foot trailer. Oh, it's a trailer.

It's on a one-acre lot. So you get, you know, it's not stuffed into a trailer park. You got some room, but the lot's weird. It's like long and thin. Oh. Your acre goes this way. Like your trailer? Yeah, it's a trailer-shaped lot.

Exactly. It says the existing mobile home is older, and, require significant renovation or removal. In other words, don't bother. It's not livable. It's not livable. It was, quote, built in 1990. It was assembled in 1990, we'll say.

Somewhere else. Somewhere else. Then drug down the road and planted here. Then drug behind a John Deer mower with porch plants falling off. This house is $115,000. I mean, for an acre of land, that's not bad. It's not bad. It's not bad.

It looks like it's not. Up there it's bad. That's awful. It doesn't look like it's in the best area. It looks like a lot of dirt lots and trailers around you. It doesn't look great. This just had a $10,000 price cut, by the way. There's going to be more coming off.

It's coming. Just sit tight. Here's a three-bedroom, two-bath, 1750 square foot house. And it just looks like a nice little family house. 0.35 acre lot, so not big. Looks like there's nice houses next door to you. Not terrible. Built in 1947, so it's an older house.

Inside is pretty nice. It's a decent house. $230,000 for that bad boy. Okay, that's not bad. That's decent for 1750 and you can have a nice little family house. And then you've done real well. You have stolen every plant that is not nailed down from here. Your wife

is the queen of this city. From here to the Carolina border, I'll tell you. When you have all that, you get a four-bedroom seven bath. Tea bowl for each and every beehole with three left over. Holy. 12,866 square foot house. What do you do with that?

13,000 square. It's enormous. It's like it's got wings. It's crayon, 28.16 acres. Tell me this is sub 800 and I'm moving there, James. Oh, you are way off. It's described as a French-inspired estate designed by renowned architect Ron Ferris. If you know the architect's name, that adds a million dollars to the price.

That's it. Offers a rare opportunity to acquire a 28-acre, fully-gated private estate offering architectural presence and total seclusion crafted for those who value autonomy, presence, and long-term legacy. Ridiculous. What in the fuck? $4,100,000. No. Who, I'm impressed that it's only four, to be honest. It's insane, but you're in the middle of nowhere.

I don't think so. What's your nearest airport, Nashville? Probably an hour 20. That's not too bad. Things to do here. Okay, here is the 41A music festival, which was canceled in 2025 due to weather. So they didn't even, they were just like, it's all messed up. No.

It's going to be raining for a while. I bet it was that tornado outbreak. Maybe. I'm not sure. So we have their last one that they actually did before that. And let's see here. We have acts such as saved by the 90s, which I think we've brought up before. Have we?

I think they were in one of these festivals. It's a saved by the bell reference, right? I would think so, yeah. Yeah, in the 90s music. The Velcro Pygmies. Oh. Yeah. That's not bad.

It's a good name. I guess so. Cody Canada and the departed. Hi there. Cody Canada. Nice to meet you. Where are you from, Cody? Oh, Arkansas.

Yeah, Arkansas. Cody Canada, just denim shirt, denim jacket, denim pants, denim hat. It's just Cody Canada. Nice to meet you. From Arkansas. From Arkansas. That's right. From Little Rock.

Well, outside of Little Rock. But, you know, we say Little Rock. Nobody really know where I'm from. Bad Monkey. Got to have Bad Monkey. J.P. Clarity. Sounds like a country singer. Stagger Moon Band.

Chase Clanton and the vintage vibes. Wait, Chase Clanton and vintage vibes. Now, I don't know if this is another band after it or if this is part of their name. It's either Chase Clanton and the Vintage Vives, and then there's another band called Jack Wagon, or it's Clay's Chaston, Chase Clanton and the Vintage Vives Jack Wagon, which sounds much cooler. I think I've heard of Jack Wagon.

That sounds very like punk. Something. Not necessarily punk, but like Rockabilly. I think that's what they are. Yeah, maybe. There's also Motley Inc, which I assume is a Motley Crew. cover band. I assume.

The atomic punks, southern moss, and then the boogie nights, but knights like of the round table. Yeah. How do you have a town of near 30,000, and this is the best you can come up with?

Well, the headliner, you didn't get, let me get to that yet. This is big. The spasmatics will be headlining. The what? It's four guys dressed like Revenge of the Nerds, nerds.

Like with like pocketers. protectors and thick glasses and like weird ones wearing like a fanny pack their short pants i don't know what they're doing if it's like divo or what if they do the song from the second one in uh fort lauderdale i'll watch yeah they rap that would be great yeah yeah you gotta get the the them all to rap at the end so they could beat the deltas that's how it works two of them are dead now yeah isn't that crazy and one is wishes he was dead because he's in jail for fucking child molestation or alleged at this point. So, yeah, he wishes.

He's like, if only, if only I could follow Skolnik in death. Somebody in the prison's going to get them. Oh, man. Yeah, nerd. It's going to be, if he hears that coming while he's in prison, if it's true, allegedly. Yeah. Crime rate in this town, property crime is about one quarter high. That would be plant stealing.

Oh, that would fall under property crime. That'll do it. And then violent crime, murder rape, robbery, and of course, assault. The Mount Rushmore. of crime, all so high. Really? Yeah. I don't know what's going on in this town, but bad things.

That said, let's talk about some murder. Here we go. Let's do this. Okay. Let's start out. We're going to start out hot here, and I mean that literally and figuratively. July 12th, 2012, we're going to start. Okay.

Not back in time too far. Yeah. You still have the same phone. Same phone, different operating system maybe, but same phone. social media apps and scrolling and we, you know, we're all, everyone's got our heads down and we're all the same shit. So post fourth of July glow. Pre, July 2nd. Oh, if I said July 12th.

No, no, July 2nd, 2012. This is about somewhere in the neighborhood of 115 to 118, somewhere in that very small neighborhood. Three minute one. A.m. So, nighttime here. Now, there's a group of teenagers. who say they were driving on AWOLT or AWOLT, AWOLT, AWOLT, AWOLT, AWOLT road in rural Franklin County near the AWOLT bridge,

which is along the shore of Tim Ford, Tims Ford Lake, not Tim Ford's Lake, Tim's Ford Lake. And they see something that looks like there's a brush fire going on. Oh. They see flames coming in. And you're in a rural area. It is dark. It's dark.

Yeah, but also. in the rural areas too. People burn shit that time of night, like trash and stuff. There's a lot of fires, but you can see those fires for miles. There is no houses around here, though. That's the thing. There is no, this is a rural, rural area. There's no houses. There's no like, okay, that's somebody burning something on their property, even though it's the middle of the night. Probably Tim's Ford. It's, it's Tim over there. It's burning his Ford. Burning another goddamn Ford down here. God damn it, Tim. Jesus Christ. So they see this, and it's not a campfire. It's bigger. They see it like tickle in the trees type of deal.

Oh, it's big. When you see that, that's a big fire. So they said they pulled over to see what it was because when you're a teenager, if you see a fire, fire is. You know, holy shit, what's going on over there? You just want to get out and drink Boone's farm next to it, no matter what's on fire. You know, oh my God. Get the Mickey's out. We got smoke around that.

Yeah, we got to do this. So they pull over. This is what they claim here. They pull over. They get out of the car thinking it's a brush fire that could. spread and I don't know what how they were planning on putting it out just how big's Tim's Ford Lake that's a it's a good size lake but I don't know if they're going to go over there and they got a pump or anything with their hands yeah and go over and put it in their shirt

yeah I don't make a papoose out of I don't know what's going on here so yeah they're they're I don't know what they thought but they said they pulled over and they approach and they see it's a barrel oh that's burning like a burn barrel which in the middle of nowhere is is a strange thing to find. It's weird, yeah. And there's a human being on fire in there. In the barrel. In the barrel.

Yeah. So they freak out. They call 911. Yeah. They all have phones. It's 2012. Sure. They describe there's a fire by the bridge and we think there's a person in there.

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Now right away, these kids are suspicious as shit to these cops, number one. They're like, it just seems. So you're driving in the little nowhere. out here and there's a body on fire and you just stumbled on it really. That's what I mean. So they're right away. They're like, don't, those kids stay right there, number one. Don't let them go anywhere.

First of all. And then at about 1.30 a.m., the first responders arrive. And it's Franklin County deputies and firefighters. And they put the flames out. And this is, there's grass chart everywhere all around them. And it's on the shoulder of AWOLT road on the edge of Tim's Ford Lake. And there's a young one. woman in there. That's who is on fire. It's strange, though, because the fire has only really taken on the lower half of her body.

They said, and she's also naked from the waist down. She's partially burned. Her upper half is in pretty good shape in terms of burning. It's not really been burned very much. We have learned that in this show over six. People don't burn well. No, they don't burn well at all. They're not. They don't burn well at all. good, the very bad conductors of fire. Yeah. Not good. Not good kindling. You got to get it so hot. It's, yeah, because it's, your body is wet.

I mean, it's all moisture and things. It doesn't burn well. It just doesn't. It's not made for that. Yeah. Unless you got a 2,000 degree fire or whatever. That's a different story. Yeah.

Like in a live tree. You really got to get it hot. Yeah. It's really hard to set a live tree on fire. It doesn't want to burn. It just doesn't want to. It's full of water. Yeah.

So the fire is concentrated in the pelvic region, it looks like. Not even the legs. It looks like it's concentrated in the pelvic region, which is not great. There's no identification. There's no purse. There's no phone. There's no keys. Her fingers have been damaged badly enough by fire that there's no fingerprints on here either.

So they are. It's perplexed. And freaksed and freaked out. And also, again, keep those kids there and don't let them go anywhere. because it looks like a young woman that's in the ballpark of their age also. So they're like that we don't like it all. Now, the detective, George Dyer of the Franklin County Sheriff's Office, he's the first detective to arrive.

And he said it was like something you'd see off a movie. This is not real. This can't be happening. This is crazy. That's a detective saying that, who. Right. They're not ones to go. They pride themselves on never being shocked by shit.

You know what I mean? So when they go, holy shit, this is wild. What the fuck? This is crazy. It's crazy when that happens. When they see movies, they go, that's not what this job is like at all. Yeah, that's, oh, you always show up in some girls crotch is on fire. Yeah, right.

Yeah. Every time. Put this one. Another detective, Todd Hindman, he notices blunt force trauma to the head. Now, it's dark. They're working with flashlights. So it's got to be pretty obvious to see at this point. He said you could actually feel the broken bones in the skull.

Oh, Jesus. That is horrible. That is nauseating. Imagine. It's feeling. Examining something and fingers just go inside where things don't. Imagine that it was just moving around. There's give.

Yeah. Yeah. Like an egg wrapped in a sock that you broke. You're like, oh, no, that's not good. Yeah. That's bad. Like an Easter egg that's broken. Yeah, that's exactly what it is.

So, man, so the first cop that got there, by the way, poured his bottle of water on the body to try to put it out. Yeah. Which, I mean, it helped. It was something. The medical examiner said she had never been in that area for a call. This was like, where the fuck is this? Like, they were like, shit, put that in the old GPS, because I don't know where the hell I'm going. It's out there.

So it's one of the- Is that our jurisdiction? Yeah, is that even us? Can we put, can we pawn that off on anybody? Yeah. Is that possible? They do notice, though, the only thing they notice is that she's wearing a shirt still. It's pretty burnt up. Sure.

They'll catch and burn up. But there's some remnants of the shirt that they can see. And it's a very, yeah, very specific something, which is good. It turns out it is a nursing school uniform top. It's got the logo of a nursing school on it. Yeah. So they don't know if this person goes to the nursing school or if she could have bought it at a thrift store or her sister goes there or anything. But there might be some connection to the nursing school and that's a good place to start.

Somebody and her family may be an alumni if she's not. Absolutely. And while they're trying to figure this all out here, you know, this is the middle of the night. Nobody expected this. It's crazy. So let's leave that scene now. Let's get out of there. And go back in time and talk about some people and how we got here.

First, let's talk about Erica Megan Sharpton. Nobody, she's always Megan, never Erica. She doesn't like Erica. I don't know, she doesn't like it, but she's Megan. That's it. No one calls her Erica ever. She's born on October 24, 1987. That's why she goes by Megan.

Yeah, Megan. That's prime Megan Age. That's huge Megan Age right there, 87. That is big time. Yeah. My wife's sister's name, Megan, and I think she was born in 87. So there you go. That's literally.

It's prime Megan age for sure. Yep. Now, she is one of, she's from a big family. She's one of at least five kids. I've seen sources say seven, but I think it's five because I saw, I know she has siblings, Carolyn, Alex, Will, Cameron, and Leah. One, two, three, four, five. Yeah, that would be six.

So I don't know. I don't know how that works. Maybe there's seven. Maybe there's... That would be, her would be seven. So I guess it is seven. But I've seen so much. She's six.

I counted five there. Oh, she's six. So yeah. Yeah, I guess she has five. It's so weird, though. I've seen it. I've seen five and then I count six and then I've also seen seven. So I'm not sure.

Not positive. She's from Coffee County, born and raised. Now they moved around a bit as a kid. Sure. With the family. Here and there. But ended up back by the time junior high, came. She ended up back in Tullahoma

in this area, not in the town proper, but in this area. And all of that kind of thing. She's got a brother who plays for the Chattanooga Moks, M-O-C-S, Mokes. I don't know if that's a semi-pro team in the area. Like Mocassens? I guess, yeah. M-O-C-S.

She is really upbeat and really has a lot of energy and a lot of spunk to her. And loves her family a lot. Really. close to all of her siblings. She has star tattoos on her body that are one for each sibling.

Are they all in the same place or just different areas? Random locations. Small blue ones, one behind each ear. She's got a larger one on her ankle, and that's for her mom, Kelly, by the way. And we'll talk about Kelly Sharpton, too. She's an interesting lady here. So she loves her family. Those are the tattoos she has just about her family.

So, you know, that's not like a Disney characters. Yeah, none of that shit. She, everybody said she had a habit of adopting strays in many different ways. People, huh? She got, yeah. Well, not only people. She actually took in a litter of abandoned bunnies. A litter of bunnies?

A litter of bunnies. And she bottle fed them. Are these wild that family adopt? Yeah. There was a family that was rabbits. out in the wherever, and the motton just left this, abandoned the bunnies. So she took them in and bottle fed them to adulthood. Okay.

That is above and beyond. Special person. Yeah. Yeah. That's wild, man. Imagine taking wild bunnies and feeding them. No, because I don't know how long it takes those to mature. I have no idea.

And if those fuck in my house, now I've got more to bottle feet. Fuck, that. Now I'm bottle feeding all these bunnies. Yeah. It's never going to stop. You got to kick the pregnant bunnies out. That's good it is. Listen, sweetheart.

If you're not going to be responsible, you can't stay here. Okay, whoever knocked you up both of you, you're out of here. You both have to go. Isn't there a planned bunny hood around here? There's got to be a planned bunnyhood somewhere that we can take them too. I hope. Get you on the pill, get you set up for next time. So, yeah, also any kind of homeless people she would find, she would try to help out too.

Yeah. She would hand out blankets and food. even after her family begged her to stop doing this. They said, you can't, she's a pretty, like, young girl. Right. You know what I mean? You can't just go walk. We're all, you know, just bring somebody with you, at least.

Don't just go walk around with a bunch of, in a rough area. Because homeless people tend to, not that even all them are particularly dangerous, but they tend to congregate in not the best areas. There's no homeless section of Brentwood, you know what I mean? It just doesn't exist. And that dangerous neighborhood, they're surviving very well. You know what I mean? Well, sort of.

Sometimes, no, I mean, they're making it. Every day they wake up. Yeah. And the environment's not killing them because they're as tough as that neighbor. Yeah, I guess, yeah, you'd have to be after a while. You've become leather. You got to be, you don't want to put the, a rough and tumble up in Brentwood is going to cause some damage. Well, he's all, he's going to stand.

out is what it is. Yeah. Right, right. Yeah. So here. What I'm saying is a lot of porch plants are going to disappear. There's a lot of porch. A lot of porch is going to be bereft of plants pretty soon.

So, yeah, this is, you know, this is a nice thing, though. This is exactly how you want your child to think that they would help people that are in need. You want your kids to be like that. But at the same time, you also want them to be safe. So this is the parents dilemma, you know, like, her family. Leave your. Yeah. Her family's begging her to stop.

And her friend Brittany, who's like her best friend from the time she's a kid, says she wanted to believe everybody had good in them all the time. That's what Megan was all about. You got to leave your mark on this world, but you got to do it in a safe fashion. Absolutely. Well, she put it this way, Brittany. She said, Megan definitely wasn't a pushover. I think she was naive to danger, but at the same time, she wasn't stupid. I think that she trusted just a little too much because she wanted to believe everyone had good in them. Sure. So, I mean, that's again, you've made a nice person who's trusting, which means that you were trusting. You were trustworthy as a parent, so it made them comfortable enough to trust people. So as a parent, that makes you feel good. But at the same time, you're like, man, should I have punched her a couple times when she was little just to keep her away from danger?

Not that, you know, that's because I feel that with my kids the same way. Like, you know, I made them very nice, but, you know, they didn't have to, they weren't feral like me. Yeah. They weren't feral like me. They didn't have to learn shit that I had to learn, you know, which is, again. I think people are definitely kind inherently, but there's sometimes. I think that environment forces them to be otherwise. And being in that environment long enough will lead, even when you get to a nicer situation,

you'll take advantage because you never know how long this is going to last kind of thing. Exactly. No, it goes either way. There's a, there's a balance there of things like that. There was a... I think everybody has good in them, but it's based on whether or not they want to use it because of what their situation is and where they're at. And some people have had such shitty lives that they haven't really had a chance to. They don't think there's a lot of good in people or... Right. And they're trying to exploit that. But then there's also people that say that Ted Bundy was inherently. evil. There was never going to be a good thing with that guy. But he didn't hurt his wife. No. And there were people he knew well. And that's the thing. It's how you raise kids is so

we've, I mean, if we figured that out, we'd have everything figured out in the world if we knew the perfect balance. I remember there was an old Mr. Show sketch where they would have, it was like a, you know, a program to have your kid turn out how you wanted them to. It was like, you know, I want her to become a doctor and all this. So, withholding things from her that she would want just to keep her wanting a little bit more. And he'd take a toy away and go, no, no, not that one. And the kid would be like, what the fuck. Things like that.

Like, I wanted to be a, you're a surgeon. You're going to be a southern playwright. And he's like, the mother's like, I'm going to overmother him for the first couple of years and then ignore him. The father was, you know what I mean? Like, it's given the perfect amount of this and that and it'll turn him into just the kind of fucked up you're looking for. So. Hool-Kirk and Cross are amazing. God damn hilarious.

National treasures. Both of them. They're great. In different ways, they're the best. But Megan, she's a nice person. And she really is. Her mother, Kelly, said she was brutally honest and brutally trusting. So both things.

And she's funny from what I understand, too. She's a good infectious laugh. And everybody says she's really funny, which I'm like, well, that's pretty cool. At 12 years old, she was sitting on the couch watching true crime. shit with her friend Brittany. Not bad. Which is cool as fuck. A kid's that's 12 watching true crime right away after my own heart.

I like them a lot. And she said something to her friend Brittany. First of all, she says, none of this shit's ever going to happen to me. I'm too smart for this shit to be kidnapped and murdered or whatever the hell. She said, if anything ever happens to me, Brittany, look for clues. This is at 12. Yeah. She said, look for.

signs. Don't stop looking because I will leave clues. I'll leave scraps of my clothing to lead you to me. Megan? She said that at 12 years old. She's already planning for her eventual every 12 year old does that. They're like eventually I'll be abducted

and murdered, so I better plan for how my family and friends might solve it. I will be tearing my shirt apart and leaving breadcrum shirt trills. I'm going to leave shirt scraps and porch plants back for you and you can find me that way. Wow.

Which is very interesting though that she's like seeing the shit and, you know, taking it in really as a 12-year-old. Right. What all that shit means. Now, as an adult here in the 2012-ish area, she is working her balls off, basically. She's working hard. She works double shifts at a local steakhouse. She's 25? Yeah.

She's going on 24. five here. She works double shifts at the steakhouse, which is the Yamato Japanese steakhouse in Tullahoma, which maybe the restaurant scene isn't that bad here because they have a Japanese steakhouse in a small town. That's amazing. That's pretty cool. Yeah.

It looks pretty good. That's going to have Wagyu, right? I would assume it does. Well, Japanese style steakhouse located try the high quality, try for the high quality sushi. Well, they have sushi there, too. Oh, it's a, like, I'll bet it's a tepaniaki house. Yeah. People say this steak house serves delicious habachi steak, shrimp and sushi as well.

as well as squid steak and salad. They have 4.5 stars at 880 Google reviews, too. So that's incredible. That's a pretty well, you know, reviewed place. Squid steaks? Squid steaks. Yeah, I guess you can grill a lot. What is that?

I don't know. They make cauliflower steaks, so you can make a steak at anything, apparently. So, yeah, she's working doubles. People said she was the server who actually remembered all the regular customer's orders. They'd walk in, she'd come over with their drinks, and just put them down in front of her. You know, it's that kind of thing. You know, a lady wants coffee with two sugars, she said, and Megan Nudor.

She knows that. She knows that. She's a good, that's a good server. That's really good. I mean, the coffee part, I would probably remember, that's the lady with the coffee. But to know how much of what shit she's put in it is crazy. That's a good server, man. That's how you make it.

She also has another job as well where she works shifts at a nursing home. just, you know, help smaller shifts at a nursing home doing whatever, you know, needs to be done at the nursing home, too, with older people. At the same time, she is a nursing student as well. So the nursing home is kind of just to do something that has to do with what she's up to. The internship, the hours, whatever. Yeah. She's enrolled at Motlo State Community College in their nursing program. Here, she is supposed to, in October of 2012, is graduation.

for the nurses. Nice. Okay, so she's, you know, upcoming on that. She is a very organized person. Yeah. As somebody, when they're 12, who would say, if I'm murdered, I'm going to leave scraps for you to find, like, that's an organized person. And their brain works in an organized manner, I think, at that point. And they said that she would organize her nursing textbooks by color, which is interesting.

Her textbooks? Her textbooks by color saying that it helped her study. And her anatomy textbook had a photo of her mom tucked in the front cover. So she could have it with her when she had exams. She could take look at her mom's picture before the exam. She said that would make her calm. Her roommate said that she remembered Megan eating peanut butter straight from the jar with a spoon while she color-coded her textbooks. They said that her roommates would complain about finding spoons all over the house.

Like, where are all the goddiams spoons? There'd be none left in the drawer and there'd be like peanut butter remnants on them. Peanut butter tongue all over. Yeah, she's leaving a trail of peanut butter spoons so she can be found later. She also has a boyfriend, a long-term boyfriend, a steady, yeah, a guy named Chris here. She's been with Chris for about three years. and it's on again off again. Yeah.

Seems to, you know, happen. People described it as a fire and water relationship. So hot and cold, I think, is that that is supposed to mean here. They said passionate and combustible, but also not at times. And I don't know anything about her dad, by the way. Oh? I know nothing about her father. Really?

Where he is, what his name is, nothing. It doesn't matter because mom's the apple. of her eye, right? Yeah, yeah. No, no. Mom is the one that takes care of them and all that kind of thing. Kelly is there,

but, I mean, I don't know anything about any kind of dad's situation. I'm just, you know, trying to extrapolate what her relationships might be based on not having a father. That doesn't help. So by the summer of 2012,

she's already decided that her friend said that she has decided there isn't really going to be a future in this relationship with Chris. Chris is done for already. Yeah, she's. She's like, I'm never going to marry this guy.

Yeah. You know, just not the guy for her in the long term. And that's by your mid-20s. You start to think of shit like that. Yeah. You start to go, all right, well, this is a waste of my time. Yeah. When you're 21, there is no waste of any time.

Time is just, it's just, time is forever. There's no end of anything. So 25, you start to go, all right, I'm about to graduate. I'm going to have a career. Do I want to be with this person? I'm almost 30. Yeah, you do start thinking that shit. Yeah.

Some people start thinking, I'm almost 40, you know, when they're 25. That's what they think. I'm closer to 40 than I am born. That's the way it is. Absolutely. I'm closer to 40 than kindergarten. That's not good.

So she's doing that. She just hadn't told them about it yet. She was still kind of figuring it all out and everything. So she, you know, this is around the time when she had, you know, she was helping homeless people with blankets and food. This is around the bunny nursing time. She made a butterfly mobile, you know, like for over a crib. Yeah. But she wanted her baby nieces and nephews to have something for Christmas.

She didn't have any money because she's working two jobs and paying for school and doing all this stuff. So she just made them a nice mobile at a construction paper because she's pretty artsy, which is nice. Kids don't give a shit. What do they care? No. I imagine you could probably go to like a second aunt store and get one of the motors and just kind of build whatever the fuck you want. I think that's what she did, if I had to guess.

I think that's what she did. She just made her own, like, things on it. Yeah. You know, also to give it some personal touch because she actually gave a shit about these kids. So, yeah, she's 24. She's getting her shit together. She's obviously really a compassionate person who gives a shit about people and cares. Summer of 2012 coming up.

It's the beginning of July. Real hot. This is southern middle Tennessee. See? Steaky hot. Steamy, sticky hot, man. That's when you just hear the cicadas going at all. Going at all time. And you move your arm.

And it feels like there's honey in there. Oh, yeah. Go sit on a leather car seat. Oh, boy. Oh, man. Peel yourself up off of that when you get to your location here. So it's really hot. And she's working.

She's got the steakhouse in Tullahoma. She's working at the nursing home. October 26th is nursing school graduation. Yeah. She's got a relationship that she's thinking about. ending and she's got a lot going on. She's, you know, she's busy. She's spinning some plates here.

She's tired, but she's excited that once she graduates, she can maybe hopefully not have two jobs and get a job in the field that she's interested in and, you know, start to calm her life down a little bit here. July 1st, 2012. She wakes up, Megan, and she had worked a late shift the night before. She worked until 2 a.m. the night before. God damn. I don't know if that's at the nursing home or at the steakhouse,

but I can't imagine the steakhouse is open until 2 a.m. I'll bet it is. I bet the bar area is open. Yeah, yeah. In Tullahoma? The Japanese steakhouse bar? There's a fucking Japanese steakhouse. That shit's staying open as long as it can.

You know what? We're going to go up and look at the hours right now. See if that fucker doesn't close it to a way. I don't have the hours on my screenshot. No, it doesn't show it even on, uh, No. It doesn't say open late or anything. No.

I'm not sure. But either way. She may be, yeah, she may be at the nursing home two a.m. Either that or she's dealing with drunks with tepaniaki breath. We're not sure. But here we go. 2 a.m. So in the morning, she slept in that day.

Yeah. So it's, you know, she slept till noon or one or whatever. Sure. She showers, gets her shit together. And her sister's visiting from out of town. So they make plans. She's supposed to go. over her mom Kelly's house for dinner that night with the sister who's in from out of town,

have a nice dinner with the family that night. Now, a phone rings, okay? Now, it's her phone, but she doesn't have it. Oh. So this is in another location. Now, her boyfriend, Chris, so it's Chris that has the phone. So he's got the phone, and it's, I guess, one of Megan's an older phone that she had that's still active for some reason. Oh.

I don't understand that. She's got, because she has her phone. Yeah. So I'm not sure exactly. Maybe it's a preloaded phone that just hasn't run out yet. I don't know because she's had it for a while because she's got like her whole phone book in there and all that kind of thing. So I don't know what the story is or she's got multiple lines on the same deal. I don't know.

But Chris has this phone and it rings. So Chris answers it, which. What? Why would you answer? So he says he answered the phone, which why would you answer the phone that's not your phone? I think this is your girlfriend's phone. Who's this? Yeah, I guess if you're, I see, I don't have that.

I know what these fucking guys will do. So I'm like, I'd just be like, that's not my phone. I'd put it. That's her business. I don't know. They're not calling for me. Jesus Christ. Who would be calling for me on her phone?

Nobody. So therefore I'm never answering. Yeah, I guess not. That's what I would think. Yeah. I'm not for me, probably. I don't know. So it's a man on the phone.

Yeah. So he's Chris is, I'm sure, like, yeah. Now, Chris says that it's a man, and Chris says that the man introduced himself and says that he needs someone to care for an elderly woman. That's what he tells, that's what, that's what Chris says. Chris says that the man said he knows Megan through a woman named Naomi, who she went to nursing school with. That's how they, that's how I know who she is. That's why I have her phone number and I'm calling her for a job. Okay.

She doesn't run this nursing home? No, not at all. So she's just, it's interesting. He says the pay is good, and he might even be able to do an advanced payment that same evening. If I hire you, I might even just give you like a sign-on bonus right there. He's getting a lot of information. This seems like a lot of information, yeah. For somebody that's not Megan.

I end that conversation at Megan isn't here. Yeah. That's it. That's where I had the conversation. phone. I've got it. Sorry. All this you're telling me is irrelevant to me. You need to talk to Megan. I'm never going to repeat all this. And even if I do, you're going to do it again. So save your breath. So Megan hears about this and is excited. Chris contacts Megan and says, you know, call this guy back or whatever. Megan's jacked. She's like, this is exactly what I was hoping for. This is a caregiving, you know, job. It's something I actually want. It's

flexible hours, according to what this guy said. It's in her actual field, and she could actually, if the pay is what this guy says, she can quit waiting tables. Oh. She can just do her job, you know, what she wants to do for a living. So it's pretty exciting here for Megan. And quit working double shifts. That's the other thing.

Yeah, you know, working until two in the morning. So she calls her mom, Kelly, and Kelly picks up, and Megan says that I can't make it to dinner tonight. I'm sorry. Yeah. But I have a job interview. for this nursing position and, you know, I got to go do it. She said, I'll come over as soon as I'm done, eat without me, don't sweat it, I'll come see you guys.

Okay. Kelly said that she was full of excitement. So Kelly, mom says, okay, good luck, see you later, and that's that. Now, quickly here, Kelly, by the way, is 47 years old at this time, her mom. She's a graphic designer at the Arnold Engineering Development Complex, which, is the Air Force testing facility right there near Telahoma. Oh.

That's what you're getting a lot of there. She has five kids. Her son, oh, that's what the mocks are. That's the University of Chattanooga. Okay. That's why I missed that before. Her son plays at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football.

And at the time she has a fiancé, Kelly does, named Don Cornelius Jr. Stop. I swear to God, his name is Don Corne. I don't know if it's the actual son of the Soul Train host or not. But I was like, hold on. Amazing. She's engaged to Don Cornelius.

What the fuck? So I look deeper into it. And she's engaged to Don Cornelius Jr. Could it be? If he's 47, possibly. I know, but I feel like that would be mentioned in the story. Like some member of the press when they were talking about this story would have said, her mom's engaged to Don Cornelius' kid.

That's weird, right? Like, that would have been something, but I didn't hear anything about that. So just some random guy named Don Cornelius that goes, yeah, yeah, I know, I know. And these people, I don't know if he's white, but everyone else in the story is white. So Don Cornelius certainly is not white at all. That's not a white guy. It's not a white man.

I'm not sure what's going on here. Yeah, Soul Train hosted by a white man named Don Cornelius would have been a terrible show. I don't think it would have lasted very long. Donald Cornelius. Welcome to Soul Train. I'm Donald Cornelius. We're going to get our groove going tonight. Shake your groove thing.

Shake your groove thing right now. Excellent. All right then. So, July 1st, 2012, Megan writes down an address. Okay. Handwriting is in a small, neat little left-tilting way that she writes it.

She folds the note, picks up her keys, and gets into her 1995 red Ford Mustang. She's driving. Hey. Hey, not bad. Really? Rounded. Yeah. Pass the Fox body style.

Rounded. Yeah, they were okay. I don't mind those. It was the new redesign with the round headlights. Just rounded a little bit. I had a 2001. I like that better. It was a little more boxy.

Well, the 95 had the, was it the taillights that were vertical or were they horizontal? Yeah, they were the ones that, you. Yeah, because my ex-wife had one of those when I met her, same car. Vertical or horizontal? I can't fucking remember. I think that's the vertical. Or the horizontal ones. That's the cool one.

It's the coolest one. Yeah, they're nice. They're cool cars, especially. They redesigned. It was amazing. 95. This is 2012, though, so. Well, that's a 17-year-old car.

17-year-old car. It's almost classic at that point. Yeah. So the address she wrote down is 850 Shelfer Road. S-H-E-L-F-E-R, Shelfer Road. Okay, so that's where she's headed. She's trying to find. Okay, she drives off into the night.

I'll see you guys later, or into the evening, I should say. I'll see you guys later. I'll be here for dinner. And then July 2nd, 2012 at 1.15 a.m. is when the group of teenagers call in a burning body in a barrel. Hey, everybody, Jess. going to take a quick break from the show and tell you a much more just a luxurious way to sleep with Bowlin Branch. Bowlingbranch.com. B-O-L-L-L-L-A-B-Ranch. That's right. You've been looking at your sheets lately.

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Code Small Town Murder to unlock 15% off. Exclusions apply. Now back to the show. And, yeah, and the responders arrive, and that's when they find the nursing shirt on her. Okay. And that's what connects this all back. So, wow, that is crazy.

Now, one of the sheriffs here said that the pelvic fire concentration, draws an immediate conclusion. They said it led us to believe there'd been a sexual assault. Someone had obviously tried to burn the evidence, essentially. Trying to destroy a specific area. So they said the first responders

immediately recognized foul play. The position of the fire, the shape in the ashes, the fact that the body was already showing signs of rigor as well. Right. You know, meaning that she was already dead before the fire started,

meaning that she was killed somewhere else and brought here. essentially, unless she was killed here and left. Someone was hanging out here for quite a long time. Now, they said that she had to have been murdered. The scene bears no evidence of any struggle, no car nearby, no weapon. The only thing they have is star tattoos and a nursing school shirt. Well, the good news is for us, we can put that together quick.

But that's, and those are good clues for a cop to. Yeah, to eventually find. We have that. We have tattoos. We have all that kind of thing. And they've seen there's no weapons. There's no anything. They do find tire tracks in the gravel near the site, but they're too degraded to make a cast of or anything.

They're just kind of there. There was a car there. They know that. But that's about it. Other than getting a wheelbase or something, they can't really get any kind of information off of that. First thing they're going to turn to are these teenagers that found this body. and they are like, you know, what the fuck guys, you know, what happened? What you do?

They're so completely traumatized by this that they're pretty, pretty, either they're all the best actors, the four leads in their latest high school play or these kids didn't do shit and they just have to do with it. They just drove by the wrong spot and got out their boons farm a little too early and now they're screwed. So how horrified would I, would a teenager be to find a, a very young woman on fire in a barrel. That would be devastating. Never going in the woods again. Never. Never. The woods. I'm never buying anything by the barrel. I'm never going in a sprouts.

Yeah. I'm never going to. I'm never buying monkeys. I don't really like the shape of a can of soda anymore. I don't like anything. Yeah. I'm never buying those buckets of nuts at sprouts or whatever. No. Never. Never. Never. I'm Leaving as soon as I see them. Dude, that's, yeah. The worst thing I ever found in the woods as a kid was there was an old man jerking off one time that we saw. That was the worst thing I ever saw. It was bad, but we just laughed at him and then he ran away. He didn't know.

We came upon him, by the way. He was out by himself in the woods. He was close. I was just going to make that joke, damn it. God damn. That's fine. No, no, no. I'm happy.

Someone made it. I don't care. All yours. But yeah, that's what I was going to say. We came upon him, luckily, before he came upon us. But, yeah, that's the... We came upon him another 30 seconds. Luckily, it was right in time.

But that, we found him in the woods one time. We were like, oh, shit. And, like, he was like, oh, God, sort of gathering his stuff and took off. But, um, yeah. But you saw his dick. Oh, he was jerking off. He was standing up with his pants around his ankle, stroking his cock. Which I think we were like 13.

or 14. So we were like, ah, look at you. You fucking, and he ran away. If there's a bunch of you, fine. There was like six of us.

Yeah, we weren't afraid of this guy. We were, we were a gang practically at that point. We went there to smoke weed. Put it that way. If you just walked out of your house into your woods and were trying to get away from your parents to go smoke

weed and happened upon a man tugging in the woods, what do you do then? Quietly walk away. Quietly, yeah. You don't know what. All right. Yeah. Tell him to put his dick away, maybe.

No, I'm not doing anything. I'm not letting you know that I see if I'm alone. These are my woods, damn it. He's going to make me help. I know it. Yeah, but if you're 14, he's not making you do shit. If you're alone, you might. This guy was in his 60s, too.

He was an old man. Like, yeah, you could, nobody was physically afraid of the guy. I mean, maybe we should have been, but we weren't. We saw. Fuck, yes, you should have been. His dick was out. No, no, no. We weren't afraid of an old man with his dick out.

We thought he was in a position of vulnerability, not us. Kind of seems that way. That's the way we looked at it. Maybe it was the wrong way. I'm not saying him right at all. I'm just saying that's the way. Levi's around jankles. It's a tough job.

Yeah. We looked at as, oh, you're going to be mocked until you get out of here, which is going to take you a second. We're just going to heckle you. Yeah. You're going to be mocked till your limp, motherfucker. You're going to have five stone little New Yorker teenagers fucking mocking you and heckling you and funny accents for the next ten minutes until you get out of here. Well, you can see what you're carrying.

Yeah. But these teenagers, this is way worse. Yeah. Obviously. Thankfully, never found anything like this. It's horrible. They're traumatized. So they right away say, all right, these teenagers had nothing to do with.

They just found this poor person. The detective died. said it appeared that foul play was involved. We weren't sure that she was murdered at this spot. It appeared that somebody may have just pulled over or backed up, dumped the body, set on the body on fire, and left. This looks like just a quick dump spot for somebody, which they were with a barrel. So they would have to bring a barrel. They're going to have to have a truck probably.

Right. And they're probably going to be someone who's pretty well versed in this area. because it's definitely out there. Even the medical examiner was like, where the fuck are we? So it's out there. We were going. Now, the next morning,

the news hits Facebook, basically. Oh, yeah. That's what it goes out on. This is a small town. So in a small town, as we know from this show, small town Facebook is alive and well. Wow, is it crazy. I mean, small town gossip,

People might not be gathering at the old coffee shop anymore, but they are gathering around Facebook so they can hate us. So I know that they'll gather for this. Whenever I see, like when we'll post an episode and I see like the next morning, I'll look at it and there's like. Overwhelming comments. No, there's like a thousand shares. I'm like, oh, shit. That means it's been shared in these people's Facebook groups and there's a thousand small town people talking about what the fuck do we know about? anything going on that.

I'm like, oh, my God. Here it comes. So, people that don't know shit about anything, they don't even care that we're talking about the murder. They're like, how dare they talk about my town? It's like, calm down, okay? Relax. Chill out.

Most of it's like that and they didn't ask me to talk about this. No, I didn't. We get that a lot. And I'm not going to. They should ask me on newer and junior high. Oh, well, we'll track you right down. I didn't have the year. I'm sorry.

This is also Dateline, in case you weren't aware, where we have teams of reporters that go out into the field. No, it's me gathering this issue. I'm not interviewing you. How am I interviewing you? I have to do eight shows a week for Christ's sake. I'm not interviewing anybody. I can't do that. Jimmy's not going down.

Hey, what do you think here? Putting a mic in someone's face? That's not what we're doing. Scooter, tell me your side. Yeah, what do you think, Scoots? So it hits Facebook, and it's a lot. They're saying the information they're giving out is that someone posts about it that a young woman was found on the side of the road near Tim's Ford, Tim's Ford Lake, and there's star tattoos on her body and a nursing school shirt. Oh, God damn it.

That's specific here. Very specific. So Kelly Sharpton happens to be awake at the time. Mom saw it on Facebook. Mom saw this on Facebook. No fucking way. No idea. They didn't identify her yet.

But star tattoos and a nursing shirt We're pretty sure Who the fuck else? Yeah. And also she never came home. She's very reliable And she didn't come over for afterwards Like she said she was gonna.

She never called. She never texted. And she's been trying to reach Megan Since midnight and got no response. My mom is already devastated. And now she's worried about her, Megan anyway, because she hasn't heard from her.

And then she sees this post. Tattoo on the back of her neck, one on her foot. She said she's, didn't need the official confirmation. She recognized her daughter instantly and knew exactly it was her. She said, I, can you believe that shit? I can't imagine. So she called the cops to say, I think I know who your person is. She's the one who, you know, precipitated the identification. She said, I actually read a post on Facebook where they had described a girl with a star tattoo on the back of her neck and one on her foot, and I knew it was her. That is horrifying. Can't imagine. A horror. From a. From a. From a. From a. a Facebook. That's the worst.

I'd rather hear gossip in a grocery store. Fuck, I hate Facebook so much. Fuck, that is brutal, man. Oh, man, that's gross. It's become the place where your parents tell you which form of cancer they're diagnosed with. It's such a, everybody's on it is the problem.

And you can see how fat your friends from 10th grade are now. Or how stupid your friends are that copy and post some dumb shit about if you're my real friend. I love that's hilarious. That or some crazy fucking political shit where you're like, I have seen you. Yeah.

I have seen you like literally shit into a laundry machine into a washing machine and a laundromat. I don't want to hear your political views. Don't. And that's what I'll do. If I see people posting crazy shit, I will post their most embarrassing shit. They're embarrassing themselves anyway.

I'll be like, is this? So am I supposed to take this opinion seriously? important things about each other. Yeah. I'm supposed to take an opinion seriously from the guy I watched climb his ass up into a washing machine on the second tier to shit in it in the 10th grade. I'm going to listen to you. I don't think so. And I'd rather take somebody's opinion of anything that they thought out and wrote rather than this is what I believe.

And then if you believe, too, copy and paste. Fuck you. I can't delete you fast enough. A meme. Goodbye. I don't have any original ideas. Right. Copy and paste.

Let's get something started. How about this started? Unfriend. Fuck you. Unfriend, asshole. And then they hit you back again like you did it by accident. Hey, it looks like we're not friends anymore. Oh, what have you done?

I wonder why. Go back to look at your own post, you know. The medical examiner will later establish that her time of death was before midnight sometime. because she had to have gone into rigor, so that's to be enough time for that on July 1st. Now, what happened to her is horrifying. Poor Megan here. She was beaten.

Her skull fractured in multiple places. She was also raped. Ah. And she was shot in the face, believed to be a 22-caliber round fired from the same weapon they think that was used to beat her. What a horrible situation. Horrible situation. They said, and this is a quote from one of the cops here,

the autopsy painted a dark picture. Megan had been raped multiple times. Oh, Jesus. She'd suffered devastating blunt force trauma to the head. The bones in her skull were fractured so that the detectives could actually feel them shift when they gently moved her head at the scene. Then the gunshot,

a single 22 caliber round fired through her cheek. This is some hatred in here for this. Yeah, that's a lot of vitriol. Like, you don't do that to somebody that. That's worse than what Ted Bundy did to women. Jesus, cry, I don't know. I mean, it's kind of exactly what he did to women. It's like on par.

Yeah. I mean, he just didn't shoot anybody. The guy just didn't come back and rape her again. Do it again. Yeah. She was, you know, Jesus. So the official cause of death was the 22 caliber round, even though her skull was crushed, too. So this poor, I can only hope she was unconscious.

Yeah. That's all we could hope. because otherwise this is excruciatingly horrible. Club raped and shot in the face. This is horrifying. Horrifying. Oh, God, Jesus. So there's no soot in her lungs,

meaning she was already dead when the fire started. Remember at first they said they didn't know if she was dead when the fire started. So they said the accelerant had been concentrated on her pelvic region, which they thought was an attempt to burn away any DNA evidence, semen left behind, something like that. But the thing is Fire didn't work like he thought it would.

Yeah. He thought it would burn it up. The whole body. Instead, the heat helped seal and preserve the biological evidence. So rather than it even naturally coming out, it actually, the fire sealed it in. Yeah. That's crazy that that happens. Yeah.

It was basically cauterized. Cotterized. Yeah. Close. Yeah, you know what I'm saying. Yep, I get, I'm not going further. Nope, got to need. Horrified.

It's horrifying. That is terrible, yeah. Terrible. But almost thank God. You know, I mean, that's horrible, but at least. If you want to find who did it. Yeah. It's better than not.

Yeah. So the, the DA later said our theory was that the purpose of the fire was to destroy the semen present in her body. But didn't do it. It actually kept it. Now, that afternoon, of July 2nd. Obviously, everybody is freaked out. Everybody is devastated. And they're also scared because who the fuck did this to this girl? You know what I mean? She's a nice girl. She's not,

she doesn't lead a crazy lifestyle. She's not a drug addict. She doesn't go hang out with crazy people. I mean, she might drop some blankets off to homeless people, but how does this happen? So, they end up finding her car that afternoon. Really? The 1995 Redford Mustang at Bedford County deputies spot it parked. on Three Forks Bridge Road in Bedford County, which is about somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 to 20 miles from where her body was found. That's a ride. Yeah, it's a good ride. A witness had spotted it earlier and thought someone just had run out of gas.

And then when they passed it by later and still no one was there, they called the cops and just said there's an abandoned car on the side of the road. So they hope that there's some kind of evidence in this Mustang. Did hopefully the killer drive her in the Mustang at some point was the killer? in the Mustang. But they search it. Not really that great in terms of biological evidence. No blood,

no signs of a struggle. But there is one very interesting thing there. There's a handwritten folded note on the passenger seat. Okay. And that is in her handwriting 850 Shelfer Road. Oh shit.

So they're like, okay, this is important. Obviously, this is where... Yeah, we got an address. So they go, great. let's go find 850 shelf or road and see what's going on. They try to do that. It doesn't exist. It's not an address.

It's not a real address. So now they're like, where the hell did she go then? Uh-oh. What's going on here? Yeah. Is this, was this a fake address to lure her somewhere? Did she have an address wrong? Put to lure her where?

Where? Is this from two days ago? Is this from before this? We don't know. So, but they have this. Now, the first, it's an investment. investigation and it's a sexual nature and seems personal almost with the way it happened. It seems somebody's mad.

Extra brutal. So they're going to start out with the people closest to Megan. And it's not going to be her sisters. It's not going to be her mom. It's going to be Chris. That's the guy they're going to look at first. So they sit Chris down. They're like three years, huh?

Okay. Where were you? Number one. Last night. And he said, Night of the murder. He goes, I was at. work. I work at a local department store. I work from six to midnight. So they're like, all right, well, we'll check on that. You know, don't worry about that. And so they're like,

we're going to talk to you. He initially says the relationship was great. They were doing great. Yeah. Then he says, well, I mean, we fight sometimes. Uh-oh. Okay. What's the last time you fought, Chris? And he said, we fight sometimes. And then he says, I guess we've been growing apart. So it started of, hey, we were ready to walk down the aisle. We're doing great to, eh, we fight so much that we're growing apart. Yeah. That happened very quickly in the course of less than an hour. And we're breaking up.

That's a lot. Then even Megan's family, they talked to, described the relationship as fire and water, passionate, volatile, up and down. One of Megan's sisters pointed the police in Chris's direction and said the relationship's been up and down. and she's about to break up with him. And if he knew that, he might have been pissed off enough to do something like this. So that's how this goes.

They're looking at Chris hard. It's such an extreme form of lashing out. It is. How much does your family, her family hate you if they go, you know, Chris is good for this. Either that or it might be the only guy she's close to. Okay.

That might be it too. Maybe she doesn't have a ton of guy friends to point any of those in that direction. It's like, listen, this is the guy that's, She's only been with him for three years. I'd be living if my current girlfriend's family goes, Chris is good for this. What? Or Jimmy's good for this?

I'd be so upset. They would. If your current girlfriend was murdered, they would immediately be like, look at that asshole with a stupid beard. They would fucking, it doesn't even matter. Every time, they'll think of every single thing that I've ever said that they didn't like. If Sarah got murdered, you don't think they'd be like the guy who does all the murder shows that knows everything about murder and all that. He'd fucking look at him and you'd get the same thing. Oh, the murder guy.

Yeah, we'd be fucked. Yeah, that's crazy. I should hire Sarah a fucking bodyguard to make sure nobody kills her because I'm getting blamed no matter what if anything happens to her. Even if it happens in Alaska when I'm in Australia, I'm getting blame for it. I'd be livid still, though. Stillbest, yeah. You guys are dicks.

Even if I expect them to say it, I'm going to be so mad when they go, she's dead. Jimmy did it. What the fuck all of you? Why? You're going to really be mad. You're going to apologize. You're going to be so embarrassed. So embarrassed.

So, so police search Chris's apartment. Yeah. And now, Chris has a roommate named Robbie as well, okay? Mm-hmm. When they search the apartment,

they find residue of suspected illegal substances in the bathroom. Lead or Coke? Yeah, I think it's residue as, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Powder.

Yeah. Now, or whatever, it's 2012, somebody crushing up pills. Now, Chris says that's where it's all Robbie. I don't know nothing about that. Oh, Robbie is the one. Yeah, and Robbie admitted that the items were his. He said, that is my shit, actually.

And he said, neither Chris nor Megan know that I do this, by the way. This has been a under, I keep this shit pen and I'm under wraps. Yeah, I'm a functioning. I'm a functioning drug addict is what I am. Yeah. And then Robbie says this. Okay. He says, because they're asking him, so you don't know Megan real well and they don't know that you're doing drugs and you're just a roommate and all that kind of thing. And then he said, well, there is something I have to tell you.

What's he too? Robbie says, Megan and I kind of had a secret relationship behind Chris's back. Oh, now it's getting. Hmm. Now you go. Okay. Now we have two. suspects. Yeah, I don't know if I like that, Robbie. That's not good. Um, no. And they said, did Chris know about it? And he said, I don't think so. Oh, Robbie. Robbie. So they went, okay, now we have multi, is Robbie jealous that he can't have her is, did Chris find out about it? And ask her about it. And she told him and he freaked out. Did she feel guilty and tell him about it?

and he freaked out. For sure, either way, you've got two suspects that would be 100% rageful enough to do something like this. That's it. And on top of all that, where did the phone call come from? Yeah, who the fuck was that? Who got the phone? Well, who got the phone call? This alleged phone call came from Chris.

Chris is the one that sent her on this journey. To this address. Well, sent her to the person who told her about the address. So. Robbie had nothing to do with that. Unless it's both of these motherfuckers. That's the whole thing. So that's what's going.

That's what's crazy at this point. So he also says, look, I got this phone call. I got the call about some job interview on her second phone that she left in my apartment. And he said, I still have the phone. Yeah. You can have it. Here, look at the phone. And it's got the burner, the number that called the line.

Yeah. And that turns out to be a burner phone. The phone that called this phone. originally. It's a preloaded phone. To precipitate this whole thing. Now what they do find out, though, after, I mean, Chris, he must have been pouring sweat in this box.

Think about this. Yeah. And then Robbie, too. The two of them, I mean, they're looking pretty, they're both looking guilty at this point. Then they go to Chris's job and they pull all the surveillance footage. He's there. And they find him working from 5 p.m. to midnight surveillance cameras show that he

never left the entire time. He's there the entire time. That is as solid an alibi as you can have for I definitely didn't physically do this. I mean, it's video evidence from a third party, so they have no interest in saving your ass. No, unless he's a great employee. I mean, he might be the best assistant manager they've ever had. Can't afford to lose him. We just can't.

We can't afford to train somebody else. It's so hard. Who cares if he's a murdering rapist slash horrible guy. He promised us he'd keep it under wraps while on the clock anyway. off the clock it's his business the drawer's never been more accurate it's accurate to the penny so that's what's going on so now they're like well great now we have not chris but there's also Robbie but yeah if chris was involved in this then he obviously had somebody else calling to the burner talking to her so maybe there's a he's got an accomplice therefore he wouldn't

have to be there at the time but then again why would he not want to be there when she was killed if he was that, if he was that rageful at her. Right. It doesn't make sense. And where he went afterwards, too, he has an alibi that he didn't drive out to the middle of nowhere and set his girlfriend on fire. Yeah. So he'd have to, I mean, he'd have to really have a great hitman that's like, does

legit hitman things. No shit. Then July 4th now, 4th of July. Yeah. There's a guy out fishing out on Rock Creek. Just having a nice 4th of July, having a fishing day. Fuck, yes. Enjoying his life here.

when he finds something in the water. It is a bright pink purse. Yeah. And she's like, that don't look like I dropped it. You know. That ain't mine. That ain't mine, is it? Shit.

Inside the purse, they find Megan's wallet, her driver's license, her social security card. What lake is this? This is Rock Creek near Estill Springs. Not Tom Ford. No, no, no. This is a different location. A complete third location. in like a triangular shape.

And a body of water. And another body of water. Some people say it was along the Elk River, but we don't know. Either way, this is what they found. Now, I never found her cell phone, though. Her cell phone has never ever been recovered. It's probably in that water too, right? Somewhere in the bottom, yeah, I'm sure.

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Cell phones don't float. Generally not. They should really make floating cell phones, though. Why wouldn't they float? Yeah. Waterproof and floating. What are we doing?

Yeah. You know? I don't know. What the fuck are we talking about? Yeah, that's it. That's what we're doing. Let's not make it laugh. Let's not make it laugh.

Selling a lot of rice. Yeah. The porch plant business must be booming. So the next thing they look at here is Chris mentioned a, or Chris mentioned that the guy on the phone said, I got your number from Naomi. So at this point, they're believing Chris because he is where he says he was and he doesn't seem like he did it. Robbie, a little less, but they're still kind of putting Robbie on the shelf right now. Naomi's got to exist because otherwise, why would you say it? Why would you say it as someone who's a reference that she would know to get her to trust you?

Yeah, that's, I mean, so it's got to be a real person. So that's what they said, Naomi from nursing school is what Chris said. That's all I remember is the guy said, Naomi from nursing school. So they're like, all right, let's try to find a Naomi from nursing school. So they go into the records and they find a Naomi from nursing school. They find a Naomi Jones from nursing school. Okay. Okay.

So they go to Naomi's house. She's not home. A neighbor gives them her phone number. Because they're like, it's pretty fucking important. You know that dead girl on Facebook? This is what we're talking about. So they call her. Naomi is like, what?

What are you talking about? She's like, I've met Megan a few, like, I know her, but I don't never hung out with her. I don't know her like that. Never gave away her phone number. No, I, yeah, she's like, I barely know her. If I know her, like, I have her phone number because in the nursing school, you do different, you need like a tree. So they, and they also give each other rides to offsite things that they have to do for nursing stuff. So, you know, they carpool sometimes.

She's like, I mean, I know her, but we're not. Give it out. No, we're not friends. We're not like tight. If I saw her, I go, hey, Megan, but I wouldn't, you know, be like, hey, are we going out this weekend or whatever? So she said they carpooled nursing school a few times. They certainly weren't close. And she never recommended Megan for any job.

He said, first of all, weird. I don't know of any jobs. And I don't know her well enough to recommend her also. So who the hell would know this? So they said she had no idea why her name was used. I just couldn't have any more of a clue. And they said her answers were credible. Her confusion was absolutely real.

They were like, I don't know. What the fuck? Maybe somebody pulled a name out of their ass, and it just happened to be the name of a student that, you know. Maybe someone just spun a wheel and said, Naomi told me. And there happens to be a Naomi. I mean, there's probably 100 women in this course.

One of them might be named Naomi. Who knows? That's like a specific name. Yeah. And they could have picked, You think they'd pick like a more common name. Yeah. Naomi's crazy.

Yeah. There's got to be a Jennifer. I met one Naomi in my life. Exactly. Naomi is not a very common name. So that, but they don't know. So for weeks,

nothing happens. That's it. They got nothing with the boyfriend. They have a missing phone. They have a fake address on the seat. Yeah. The 850 Schaeffler. They have a burn body.

They have a Naomi that doesn't know anything about the fucking shit. Yeah. They got a boyfriend who was at work, a roommate who was screwing around with the girl that seems to not have been a part of it. They don't know what's going on here. This is complete cluelessness here. Where do you chase to win here? That's what I mean that all the leads went cold. They chased every lead.

And it all died. Yeah, you can only follow. It's usually what the detectives do is people, like a lot of people think they look at it from a macro standpoint. Yeah. And they're like, okay, what's the whole of the case? They get, it's not like that. They take one lead. They pull a string.

And they run that lead. until it's either an arrest or dead end. And then they go to the next lead. It's not a macro thing of like, hmm, we should investigate her professor. Like, that's not what it is. They don't have a theory of how all this goes together. You find a string and start pulling on it.

It's lead to lead. Hopefully it pulls another string. Yeah, if you ever watch the first 48, you can watch people do that. They'll get a clue and they'll go hard on somebody. Turns out they had nothing to do with any of it. It's just they had to play that string out. Then they go,

they get a tip that it was another guy that they saw. was wearing a red shirt or whatever the fuck. So late July 2012, weeks have gone by and the family's getting really antsy, as I don't blame you. Sure. They must be. They're finding the investigation is active, but they're not generating shit for leads, basically. And there really is nothing to generate. So the Tennessee and Bureau of Investigation is brought in, the TBI.

And they confirm that they have agents working on the case. also Franklin County Sheriff Tim Fuller and Detective Todd Hidman are the primary kind of primary cops here Hidman becomes like the liaison to the Sharpton family

here. Okay. Okay. Kelly is calling him and texting him frequently. If she calls him, if she texts him at two in the morning, he'll text her back at two in the morning. You fucking better? Yeah, he's giving her whatever update he had. whatever. And she even said, quote, I can't thank the Franklin County Sheriff Tim Fuller,

an investigator, Todd Hinman, enough. They've been very supportive. It's almost like they knew Megan. They don't call it the case. They call her Megan. So they're doing a good job. So by late July, the family raises a reward fund at American City Bank in Tallahoma. And the whole town gets in on it. I mean, everybody donates to this. Nursing classmates. steakhouse like customers from the steakhouse they sold t-shirts they ran car washes yeah uh they made bracelets and all that kind of thing and uh kelly said they've done several fundraisers the whole town of tullahoma has jumped on board she said she was my daughter she was our sister she was an aunt she was a cousin she was a friend if she was yours you'd want to know too if the killer hadn't you know

isn't out there then they said they planned to also turn um if If the killer isn't caught and the reward isn't paid, they're going to turn all this money into a nursing scholarship in her name. Beautiful. So either way, it's getting donated, either to nursing students or to someone who finds who did this. July 23rd, 2012, right around this time, Nancy Grace enters the picture. Oh, Jesus. I hope this is good. More accurately, Nancy Grace's show with Rita Cosby filling in as host that night.

Do I know that woman? You know her if you saw her. face. But it's, you know, the Nancy Grace show. At least it's not Nancy. It's not Nancy. Yeah, that would be horrifying. So missing Tennessee nursing students body found is the whole thing.

Now, they have Kelly on here. Mom is here. Now, Kelly spoke about her daughter, described her as a beautiful nursing student who was two months from graduation. She never came home for dinner. She learned about this via Facebook that her daughter's body was burned. And it's horrifying. It's, yeah, I mean, that on TV, a mother putting expressing this on TV is a lot, man.

That's, that's horrifying. So they highlighted the details during this, her 1995 Mustang. You know, they get a whole kind of overview of it. It's abandoned 15, 20 miles away. There's a fake job interview lore, handwritten fake address note in the car, no phone found, no purse found at the time at the scenes anyway, either of them, the car or the fire scene. the fire concentrated on the pelvic area. So it framed the case as a murder mystery out of Tennessee involving a beautiful 24-year-old nursing student who was beaten,

shot, raped, and set ablaze in an attempt to destroy evidence. Okay. There was a huge emphasis on the small town shock in Tullahoma and the surrounding counties. So they're really playing it as, look at these Hicks Scramble. That's basically what they're doing. They're playing that shit. Meanwhile, Hidman and Fuller seem like they're doing a pretty good job.

Very competent investigation going on here. Absolutely. And they brought in the TBI when they realized that those were beyond their resources and their leads right up. Yeah. They didn't say, well, I'm going to solve this case. Never mind. Those people say, if you got a better idea, fucking tell me because we'll do it. They actually get a shit.

It's fascinating. Nancy Grace's program is kind of that, just like judging people while she sounds like the biggest dip shit on the planet. Yeah. Yeah. When I was a prosecutor, that's all you're getting over and over. Fuck you, Nancy. Ugh, God, imagine being prosecuted by her. I mean, I don't, give me the chair, just don't make me listen to this fucking, annoying bitch for one more minute.

I don't care. 30 years, great. I know I stole a pack of juicy fruit. I don't give a fuck. Just put me away. I don't even care if she's right. I just wanted to shut the fuck up. Shut up.

That's how she gets people to confess. They're just like, okay, fine. All right, you're annoying bitch. Jesus Christ. Your fucking voice in your hair helmet, I can't take it anymore. Fine. So anyway, I got some transcript from this. I'm Rita Cosby.

Breaking news tonight as we go live to Tim's Ford Lake Tennessee. A beautiful nursing student plans makes plans to visit her mother on a Sunday afternoon, but she never makes it. Just hours later, a driver spots a grassfire near a local bridge and gets the shock of a lifetime. the body of a young female dumped on the side of the road up in flames. Good Lord. Yeah. That's, see what I mean? It's a little more complex than that, but yeah.

Yeah. And this is why we mix comedy in with this. Because to me, this sounds like murder porn. Up in flames. Miss Cosby, tell us the time you and your friends found an old man masturbating in the woods. Tell me about that. I would like to hear that, actually, Nancy Grace. When I was a young girl, there was a young girl.

there was a man masturbating in my woods. Feels like she'd be like, no, no, sit down. I'll join you. Here's a picture of a listen, child. Let's do it together. Yeah, I prosecuted him to the fullest extent of the law. Oh, God, let's do it together. So this is what I mean.

Like, to me, this is like this sensationalism of it all feels gross. And we tell jokes to kind of cut the tension a little bit. It's the worst. They feel like it's gross otherwise. They say a positive ID confirms its nursing student, 24-year-old Megan Sharpton. The murder mystery thickens when it's revealed Megan died from blunt force trauma to the head. And a red Ford Mustang is found abandoned 16 miles away. Who murdered 24-year-old Megan Sharpton?

Gosh, we'd love to know. We'd love to know. So they have one person here because they have interviews from people that were on the scene. And they said, well, you know, Rita, it's. It's just over a bridge and just off the road, as you mentioned. It wasn't even that far off the road that her body was placed. Remember, she was dumped there after the blunt force trauma that caused her death. And then somebody attempts to burn out the middle of, burn out in the middle of nowhere, so to speak, about 15 miles from where they found the car.

I'm telling you, Rita, when they said there must be a rule on this show that you must mention the host's name at the beginning of every paragraph, just so they know. I don't know that it's not Nancy tonight. It's not. And if it's Nancy, you have to go, I'll tell you, Nancy. You have to say her name, too. It's just a rule here. I'm telling you, Rita, when they set her on fire, the goal was, it was just far enough out that nobody would find it. And all they would find were just some charred remains.

The fact that this guy got there in a nick of time, wasn't this guy, it was a bunch of teenagers. She could be identified quickly enough that they could actually get on this case and try to find her murderer. Yeah. So one of the investigators is talking here and they're, yeah, they said the fire was the dry time of season and people are driving by there. So they see a fire. They immediately, so they're going to call and get the fire department en route. And they said it's a rural area, Rita Cosby says. And he says, yeah, she says, describe the area. Is it sort of an abandoned area? And the guy says, it's an abandoned area. Yeah, yeah. What kind of question is that? Yeah. There's so many other words, but abandon. Is it an abandoned area?

That makes it sound like there's warehouses that are crumbling. Yeah, is there a lot of graffiti and rats around? Yeah, that's what I feel like. Paint the scene. Is it like the worst place that you could think of to be found, charred, and raked and clubbed? Is it an industrial hellhole? Is that what we're talking about? No.

So the guy said it's very isolated, very isolated. They bring in a former officer from the Atlanta PD for some reason to talk to. This is the other thing. None of the people they bring in to talk to never make any sense. This is why we don't ask people shit because we'd be talking to former Atlanta PD person who's not even working on this case. Yeah. There's nothing to do with shit.

She gets Matt Murphy there, the guy from L.A. That has no experience with fucking rural Tennessee. Totally. It makes no sense. So this guy says, well, so far it doesn't look like robbery was the motive. the thing about the purse, it may, what was taken out of the purse or what was missing from the purse may be an interesting, may be an interesting and it may be, and it may lead to something. But the most interesting thing about the purse is where it was located.

If you look at this map, what you're going to have to determine is it seems that they know where she was dumped and she was likely set on fire there, but where the blunt force trauma was inflicted upon her may be near the location of the purse. So when you have items spread out like that, it can certainly help you with both their chronology and the progression of the time, of the crime. Okay. And that guy's a cop? This guy's a cop saying obvious things.

Yeah. But also maybe the dumbest thing. Because with a person it's done, that could be very well be something, like at the very end of the thing, getting rid of it. It could be near the person's house, them throwing it out a window into the river. It could be nothing to do with anything. It could just be a place that guy likes to go camping with his kids. You don't know shit. What a silly thing.

That's why he's, why is he even here? He's not part of this. I don't get it. Why are you talking to? Yeah, I do too. Mind your own business, Mark. Stay off TV, Mark. Yeah, quick being fucking interviewed.

This guy just loves putting makeup on. I think that's all it is. So Rita Cosby said, and Mark, I do think it's interesting that you got three different locations. You got the location of the body. You got the location of the car. And then you got the purse sort of in between. Why all these different locations, Mark Harold? How the fuck does he know?

Hey, Rita. Does she think Mark did this? Mark should go, hey, Rita, do you think I committed this fucking crime? Why are you asking me that? Anything else? Why, he's so mad at me. What would have I ever done that would lead you to think I would do this to a woman? Hey, Mark, when you rape a woman, do you set her crotch on fire usually?

Is that how you do it? What are we talking about? Why all these different locations, Mark Harold? That sounds like he's on the witness stand. Why can't you do everything in one spot, Mark? What's wrong with you, Mark? You lazy shit. So poor Mark says, well, at this point, everybody's just speculating.

Yeah. Why am I here? Ten minutes ago, Mark. You've been speculating like crazy. You repeated the information of what happened in this case to me. Then I repeated it back to you. And now you're asking me why that happened. What are we talking about?

Yeah. So he said the sheriff's department and the TBI may know more than we do. But as far as we can tell, it looks like the purse may be near the infliction of the wounds. I don't think so. What information does he have to say that? That's what I mean. It may be where she was struck, the purse was left behind. The vehicle looks to have gone in an opposite direction, and most likely the body was dumped somewhere in the middle, then set on fire.

Most likely, as was alluded to, it may be to cover up a specific type of crime, given where the burning was done. And that may look towards at least or at least give us some evidence. There may be a sexual assault. Then he says, the most obvious thing, I'm of course just speculating. This show is just one big circle jerk. You know that, right? Like, none of us know shit. This is all just specul of horse shit to entertain people while they dust their furniture.

That's it. They put it on in the background while dinner's being made. That's all the only reason we're here. And the car went in the other direction. And most likely when the car was recovered, that gives you an idea of where the perpetrator went, which honestly, I believe is the opposite of what happened. I hope everything that he said is wrong. I believe she was taken from the car and gone the other way, where it would be drop the purse, then kill her. Right. She was probably injured near the vehicle, taken and done horrible things to.

And then. Uncable of fight. Yeah. And then got rid of all the evidence at the end, which is like how it usually works. That's how it usually works. And I'm just speculating here, James. We're just spitballing. Two idiot comedians. We're comedians. We're not detectives from I'm speculating my ass off right now. We could be on the show too, speculating.

Who cares? So then later on, Rita says, okay, let's go to Wendy Walsh, psychologist. What kind of person burns a body, Wendy? Obviously a monster, but what kind of person does this? An asshole, that's who? What are we talking about? What? Imagine you're Wendy Walsh psychologist, and it's your job to sit and wait for this

fucking call from this idiot to ask you dumb questions. That's your job. What kind of person does? I don't know. The worst. What are you talking about? Yeah, what you're talking about? Look it up.

That's who. Look it up people who do this. It's crazy. So Wendy Walsh like, yeah. Psychologist says somebody who wants to hide evidence, somebody who isn't criminally insane and they know the consequences of their crime and they're doing what they can to cover it up. And that's clearly what we're seeing here from where he moved the body from where he may

have moved the body from where the purse is. They're just speculating that that's where the body was. And then taking the car and putting it in another location, there was a lot of work done after the fact to show that this assailant knew that what he was doing was seriously wrong. Yeah, he's covering it up. That's all it is. And this is how like rampant speculation gets spread.

It went from, I think possibly, you know, because the purse is here, maybe that's, That's what happened to her now saying, I mean, because where the body was, where the purse is, now that's a fact all of a sudden over the course of this show. And also, James, this person cannot claim to be mentally ill because this is not something that insane people do. She's already come to that conclusion. Yeah, already come to the conclusion. This person deserves life in prison or death because this is clearly calculated, covered up. Sane as can be. She's now trying the case.

Yeah, no, she's now, even though we have no possible idea who did this, she has given him a full evaluation and a full workup. And she's ready to convict. She doesn't even need the jury any long. Just a sane asshole. That's who did it. She needs the judge to wrap the gavel and send this guy to prison. Yeah, well, we need to find him also. Oh, that's the other thing.

Yeah, we got to find him. There is that. Once you find him, it's over. So the investigation continues. August of 2012. Franklin County Sheriff's spokesman, Chris Guess, tells the media that they're making progress, but that results take time.

Yeah. Do you have leads? Yeah, Chris Guess. Chris, like, Christopher, yeah, guessed. That would be guest to, but this is guess. Yeah, but he's, guess, like, guess. The spokesman guesses? Shit.

My guess is. Yeah. He said it takes quite a while just to amass the physical evidence to get the TBI to return results so you can start piecing that together. Subpoenas for things like phone records, search warrants that you have to execute. It's a tremendous amount to do. Basically, we're super busy.

We're, you know, I mean, sometimes they solve murders in like six hours, but we're real busy. We got a lot of stuff going on here. Nobody thought this was easy, Chris. No. Jesus Christ. And this especially is an especially difficult case to something. You find a burning woman somewhere. I mean, a call from a burner phone.

You got nothing. And every string you chase is a knot. Yeah, there's nothing behind it, nothing. So the investigation briefly, and this becomes very public, very quickly, explores a potential connection to the Holly Bobo case. Who is that? It's a 20-year-old nursing student who vanished from Decatur County, Tennessee, six months earlier. Same age range and a nursing student, April 2012, as opposed to July, 2,000.

2012. So that is. And we haven't solved that yet either? It's about 130 miles away. That's a pretty public case too. Well, people have asked us to cover that case. We'll talk about that probably at some point. So it's interesting. So the media is speculating because as we found out from that Rita Cosby, what they do best is speculate. Oh, do they love it. Not deliver facts, just speculate wildly these shows. That's on headline news. Yep. They're speculating about a serial killer on the loose targeting nursing students in Tennessee.

They don't scare people or anything. No, no, no, no, no. You're fine. It's just a serial killer targeting young pretty nursing students. It's fine. Don't worry about it. Holy. It'll be all right.

So the detectives compare the cases closely and they reach a conclusion completely unrelated. Yeah. Different MO, different geography, just a different perpetrator. Holly wasn't torched, right? I don't think so, no. And just a different, you can tell kind of similar. Different circumstance. Different deal.

But the fear really fucks everybody up. Nobody hears that part. They just hear there's a possible serial killer. And next thing you know, they're like, there's definitely a serial killer. Did you hear? Guy knocked on my door. There's a lot speck in Bundy. Yeah.

Guy knocked on my door, drooling from the fangs, serial killer. Bleeding from his eyes. I can see it. Porin. Now, late summer, early fall, 2012. They're trying to focus on the burner phone that was used to call her. Good call. That's where they're all, where you're going to find everything from.

That's the only lead they can really go on at this point. There's a voice on a person there. Yes. They can't trace the owner directly because it's a prepaid unregistered phone. But they can trace where it was purchased. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So then if you've seen the wire, this is.

how they got the burner phones back to get on the burner phones to try to bring down. And that's how they got that dude from Gilbo Beach. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, he had a bunch of phones. So they, that guy's going to plead guilty, by the way. Stop it. Heurman's pleading guilty. That's what I heard.

I heard he's going to plead guilty. When did you hear that? Like two days ago. He's going to plead. Will he talk? Oh, God. He's going to, I assume they're going to have to because they're going to want. That's going to be the biggest Netflix special ever.

Oh, my God. They're going to want. everybody's, they're going to want to know all of the people he killed because there's a lot. There's like 20 that we know of, right? Yeah, they're talking about that he wants kind of a, he might want kind of an umbrella deal that covers him for what he may come up later, basically. Yeah. So one of those.

Or he just gets life without? I don't see what I don't, he's never getting out. What else is he getting? No one is ever letting him out. Yeah. We won't kick you in the balls every morning at 6 a.m. How about that? That's the deal you get.

We won't leave your cell open in Gen. every day. Yeah, every day. So that's what they're trying to figure out. Now, the detective Hindman, he pulls surveillance video from every store in the area that sells prepaid phones around the time of the murder. Imagine. The amount of footage.

Oh, boy. Watching a fucking convenient store's surveillance footage waiting for somebody to buy a burner phone. Imagine that's, that is brutal, man. Your eyes would bleed. from that. That's horrifying. Is it, am I, am I wrong to think that that

is something that shouldn't be sold? A pre, a burner phone? This is, you can buy, if you can buy an assault weapon, you can buy a burner phone. I'm sorry, I'll go back to that.

If I can, if I can buy a crazy weapon that can do what that does, anything else should be legal. Don't tell me drugs should be illegal. Nope, I should be able to fucking jam heroin in my arm.

It should be able to buy children. Yeah. It should be, yeah, children should be illegal. able to buy heroin if I can buy that gun. Sight unseen. You know, whatever. So, anyway, they can't trace it.

They're trying to trace it. This guy watches 11 or 12 videos total. Hours. Hours of videos. Most of them are just nothing happening. Just people buying gum and coffee. You're picking up a twisted tea. I mean, it is boring as fuck.

Then there's one that catches his eye. The guy's acting a little off. He had his personal cell phone on the counter while he was buying it. So clearly he has a phone. He doesn't need this. Doesn't need it. And then he walked outside and got into a red pickup truck. So they have a photo of this man on the surveillance footage still.

So he circulates the photo around the sheriff's department. Anybody know who this guy is? Anybody ever seen this guy before? and within two minutes, one guy goes, I know this idiot, yeah. We all know this fucking idiot. He's a local small-time drug dealer. We all know him.

His name's Timothy Gifford. We know exactly who this asshole is. Like Tim's Ford? I guess. Wow. Yeah. He said we've, you know, we've arrested him before.

We all know him, basically. So that's what they do. Timothy Gifford, small-time local drug dealer, known to law enforcement. He's brought in for questioning. All right. They said he's real cooperative, too.

Oh. Eager to help. Real cooperative, okay? He admits, yes, that's me. I'm in the footage. He said, I bought the burner phone, but I did it as a favor for a friend. Wasn't for me. Oh.

I might sell you a couple of pills or some shit like that, but I'm not a murderer. I'll tell you that right now. That's interesting. Those occupations usually don't cross over like that. Small time drug deal. are generally not. They're usually doing that to pay for their own habits. It's a very fascinating string they just pulled, though.

A guy buying a burner said, it's not my phone. Not for me. So, yeah, they don't know whether to believe them or not, but they're like, well, then who's it for? You keep talking. And he said, it's a friend of mine, a friend of mine named Donnie Jones. That's what I bought it for.

Donnie Jones. He said, I had surgery, or Donnie had surgery recently, and he couldn't get out. So he asked me if I would buy it for him, and I was even driving his truck. Oh, it wasn't even his truck. Yeah. He said that he, he said, okay, how did he pay you for this phone? And he said, he paid me with some of his post-surgery prescription pain medication.

He gave me perks to sell on the street. That's what I mean. That guy is a small-time drug dealer supporting his own habit. You know what I mean? Not really a master criminal here. Yeah. So that's who they're saying. He said, it's this guy, Donnie Jones.

And they said, okay, so you gave this phone to Johnny Jones, anything else? And he said, well, a few days after the phone purchase, Donnie contacted me again. And he wanted help selling his red pickup truck. Oh. He wanted to trade it for a Mustang is what he said. Okay. So now Gifford found that strange because he, the truck he had, it was a pickup truck. but it's like a bigger cab, extended cab and everything.

And he said, Donnie has four kids. The truck is more practical. You could throw them right in the back of the truck. You can't put four kids in a damn Mustang. Not at all. So he said, you know, that's weird, but he said if that's what he wanted to do, I agreed to help. Why not? You know?

So he said when he had gotten into the truck to help with the sale, though, he noticed something. Gifford said, he noticed the carpeting and interior panels had been recently replaced. Of the truck? Of the truck. Okay. This was after Megan was killed. Brand new interior. And he said he asked Donnie about it.

He said, well, Jesus, you replaced the interior of your truck. And he said, yeah, my wife suggested it. He said, cars with new interior sell faster. They'll get in there and go, look how clean it is. And it'll sell. Which is a good point. It's not bad. It's true.

You see a clean thing there. Then they were like, all right, well, I mean, right now, you're on the hook. You're the guy buying the goddamn phone, so you better hope his Donnie bullshit works out. So they look into Donnie Jones, and they're skeptical, man. They're like, we're looking into this guy. Oh, no phone Jones. Yeah, we're keeping an eye on you over here. So they look them up, and they find an incredible coincidence.

Do you know who Donnie Jones's wife is? Is it Naomi Jones? It's Naomi fucking Jones. How in the fuck? How, like a. Donut. Wow. Full circle.

Wow. How would that? What? Yep. It's fucking Naomi Jones is his wife. Hmm. The nursing school student who knew Megan. Yeah.

Briefly a little bit. Now who the fuck is Donnie Jones? Now we got to find this. Who the fuck, Donnie? Donnie Frank Jones Jr. Yeah. Of course, a junior. He's born 1975.

He has been in trouble a lot. up until this point he has 21 felony convictions. Naomi. What kind of guys are you after? Nurses often will They will tend to the wounded duck, you know what I'm saying? That's a... 21.

21. Yes, this is very interesting. He's a resident. He lived on Bell Air Drive in Tallahoma in Coffey County. he is just a criminal of the criminals. He's just a full on his whole adult life. He's a criminal. What do you do for a living?

Oh, I'm a criminal. That's what he would answer, basically. 21 felonies. I'm doing great. Yep, 21 prior felony convictions by the time Megan was murdered. His sheet includes such lustrous crimes as forgery, theft, battery, aggravated assault, aggravated burglary. He's been to state prison multiple times.

He's also been a police informant for years. Really? That's what a scumbag he is. He's a criminal, but then he's also a rat. A rat. A rat. He snitched on small-time drug operations in exchange for leniency for his own arrests. What a pussy.

The cops knew him. Yeah, they said that he'd make himself as useful as he needed to be so he can navigate his way out of trouble here and there. Scumbag. Which is why he's not in prison, but he's been convicted 21 times because he'd get convicted of something, but they'd give him a light sentence because he's snitching. Yeah. Yeah.

Then they said also, I know that he had a 1998 escape where he act, because they were like, well, none of those things really say that he's going to murder and kidnap a woman and rape. This is a lot. This is a big step up in crime from small time bullshit. And the cops said, and the cops said, We looked it up and we found out in 98. He tried to kidnap two young ladies in a car and take them to the interstate. Now, this was when he escaped from jail in 98.

I'm going to read you... What? I'm going to read you an article from the Daily News Journal from September 5, 1988. Here we go. Attempted kidnapping and aggravated assault charges were lodged against a workhouse escapee who allegedly tried to abduct women at knife point Thursday night, Murphy's Borough Police said. Donnie Frank Jones Jr., 23 at that time, an inmate from Winchester, was serving time for

misdemeanor assault convictions when he scaled a razor wire fence Thursday afternoon and escaped. Holy. Misdemeanor assault convictions, meaning he's not going to be in there very long. He didn't get 10 years for that probably. What is that? 18 months? Topps. It's a misdemeanor assault?

I can't even imagine. I mean, even with a record still, you need to scale razor. wire walls. That's insane. That's, that's, uh, convicted murderer shit. Yeah, I got to get out of here. They're going to put a fucking needle in my arm. They're going to give me the chair. I'm honest. He said he scaled a razor wire fence Thursday afternoon and escaped, said Alan Miller, workhouse superintendent. Jones was also serving time for parole violation. Okay, that makes sense. Jones had requested a furlough because his grandfather died, Miller said. While checking his background, workhouse authorities found that he had escaped twice before from other facilities.

Holy fuck. The workhouse was preparing to transfer Jones to the more secure jail, but when he found out, he had escaped. They were like, oh, not only can you knock it out for a furlough, we're actually, you actually shouldn't even be here. Yeah. We should put you some more harder to get out of. Yeah. Murphy's Borough police officer Anthony, oh, Tostanowski, reported Jones allegedly stole a 1988 Ford Torris owned by

Donald Conway of Murphy's Borough when it was parked on Rutledge Drive. The car, which had a

knife inside, was abandoned near Home Depot. Jones later approached Kelly Stites and Jennifer Saul's of

Illinois at a service station on Old Fort Parkway. He got into their car and told them he

needed a ride to the interstate. Oh my God. And they said, quote, at times,

at all times, at all times, Mr. Jones was displaying a knife to the victims. That's terrifying. He's holding two women at knife point and getting told they need to drive him somewhere. So, Steets, one of the young ladies,

repeatedly told Jones, quote, Sir, I need you to get out of the car. That's super comp. Sir, I'm going to need you to get out of this car. Sir, I need you to get out of the car. Well, he's got, I said, drive me. Sir, I'm going to ask you one more time. Get out of my car.

Like, that's pretty impressive fucking keeping it together. Listen. Can't take it with me. Holy shit. And he just, he kept saying, go, go with the knife. And she kept saying, I'm not doing it. Get out of the car. So eventually, after a few minutes, he just jumped out of the car and ran away.

Wow. He's like, if I kill them, I can't drive this car, start stabbing. I'm going to drive the car with stabbed women hanging out of it. That's not going to work. Dead bodies in the car. I got to work. So, yeah. I'm here for a misdemeanor drunk charge.

I shouldn't have been escaping. I'm taping even. This is crazy. This is mean our assault. It's not even that bad. Her assault, that's, yeah. So the, I guess, he ran down Chafin Lane. Tostanowski searched the area and found an empty school bus with the door open.

As he started up the stairs, Jones yelled, just shoot me. I'm back here. Just shoot me. You got me. I want to die. I'm going to kill myself. Just, I'm good. Just shoot me.

The officer drew his weapon and walked toward the rear of the bus. He repeatedly told Jones that he wanted to see his hands. While he approached, Jones cut his left wrist with a small pocket knife. That's his big suicide attempt. He took out a Swiss Army knife and fucking tried to slash it himself there. So he said at that point, the cop says, at that time, I took out my OC spray and told him to put the knife down. Jones refused. So the cop sprayed him with pepper spray.

Shit. I said, shoot me. Damn it. Not with that. So when Jones closed his eyes, ah, with the spray, that's when the cop kicked the knife out of his hand. Yeah. And then got on him. Officer Amy Cassidy reported Jones's curl, Jones curled his legs around the legs of the bus seat and wouldn't let go.

They were trying to get him around. Oh, my God. Think of how pathetic this is. This is really sad. This is like a five-year-old having a tantrum. I'm just wrapping my legs around this thing, and you're not, no, you can't make me. This is ridiculous. We can, and we will.

You're getting out of here. And Officer Cassidy said he received blows to his legs to force him to release his whole. They just beat his legs. Yeah. Like the Murphy brothers beating up fucking Rick James on the couch. Probably with a stick. Oh, I'm sure. He was a batonting.

Oh, yeah. Okay. Crack, crack, crack. Three shots on the shin. You'll let go. You'll let go. So then they said they asked him about the attempted kidnapping and he said, quote, it was me. We know.

We got it. He goes, it was me. I just want to die. My grandfather's dead and they wouldn't let me see him. I just want to die. Okay. That's what he said. So Jones told police that he had abandoned the car and where he abandoned it even.

So they have found it near Home Depot with his workhouse clothes. side and another knife. So this is who we're dealing with. My God. He was charged... Naomi likes that guy. She's married to him, for Christ's sake. He was charged with attempted, aggravated kidnapping plus possession of a weapon,

theft, and escape. All this from a misdemeanor assault charge, you fucking dummy. How long do you do for that shit? Well, I'm not sure exactly, but two weeks later, there's an article in the newspaper, quote, more guards are needed at the Rutherford, county workhouse officials have said before and since it inmate escaped late last summer, but tonight they're going to do something about it. The county commission's public safety committee meets at six tonight in suite 205 of the courthouse.

Members of the workhouse board will request a budget amendment to hire two correctional officers here. More guards were requested last spring when the budget was being prepared for the fiscal year. The superintendent said, I don't understand why it wasn't put in the budget. he said that they want basically they need money for two guards which would have helped imagine that all they're asking for is two two it was turned down which is hilarious and then someone escaped they're like how about now holding shicks at knife point what about now now can we have two extra guards you fucking dummy they probably let him escape let him escape we'll get to hire more people you know what i mean christ he stole the man's torus for christ's shit so yeah

The Workhouse Board voted September 3rd to request the budget amendment so he could fill the two jobs that were in the budget. The starting pay for the guards is this is 1998. Is it $32,000? $20,450. Fuck you. Not a chance. Fuck you. You could work if you want to, you could work in a toll booth and make more than that.

What year was that? 1998. 1998. 1998, I made $9,000 working at a pizza joint. Exactly. There's not a fucking chance. I'm watching guys like this. Fuck you.

For 20 grand? For $10 an hour? Eat my asshole. Not happening. Not a chance. A dick all the way. Suck my hemorrhoids. The annual cost for two guards is $41,000 because of health benefits and workers' comp costs.

Wow. So basically he got time served for that and got out. The time he was in for the misdemeanor, whatever, they just ran it all concurrent with that, and he didn't get any time for that, really. He broke out of jail, stole a car, held two women at gunpoint, ran away, got fucking pepper sprayed, beaten with batons,

had to be dragged off a bus, so that's even resisting arrest. I mean, you could pile the charges to the moon And they were like, ah, just keep doing what you're doing. It's good. He's probably pretty embarrassed.

He was probably pretty embarrassed. He was the newspaper. Yeah, he's got to be. He feels like an idiot, this guy. He really does. He said he felt like a real dip shit. Nancy Grides is talking about this.

She's speculating. Yeah. Now, what they, they said, he's had 21 prior felony convictions. He has 13 forgeries in Coffey County, aggravated assault, aggravated burglary,

attempted kidnapping, assault, and two felony escape convictions. Convictions. Convictions. This is crazy. Wow, that's a lot. They said ranging from forgery to aggravated assault.

Now, more crime here, scattered public records that you can pick up on here, found some more crimes besides those. Counterfeit controlled substance. I guess selling a counterfeit controlled substance. So sell them burner bags, basically. Probably selling bad pills or bad pills or bad. This was a third offense for him for doing this, by the way. He does this a lot.

That's a Class E felony. Forgery, over $10,000. That was one of the 13. Theft of property, burglary, drug-related felonies, certain amounts of what? Anhydrous ammonia violations? What the fuck is that? Anhydrous ammonia? Is that something you use to make something else?

It's got to be. It's got to be an additive to something, maybe a meddra simonia. meth thing I could see. That sounds like something you'd put in meth. Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. Fuck yeah. Then they also found, this was a little, they had to do some digging here, a

1993 rape arrest for him. Oh, what? Gee, the more you look into him, the more he's starting to really look like the guy here. They said, yeah, it was not documented very well, but it seems like that's something happened in 1993. There was some sort of rape arrest. We don't know if he was convicted for all of that.

he's also a dad though stop it of course but he's got too many kids to fit in the Mustang right he's got four of them he's got a wife he's got Naomi here she goes to the nursing program at Motlo state community college he has

most counts put it at four kids multiple young children he has at least four he drives a red pickup truck sells drugs on the side and basically neighbor said when you, if you ask him what he did for work, he gives kind of a vague non-answer

and then changes the subject. Yeah. You know, rape, forgery, escape, whatever comes across. Yeah. So, Naomi is the connection here. She'd been, they weren't in the exact same class, but Naomi was there first, but they overlapped for a while. Got it.

That's how it went. And Donnie had even driven Naomi and Megan to clinical rotations a couple times. Oh. So that's how he knew her there. Now, the burner phone, this is the same burner phone they find out, we'll talk about. You know what? We'll save that for a second. Okay.

Crime scene connection. Okay. Get to the burner phone. We do the GPS stuff. The crime scene, AWOLT Road or EWalt Road is a remote stretch of blacktop along the edge of Tim's Ford Lake. The nearest building was a church over a half mile away. Okay. The nearest house was across a small bridge.

So this wasn't a road where people would hang out after dark, really. There's no streetlights. There's no neighbors, no security cameras. This is, you know, this is where you'd go when you don't want people to see what you're doing, essentially. Donnie grew up in this area. Is that right? Oh, yeah. His family owned farm property right in this area, right in the vicinity.

He knows all of these roads. He knows which roads have people watching them. He knows which roads people are on. He knows which roads are really rural and completely abandoned. Sparsely populated, yeah. Yep. He, that's what they think. They said he drove Megan here or drove her body there post-murder deliberately.

This is not a panic dump site. This is a well-thought-out. This is where he planned to dump this body, period. Why? Because he knows. They said he lit her on fire approximately 1245 a.m. based on the burn progression when they responded. He concentrated the accelerant on her.

pelvic region, then drove away, thinking clean. Done. I did it. Yeah. But fire doesn't burn everything uniformly, especially bodies. The nursing school shirt on her torso survived partially, but even if it didn't, the tattoos survived and they would have found out who she was real goddamn quick. So the detectives here, Lindman, the one who followed the burner phone trail.

Very good detective, by the way. Nice work. That's great detective work. He had no leads, so he made leads out of something. I will find, make something a lead. If I have to, I'll look for shit. That's pretty amazing. Just start knocking until somebody gives me a fucking weird answer.

That's it, pretty much. Yeah. He's the guy who identified all of these people. He's also the one who would answer Kelly Sharpton's text when she would text about her daughter. It's horrible. They said, this is, he said, Detective George Dyer put it plain years later. Megan Sharpton's last few minutes of life was pure hell and panic and fear. And they said, and Donnie Jones is just a cold-blooded killer.

All right, let's talk about the GPS, because this is interesting here. Okay. GPS investigators obtain data from four devices. Megan's phone, Donnie Jones's personal phone, Timothy Gifford's phone, the guy who bought it all, and the burner phone. Okay. But they don't have her phone, right?

They have the one that was called. Oh, right, right, right, right. That's the only one they have. So they have all four of these devices. And what they do when they do this is when they're comparing shit in court, they'll put a big map up and they'll put all your movements, and then it'll overlap them to see how they go. So that's what they do.

What they find is really bad for Donnie. On the evening of July 1st into July 2nd, the burner phone moves in perfect parallel with Donnie Jones' personal phone. So, meaning he has both phones. Same route, same timing. Both devices tracked together from Tullahoma outward into rural Franklin slash Bedford County. The burner phone was in his vehicle, obviously, he's carrying both. The GPS data then maps to three critical locations. One, where investigators believe Megan was first met or intercepted.

Yeah. Because they think that basically she went to a place where she thought this would be. And this guy pulled up behind her and she thought that he was the guy she was supposed to meet. So she got out of the car voluntarily to talk to him and that's when he could have disabled her, basically. Location two, Jones's family farm property. Oh, what? That's where it went down, not by the pink personal. That horse shit the other guy was saying.

They said that this property is where the rape and murder are believed to have been occurred there or how it occurred is at his family farm. Because that's a place where he could go and have plenty of time and he knows who's there and he knows who's watching. Then location three is AWOLT Road, which is the disposal site. So we see his phone with the burner phone going through all this. The Jones family owned several farms in that area, and that's where they felt she was murdered on the farm property. So they go to the farm property that the GPS led them to because that's where he was that night. So let's find out if he left any evidence. And they find a burn barrel there.

Really? Not the same one, obviously, that she had because it's back at their house. But they look in the burn barrel and they find charred remnants of a purple scarf with star patterns printed on it. It's hers. It's hers. So she was there. Megan's sister Carrie recognized it immediately because she'd given the scarf to Megan as a gift.

So she knew. Jones had burned it along with whatever else might have connected him. He stripped his truck down, probably burned all that shit. He burned the scarf. He used his burner phone. He created a false alibi to claim that he was with his kids all night. But the GPS says otherwise. the burn barrel still has ashes.

Yeah, they said that's where we feel like she was murdered. Yeah. Which is wild. Now, remember what she said to her friend when she was 12. I'll leave scraps of me all over the place. I'll leave scraps of clothes for you to find me. And she did on accident. How did we find her?

Scraps and clothes left behind. That's amazing. That's wild shit. That's crazy. You know what I did? So where the car was left where he abducted her? Is that where he caught her probably? That's where they think, yeah.

Got to. Because otherwise he's got no way to move that car all over there. Exactly. How would he have moved the car? This is not a two-man operation. This is one person doing this in the dark. All by himself. Yep.

So this is fucking horrible, obviously, here. Then they find out something even crazier. No. Through his phone records, they find out that on the burner phone, he'd use the same burner phone to call several other numbers. numbers, most of them belonging to women working in elder care and nursing. Megan wasn't even his first choice. He just went down the line of phone numbers that he had until he found somebody that would

agree to do this. Why does he... This is insane. Why is he... Is he married to Naomi for this idea? I don't know. I don't know what he just got a wild hair up his ass that he's going to do this, but this is crazy.

This isn't even there's that one chick. Let me see if she'll do. He went person to person until he found, I'm going to rape and kill somebody. Don't care who it is. I care about one thing, and that's that they are a worker. That's it. Well, that's why I have access to. Yeah, that's why I have access to.

I don't know any. What other chicks is this idiot now? You know what I mean? Why does he want to do this? I don't know why anybody wants to do this. This is disgusting and horrifying. Yeah, but I mean, why do you get this wild air that this is? I don't know.

This is fucked up. The cop said he's just a cold-blooded killer. I don't know what else. I know that's a little too reductive for the whole situation. Psychologically, we'd like a bigger picture. But in the end, that's what we got. He's just a fucking murdering asshole. The wise is so important to one side, not to the law.

But this I want to know why so bad. What's wrong with this fucking guy? Yeah. Apparently a lot. based on his past. He's a lunatic. What the fuck? So what they do is they announce an arrest in the case, but what they do is they don't arrest him for murder yet.

Okay. They arrest him for weapons possession. Oh. Because they searched his home and they found a rifle and ammunition inside. And he is a many-time convicted felon. Yeah. So he's prohibited from possessing them. He's arrested on felon in possession of weapons charge.

Blackjack felonies are way worse. That's bad stuff. And you're 21, sir. That's no good. One more is a bust. So they said they can hold him now on a half a million dollar bond while they wait for the results of the DNA just to make sure. But they're holding on to him just so they know, even though they know it's coming back. But this is the DNA is, pardon my pun here, the kill shot.

That's it. They got that and all the maps and everything else. You're fucking toast. And they got him sitting in jail knowing that they're out there just to. test in DNA. Just a test in things. Have it sit for a minute. Well, while they have him in there, that's when they get his DNA, as we'll talk about.

Late October 2012, they bring him in, and the semen recovered because they have a match through there. When they confront him, when he's in custody, his first response is, quote, I ain't ever, I had no contact with her. I knew of her. I ain't ever was the first thing he said out of that. I ain't ever. I had no contact with her. I knew of her. Then they were like, yeah, but, you know, we have all this, you know, GPS and all this.

And he said, I'm with my kids all the fucking time. That's all I fucking do. I love my fucking kids, goddamn it. Little fuckers. I'm with my fucking kids. All the fucking time. That's all I fucking do. All the fucking time.

That's when he invited police. Go search my house. I'll provide you with my DNA, Sam. Apple, no problem, swab me. I am good. He's confident. They got shit. In his mind, he burned it all.

But the problem is he didn't. So there's the DNA hit, obviously. Now they test his DNA. It matches. Big shocker there. Gotcha. He's sitting in jail with the gun. So then they sit him down for another interrogation.

And they go, hey, dick hole. Well, question for you. Your DNA matches with what was inside. of her. How'd that happen possibly? Now he's got a whole new story. He said, I didn't want to tell you all this. I didn't want to make my wife mad, but I've been having a consensual affair with Megan in secret. It's a secret affair we've been having. Real hush, hush like. And then we had been together that night and she left afterwards. I don't know what happened to her after that. Somebody must have got her. That's it. So, huh?

She likes guys named Ani, like Ronnie and Donnie. Donny, Donny, all sorts of people. She's got another affair going. Robbie, oh, that's right. Yeah, that's right. So they're like, okay. Yeah. Tell us more.

That's funny. So they go through all the shit and they're like, well, you've never contacted her before and she's never contacted you. Right. None of her family knows who you are. None of her friends have ever heard of you. Yeah. Don't think you're having that secret of an affair. Sorry, Chief.

She may not be sleeping with her boyfriend's roommate, and how many people could she possibly be having affairs with? Yeah, this is crazy. Now, October 26, 2012 is graduation day at the Tennessee Technology Center in Tullahoma. They held the ceremony there, and 18 of Megan's classmates received their degrees, including her. They put Megan on the program. They decorate her seat. They leave her a seat there. when her name is called, everybody stands up, and her mom goes up and accepts it.

And she said, I'm not the only person that should be sad. Every patient that she would have had, every person that she would have touched should also be lost like I am. So she said that she wanted this and she worked hard for this and she's happy to, she's getting her diploma even though she's obviously not going to use it. Now, November 5th, 2012, a Franklin County grand jury returns an indictment against Donnie Jones for first-degree murder. Two counts of, this is crazy, especially aggravated kidnapping. I didn't know that was a charge, but I really like that. Especially aggravated.

Now, there's aggravated, then there's, hold on a minute. This is a secret aggravated. Egregiously aggravated kidnapping. This is a lot. Double aggravated. A higher aggravation level, what does that equate? Especially aggravated. I think that means you killed them afterwards, probably.

Has to be, right? And two counts of aggravated rape as well. Ooh. So he has got, he is lined up very fucking well for certain things here. The DA says he's been charged with first degree murder and will face justice in our court system. This is rural Middle Tennessee. We don't see things like this. here. We don't experience that level of brutality or violence or just coldness. Well, you do because

you're looking at it now. You got it. The family reaction, Carrie, that's her Megan's sister, talks about, you know, how hard this has been for everybody. She said July 2nd was definitely one of the worst days of my life. I received the phone call and my world was turned upside down. She said that her sister was very trusting. She said she was under the impression that there was a job opportunity. So she was going to help her family and herself and to help this so-called person. She was doing it to do better for everyone around her and she got taken advantage of. She said, my goal is to be Megan's voice and to let others become more aware that it's right here and that it's very real. And if I could help one other person from what my sister had to go through,

then that's me speaking for her. And she says to ask her about the court hearings approaching. And she said, I hope that there's peace for Megan. I hope that there is no justice. I hope that there is no justice and that I know that sounds crazy. I just hope that it never happens again. She may not be here in flesh and blood, but she's here. Her soul and her spirit are still here and they always will be. So he pleads not guilty.

Yeah. Really? He shackled hands and feet, walks into the courthouse, and there is Kelly, mom, holding a picture of Megan. he starts mouthing words to the gallery. We don't know if it's directly at her to everybody's saying, I didn't do it, I didn't do it. That's what he's doing. He's mouthing words.

I didn't do it. Get him, Kelly. Just now. Kelly is watching. Now, these people are fucking decent, nice people. They're not, yeah, they're not that type. You don't walk in front of me when I know they got your DNA saying, I didn't do it. I didn't do it.

I'll fucking open you. Yeah, no, these people are, this is a very nice family. Good for her. That's why she's so nice and want to be a nurse and want to help people. And their kindness trickles down. And I'm the same way. I want to, you know, I'll want to catch you. But I get this.

Kelly says he knows it in his heart. The universe knows who's guilty. I don't have to argue with him. The police have done their work. This is a person who is very settled and sounds like they've gone to therapy. Yeah. They got his DNA. They got his DNA.

You don't have to fight. don't make it on you. The detective also said that, you know, in this preliminary hearing, he brings up the 98 escape with the kidnapping saying this is a thing that he does. So they said 14 years before Megan, he tried the same move during one of his felony escapes, he carjacked two young women by force and ordered them into their own car and made them drive toward the interstate and picked up the attempted kidnapping charge. So the evidence against him, wow.

Jesus Christ, it's a lot. They have DNA, GPS, Timothy Gifford's testimony, the burn barrel on his family's farm with scarf remnants. They have a lot. It's pretty heavy, yeah. But the way their prosecution's working here, they're really not haphazard. They are basically going at this like it's a close case. They're dotting eyes crossing the T's. They're doing everything they need to do.

They talk about also the burner phone that he used to call multiple women as well. And yeah, that is wild. The sheriff said Jones had attempted the same scheme with at least one other woman before targeting Megan. That woman had decided to bring her mother along to the, quote, interview. She didn't show up alone. When Jones saw she wasn't alone, he didn't even do the interview. just canceled the meeting. What?

He just said, never mind, got in his car and drove away because she showed up with somebody. She was dead fucking meat,

this girl. Brilliant girl. Dead meat. Very smart. Yeah. I mean, think about that. She goes,

how would you even feel like that? Holy fuck. This person had me in his sights ready to. So smart of her to bring her mother.

Bring up, yeah, because it was a rural area. Yeah, don't go out there by yourself. So, yeah, they think that the,

The Jones family farm is where he did it. Megan's car was found 15, 20 miles away. And then the other one was the disposal site. Nothing more. Took her from there. Brought her here. Did what he did. Brought her there.

Dumped her through the purse as he's driving. On his route home. That's it. The death penalty is on the table. Of course. Yeah. The DA says his office is still considering it. They're waiting for a mental health evaluation before they...

21,000. He pulls this shit, and if he's sane, we're killing him. This is crazy. Yeah. So they asked the judge for, then he asked the judge for a speedy trial. Oh, he wants to die, too. I don't understand. They have all this evidence.

It's not like they don't have the evidence and you're trying to cut them off at the pass. This just gives them more time to really arrange the evidence in a really, you know, palpable way. Getting it speedy is bad for you. because you want to get professionals to dispute the shit that they're going to say. Exactly. And it ends up, it doesn't end up being very speedy as the pretrial motions grind on here into early 2013. Eish. Then on February 4th, 2013 here, death penalty on the table.

Yeah. He makes a deal. Yeah. Yeah. He says, I'm going to the fucking chair. This is bad. They're going to kill me. So much trouble.

The whole town's going to kill me. not just like, you know, on the death, you know, the lethal injection table, the whole town is just going to beat me with sticks until like that. And every person he's told in jail is going, you did what? Bro, you're going to die. Jesus, they're going to fucking kill you. They're going to kill you for this. They had maps about you.

You're dead, dude. You're fucking. You thought a burner? Dude, no. My God. So February 4th, 2013 is the deal. That's what they do. he pleads guilty to first degree murder.

Ooh. And that takes the rape and kidnapping charges are dropped then. Oh. His first degree murder has got some enough stank on it here. Yeah, but in prison now he's just a murderer, not a raping murderer. Well, they know what he did. They can still look it up. This isn't 1975.

Oh, yeah. And they just Google them and stay all. Yeah, but the charges still show up even if they were dropped. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You could just look up fucking his name and you can get all sorts of shit popping up. And Christ, listen to this show, everybody. Hey, everybody hanging around with Donnie Jones right now. Listen to this show.

Yeah. They make these in prison. They can certainly hear them, right? They can hear them, I would imagine. So, and then do what you will. So the DA explained that it was because Jones was going to prison for the rest of his life regardless. And putting the whole, putting the family, the Sharpton family, through a full trial for charges that wouldn't change his sentence anyway. It was stupid.

It just didn't make sense. Then he changes his mind. Not the prosecutor, Donnie. He goes, never mind. Did he plead already? I don't want any more. Yeah, he already did it formally. He said, I want to pull it back.

21 days after pleading guilty. Sorry? He files paperwork from his prison cell claiming that his attorney, Joseph Ford, coerced him into a plea agreement. That's the one way you could actually get out of this. He claims that the prosecutors threatened to file charges against Naomi as leverage to force the plea as well. Motion is filed in Franklin County.

Circuit Court. The Sharpton family is like, what the fuck? They were, it was settled in their mind. It was over. And now it's this tumultuous shit again. Yeah. Kelly, the mom, who said she just began to try to process her grief, tells reporters she drove out to the bridge where Megan's body was found when she heard about the filing.

She just needed to be somewhere around where Megan was. An attorney is appointed to handle the motion. A mental health evaluation has already been ordered. This drags on a little further now into 2014. In the end, a circuit judge hears Jones's new motion that ultimately formally withdraws his request to go to trial and reinstates the original judgment. Fuck you. Go to jail? You pled guilty.

You pled guilty. You're still guilty. They said, now the original judgment goes back into effect. The state, of course, had no objections. I was quite satisfied with the judge's ruling on it. Okay, that's what the family said. Now, during sentencing, the family gets to speak now. Yeah.

Kelly is there holding Megan's photo as she is there for every court appearance. She watches Danny Jones enter his plea. And then she spoke to reporters and she said, we're letting Donnie Jones go today. He gets nothing more from us. We've never been hung up on what he gets, death or life, just as long as he's off the streets. as the healthiest, most mature. Pretty well done, yeah. Well done, well done, Kelly.

Well done. Can't imagine what you're going through and to have that. It's terrible. It's incredible. She says the family plans to use the money donated in Megan's memory to establish a nursing scholarship at the community college in the Tullahoma area. She told a reporter, my heart is open and bleeding and it will never close. It will never close. The judge has something different to say that.

The judge says, you, sir, may fuck off life without possibility of parole. Yeah. Eaton Dick's line is that way, my friend. Forever's. Join it. Yep, there you go. In spring of 2013, by the way, Kelly Sharpton and the family dedicated a memorial at the A.Walt Road site where she was found. That's kind of depressing, isn't it?

You'd think you'd want to find a nice park or somewhere that's like, but they want to be connected to it, though, I guess. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know how you'd feel. It's her last place, apart from wherever they bury her or if they cremate her. It's the last place that she, oh, the poor thing. It's tough. It's not even the last place she was like a lie.

That's just tough. It's just a terrible. I mean, you can't really go to the last place she was alive and put a memorial. I don't think that family is going to be happy. They probably won't want you hanging out on their yard bringing more attention. Yeah. Now, the memorial stands more than seven feet tall. It has 24 metal stars, one for each year of her life.

She likes stars. It's like a monolith? Yeah, I guess. Like a big thing like that. Wow. They're mounted on it and spin in the breeze, the stars do. Oh, like pinwheels. That's pretty cool.

Yeah. Kelly described the meaning. She said, this is perpetual motion. This is the light in life. It lights up the night, lights up the day, and that was Meg. That's nice. There's lights on it, too. Yep.

She also placed a rock at the site with the message written on it saying Megan is her name. She was adamant that her daughter not be remembered as simply as that burned girl found on the side of the road. That is fucked up. Making her a human being, because that's all anybody in the area is going to remember is, oh, remember when that chick was found on the side of the road all burned up? It's pretty fucked up, yeah.

So that's nice that she did that. Yeah, and Megan's sister, Carrie, said, if Megan hadn't lost her life, I feel very confident that Donnie Jones would still be out trying to trick young women. Megan put him behind bars for life. She sacrificed her life to keep everybody else in our community safe. Yeah. That's a, these people are like aggressively healthy. Like, aggressively mentally healthy and like kind and compassionate.

Absolute opposite of Naomi. What the fuck is her problem? Don't know what her dad. And I don't even know what her deal is. I don't know if she knows anything about this. If he kept this all to him, I don't know. If she doesn't know anything about it, She lives her life with blinders.

Yeah, she's married to a piece of shit. She married a guy with 21 felony, so you got to... That's a girl that'll overlook a lot. That's, yes, she is pretty forgiving, I would say. Oh, boy. So Brittany, her friend who was told to look for my clothes there, she said, quote, she's like, if anything ever happens to me, Brittany, look for clues, look for signs, don't stop looking.

I'll leave scraps of my clothing to lead you. And that's exactly what she did. Megan definitely wasn't a pushover. I think she was naive to danger. Big difference. For me, Megan is my hero. She's literally saved everybody else

that would have ever come in contact with him. Is Brittany another one of her sister? Is that what it was? No, no, that's her best friend from the time she was a kid. Yeah. She's the one watching true crime with her. Now, if this couldn't get any fucking sadder.

What are you going to do to me today, James? Any worse. This is horrible, man. Okay. November of Tuesday. 2013. Yeah. This is only 13 months after poor Megan was dead,

was murdered. At a hotel in Chattanooga, uh-huh. Kelly Sharpton mom is found dead from an apparent suicide. Oh, Kelly, no. She couldn't take it. That's horrifying, man. She couldn't take it.

That's so fucked. That's so fucked, man. That's terrible. That poor woman. And think about the poor other kids, too. Yeah. Now they lost their sister. So many kids.

And their mom. And their mom. And that's another person that this guy killed. And that's exactly what they said. The detective Dyer said, Jones essentially killed them both. Sure did. What a piece of shit.

What a complete and total utter pile of fucking excrement this guy is. Oh, poor Kelly. That's horrid. She went to a hotel to do it. She probably lived with people and didn't want them to have to discover it. She went to a hotel in Chattanooga, pronounced dead at the hospital. That is fucking terrible.

Awful. Absolutely awful. Her obituary said that she survived by her parents, her children, and of course her fiancé, Don Cornelius Jr. Is that right? That's what it said. Wow. And as on the Megan's obituary, it listed her parents as Kelly, Sharpton and Don Cornelius Jr., which we know that's not her father. That's why I was wondering what happened to her father because her mother's boy.

boyfriend was listed as her, you know, other parent in the obituary. And her last name was not Sharpton, was it? Kelly's? No, no, no, no. Kelly Sharpton was her name. Megan Sharpton was. It was Megan Sharpton. Yeah, they all have the same last name.

Okay, so they all have mom's last name. They all have either that or she kept the father's last name. Or the dad passed away and that would make this story so much worse, James. That would make it even worse. It's bad enough. Let's say he ran off into the night. He's a real jackass. It makes it somehow less sad.

And she kept her maiden name and named all the kids are maiden name. That's it. And she's just being strong about it. So I don't know. But that's horrifying, man. And you don't even know, too. Is it, was it the not letting it out? Yeah.

Not letting the fucking anger that you wanted to keep down. And your therapist probably told you don't let it control you. Yeah. Do you need to get that out? If you don't let it out, then perhaps it manifests. Too much. Look, we all grieve differently. So there's, even in therapy, grieving is so hard to talk out. That's not a magic pill.

No, God, no. No. And when there's too much, there's too much. And when you've got to be the beacon of strength for so many people, sometimes it's overwhelming. Or it's just no matter what, that's just, it was too much for her to handle because their daughter getting killed is too much, and especially in the way it fucking happened. It's the worst. That all the time is horrifying.

It's literally the worst way you can die. That is so fucking bad. So that's, like I said, if there couldn't have been a sad or cherry to put on top of this fucking thing, we just did it. Now, in 2017, there's an episode of murder comes to town on investigation discovery called Answering the Call. That's the title of the episode. This is now on HBO, HBO Max or whatever the fuck it is. It's on there. It's not good.

I'll be real honest with you. I knew it wasn't going to be good because from the very beginning, they're put up a Chiron that says some names and timelines may be altered. And it's like, why? Why are my watching this then? Why don't I just watch fucking knives out then? You know what I mean? At least that's funny.

This is bullshit. Yeah, this is stupid. Events, times, everything's changed. Well, what the fuck? Like in the show, they had her mom looking for her calling the cops. on the phone and report her missing before she got saw the Facebook post and all that. And it's like that's not the timeline that I'm aware of here. It's like a documentary on 9-11 showing Pearl Harbor.

What are you doing? Yeah. They're like, oh, everyone slept calmly that morning while the kamikaze bombers dove in for the kill. Why would you do that? Everyone at Bear Stearns ran from their offices. We're Lehman brothers or whatever was the one. I don't remember anymore. I was trying to think of investment companies that are now defyman.

All of them. Merrill Lynch, they're all up there, right? Yeah, probably. Yeah. So that's what happened. Now, the only thing that's half decent here is that we know that Donnie, even in prison, prison's going to suck for him, obviously. I hope people are going to want to stab him or things or do whatever to him. But in addition to that, Naomi divorces him while he's in there. And this is fucking hilarious because I have their like divorce paperwork that I found.

It's funny as shit. Yeah. So normally we wouldn't go over something like this, but we kind of have to because it's just fuck Donnie. You know what I mean? Yeah. So they said the plaintiff, this is an appeal from Donnie filed after a judgment against him and the divorce. They said basically that Naomi filed this divorce action against Donnie on October 20th, 2017. So she didn't file until then.

Five years? Yeah. He was three years. over almost four years of convicted sentence to life without before she actually filed anything. A lot of people say I'll wait for you until they start realizing how long I'll wait for you really. How long life without parole is? Yeah, that's a long, that's a long fucking time. So they said that Donnie has been at all times during the pendency of this case incarcerated at the River Bend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tennessee. On November 13th, 2017, appellant answered his wife's complaint for divorce, raising issues regarding the party's residence, the party's three minor children.

Now it's three. It was four before. Maybe the one's an adult by now. That's possible. Oh, three minor children. I'll bet you're right. Yeah. And the appellee's requested child support.

What fucking, he's in prison forever. She wants child support. What do you want? Ramen noodles from this man? He's, what does he have? She wants his half of everything in the house. So she wants to, that's what she wants. She wants that, but she also wants child support.

Yeah, but in lieu of that. So if they get a divorce and they separate everything, she wants child support. And since he can't pay it, she's just going to say, then just give me everything. No, she wants child support from a monthly. Now, I don't know, maybe that's what she could say. That's how she would get it. But that's not what she's looking for. No.

She wants child support. Now, I don't know if maybe he's got some. kind of inheritance since his family owns a bunch of farms. If maybe he gets some kind of farm income, some sort of soy windfall he gets or some I don't know what he's doing. Whatever it is. This is crazy. So she wants child support.

He then filed a, or no, she filed a motion requesting that the trial court waived the mediation requirement. What am I go sit in maximum security prison with this guy? I'm not coming to Nashville to sort this out. No. And set the matter for a final hearing. The trial court granted this motion in 2018 and the matter was set for a final hearing. So they skipped mediation.

Yeah. They said, you don't have to skip it. He's in there for life. Then in 2018, he, Donnie, files a motion requesting that he be allowed to participate in the final hearing via video communication or telephone. Can I at least be there? Yeah. Okay. Now there's a law that says the court, or a statute, the court may hold a hearing under this part.

at a county jail or facility operated by the department or may conduct the hearing with video communications technology that permits the court to see and hear the inmate and that hear the inmate and that permits the inmate to see and hear the court and any other witnesses. The trial court, however, didn't deny it. They just declined to rule on the motion and instead just proceeded with the final hearing. They didn't even say no. They just said, ah, fuck him, and ignored it and went on. He knows what we'd say.

Which is hilarious. He's got this. Fuck him. So the trial court, that is amazing. This doesn't rule. So her complaint for divorce is granted and the final order is entered.

The trial court concluded that the residence at issue was her separate property. So she gets all of that. and assessed child support at $712 a month. Oh, my God. Which you could work 8,000 hours a month in prison and not make $712 a month. It would be impossible to make that.

You make like 20 cents an hour, right? Yeah, like 18 cents an hour. $712 a month. I don't know what she's expecting here. He's going to have to sell his ass. I don't care. Get in there. Fuck it.

Yeah, I can do it up. So he files a timely notice of appeal. Yeah. And anyway, they have a statute here that says litigation involving self-represented litigants can be challenging and difficult. It can become even more difficult and cumbersome when the self-represented litigant is incarcerated. Yeah. Yeah, that's complicated for everybody. It's not easy. No. However, an incarcerated litigant's right to meaningful access to the courts require that the litigant be afforded a fair opportunity to present his or her side of the controversy. Appellate courts frequently have been confirmed. with cases in which the trial courts have disposed of claims either filed or asserted against self-represented prisoners without first addressing the prisoner's pending motions. No matter whether the prisoner is the plaintiff or the defendant, reviewing courts have consistently held that trial courts err when they proceed to adjudicate the merits of the claim without first addressing the prisoners pending motion or motions.

So the Tennessee law on the issue was well settled. They said so the court is unpersuaded by. Naomi's argument on the appeal that Donnie was not entitled to a ruling on his outstanding motion. So they said, we have to at least give him a ruling on it. They said, we cannot endorse the trial court's decision to ignore a motion of substance and proceed as if it had not been filed. Clearly, precedent demands that the judgment of the trial court be vacated in light of this decision. So they said in judgment of the Dixon County Chancery Court is hereby vacated and remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. Costs of these appeals are taxed against appellee, Naomi Jones, for which execution may issue if necessary.

How is it on her? The judge didn't rule on something. It should be over now. That's not fair, though. The judge should pay the goddamn court costs. The court should eat the court costs. She can't rule on it. Right.

It would be impossible for her to have made that situation come out any difference. So because they didn't rule on it and she asked that they rule on it, then when they did rule on it, they're like, well, now you've made us rule on it, so now you have to eat the court cuts. But they didn't rule on it. That's the point. Yeah. If they just ruled on it and said no and gave a reason why he wasn't allowed to participate, it would have been fine. If they let him participate, it's fine. They just ignored it like it never happened and kept going.

I bet it was $11. Anyway. That's what I mean, but that's all on the judge. That's crazy. So she can add that to money that she has to pay, which is not getting child support from this dip shit and everything else. So anyway, yeah, that's how it goad. That's how it goes.

That's how it goes. Say that's how it goes and that's how it went and I got goat out of it. That's not good. That's how it goad. That's how it goad. Here we are. Got all ringed up. I got all ringed up.

So the trial court didn't do that. They conclude the trial court aired. And so now I guess there's have to have a new trial. It's her man. So she's got to go back to court to try to get $712 a month from this idiot that she'll never see again. Raise your kids. Go find a better man. You'll be better.

It's it. Don't let this man have any contact with those children nor any reason to. At least three minor children. He can't help the adult going and seeing him. But everyone else, keep the fuck away, man. So he is transferred to different state prisons, first reportedly at Morgan County Correctional Complex. Later, he was at Turney Industrial Complex in Hickman County. And then most recently, he was at Northeast Correctional Complex in Johnson County, Tennessee, near the Virginia border.

Way the fuck out there. So no one's visiting him. No. He is just sitting on his fucking ass in jail, which he deserves. Good for him. This is crazy. This, this,

Kelly killing herself is horrible. I hate that part. That is so much. So fucked. And I just can't say how badly I feel for the rest of these kids whose mother's dead and their sister's dead. And it just sucks, man.

That's just terrible. And, uh, I don't know. And I, and I'm very impressed actually on this one. A lot of times in small town murder, we deal with people that might get convicted,

but like in spite of the terrible. horrible. Bumbling work of cops or the DAs or fucking idiots or whatever it is. This was detectives that buckled down, didn't let it go. Pulled strings involved in them. Any little, any tiny thread there,

like letting me get my nails on that thing and see if anything is behind it. That's pretty goddamn impressive. And, I mean, police work is police works, but most times it takes some really dumb luck. And for a dip shit, just to give a stupid, could fucking answer and they're like, say

again, and then it leads them to a moron that bought a burner phone. Yeah. That's incredible. This all started it's just, it's a good police work is all I'm saying. We take tons of shot at dumb cops. Oh, boy, do I love to. We take a lot of shots at them because they're

fucking it all up. Yeah. But when somebody actually does their job well, they also deserve some credit for it because they helped a family kind of clear this all up and everything. So, you know, I mean, it is your job, but still, it's a tough job. Because there's a lot of those rural cops want to be the hero. But sometimes it's fun to put down your gun and call in the actual heroes when you know you're outgunned here.

We need resources. This county can't handle it. We need the state. We need the labs. We need the medical examiners. Get the TBI in here. They know better. It's pretty impressive.

So good job, everybody there. And Jesus, Sharpton family. That's just awful. So anyway, if you like this show, please tell everyone about it. Get on whatever app you're on and give us five stars. It helps a ton, like it, do whatever you do on Netflix for it. It helps us out. Thank you for doing that.

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For crime and sports this week, we're going to do old-timey articles and ads, which is so much fun. Newspaper articles from 100 years or more ago sometimes and crazy descriptions of wild, you know, industrial accidents and murders and all sorts of weird shit. Then for Small Town Murder, my favorite case of the year, the Corey Richens murder trial. She's a terrible person. She was just convicted of murdering her husband, and she also wrote a fucking, a bull. book for her grieving children featuring, by the way, illegally used image of her husband in the book and all this type of shit. And it's wild.

I'd rather write a how-to book on how to how to kill your husband. Yeah. That would have been less fucking egregious. Less offensive. Less offensive. So that's going to be crazy to talk about. I watched every moment of the trial. So I have so much information locked and loaded.

Jimmy saw the closing arguments. Can't wait to give you that. Patreon.com slash crime. In sports is where you get that. You also get all of our shows that we put out. Crime and Sports, Small Town Murder, your stupid opinions all ad free with your Patreon. And you get a shout out at the end of the show, which is right goddamn now.

Jimmy, hit me with the names of the best fucking people on earth who would never, ever, ever track us down with burner phones and murder us and try to set us on fire. Hit me with them right fucking now. This executive producer, Gary Howard, check out in Lebanese, North Carolina. Erica Brimhall. Thank you so much, Erica. Alana Zemmel, thank you. Thank you.

Corporal Carl Kershner. Again, thank you. Other producers this week, Peyton Meadows, happy hours in Carrizo Springs. Carrizo Springs. Texas. I don't know where the fuck that is. That sounds awful. Fucking idea.

It's a huge state. Janice Hill. It's probably one of those places that asked you for directions and you told them. What makes them think that you're from around here? How dare you? That was, you've never, nothing's ever amused you quite so much. The greatest thing, I'll never forget. With a dismissive puff of a cigarette.

How dare you think I'm from around here? Snipe my methyl and get away from me. I couldn't help me. It just came out. The other thought was put into that statement. Rachel Benson, Madison Haltzworth, Jared Kinney. Jared's kidney stone. I think I said Janice Hill, but we'll say her again.

Adele with no last name. Perhaps that one. Colleen. Thanks, Adele. Deswan chick. This one chick? Is that what that is? This one chick.

Colleen, this one chick. I think that's what she's going for. Olivia Maddox, Heather Barnett, Oz would no last name. Rachel Williamson. Melissa with no last name. Share with an S with no last name. Moxie Goodwitch. Anthony George.

Walzer? Yep, Walser. Nantthy? Nanty? Yeah, Nanty. Nancy Buxensmith. No, that's not it. Bootschek Smith. That's what I said the first time, but that's stupid. I think you got that. Christy and Drew Corey. Rose Reed, Maggie Thompson, Kristen Greta, Mary Hoover, Matt with no last name. Sidney Vandammer. Murway, Vanda Murray, Betty Surrey. Nancy Nehus, Leicar 3, Karen Irba, Helena Ann, Nick N, Sweet Jane, Heather Sky, Amaretto Waffles, Jamie Holland, perhaps Jaime. It's probably Jamie. Heather Holden, Gary Brandt, Natalie Rich, Cassandra Hopkins, Michael Self, Dawn would know the last name, Smoorsbox. Gross. A crow, you know.

Nicole would know the last name. Alan Miecksegera. Mew, what is that? Mue, it looks like French and Spanish together. Wow. Mew like Mario and then Ero like fucking Tachshara. Okay. Or Tashara.

How do you say that? Maybe it's Meshara. There you, maybe. Mucera. Hey. Probably not. Cassie would know the last name. Victoria.

Dizdar. I love you. Victoria with a K. That looks rather Russian. Or, you know, Eastern Block. Joy Gilbert. Joe would know last name. T.

and Flo Malone. Someone waiting for a wall to fall down. Yeah. Somebody that probably needs food. Maybe. We'll get your food, Victoria. Sheena Haas Tilapaw. Eric.

Oh, and he has a last name, but he didn't tell it to us. Sarah Ferris, just Bobby. Kim Kelly, Jim's daughter or sister. Probably his twin sister, Kim Kelly. Obviously. Nicole E.R. K. K. Kewelman. Sue Richardson, or Richardson, Bobby Waterman, Jennifer Patton, J. Champion, Anita Apollo, Paolo,

112, Curiosity, Shriver Ashley, probably reverse those. Roy Pascoe, Charlene Palmer, or Carlin, it's probably Charlene. Jody Brockman, Stormy Reuter, Router, Rodder. Rodney Erickson, B. Payton, Tanya Hill, Mountain Mama, Hannah, Muriel, La La La La La La La La La A lot of French there. A lot of values. A lot of vowels. Vows. Why did I say valves?

A lot of valves and valves. Tina Christensen, McKenzie, Irish, Joshua Pettigrew, Josh Chastain, Katie Blevins, Holly O'Neill. Kevin would know the last name. Genevine. Genevin. Seventy-6. Genovine. Jackson Goltz, Paul Brown.

Andrew Bootsma. Barbara Beasley. Molly Escamilla, Lucci, CMF. I'm a computer. I'm not me. Dusty K. Margie would know the last name. Sam Seeger. Oh, Bob's Kid.

Lori Capriotti, Tish Bell, Nicole Dingman. Bunny would know the last name. Michael Bello. Karen would know last name. Sanjee Sang. Melissa, Kistner, A.L. Miller, Brittany, Woll Chief. Matthew Richards. Melvin Hancock.

Weekems, Weekems. Joanne Holly or Hale, Aidan Fulham, Fulham, Cheryl Sams, Ashley would no last name, Kate Lucas, Lucassovic, Kayla would no last name, Katie Pace, Isaac Meow, Mao, right meow, Miao, Cindy Marshall, Angel would know last name, Danny Bellinger, Meg Clements, Kim would no last name, Robin Middlebrook, Kate Burkart, or Katie, Jennifer DeWill, John, Jennifer McGinn, Jerry, Jerry Meatball. That's a fun one. Hey, Jennifer Carey, K-Bay, K-Bay, Bay, for you and all of her patrons. You guys are the best. Thank you. Thank you, everybody so much. You fantastic, wonderful people. We cannot tell you how much we appreciate all that you do for us. Keep coming back and seeing us week after week.

Tell your friends. And if you want to follow us on social media or find out anything about the shows, very easy to do that. Shut up and give me murder.com has drop-down menus that take you anywhere. where you want to go. That said, thank you so much for joining us and enjoying it either way. And until next week, everybody, it's been our pleasure. Bye. Hey, everybody, listening to Small Town Murder out there. Hi. Good to see you out there. I'm here with Jimmy, too. And this is an ad, but not an ad for a product. This is an ad for tour dates. Yes, come see a live show, the 2026 tour. All the tickets are for sale right now starting out with February 21st in Nashville, March 6th.

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