The Binge Cases: Denise Didn't Come Home - My Mother’s Lies | 2. My Mom, Susan

Episode Date: April 8, 2026

After her death, Susan’s son Ray finds a web of lies in her old case notes, and it throws her memory into question. And sets him on a journey to set the record straight. Want the full story? Binge every episode of My Mother’s Lies ad-free now by subscribing to The Binge+. You’ll unlock over 60 true crime series instantly, get early access to drops on the first of every month, and hear exclusive bonus episodes. Search for the channel on Apple Podcasts or head to GetTheBinge.com. For behind-the-scenes details, join our free newsletter at Patreon.com/TheBinge. My Mother’s Lies is a production of Sony Music Entertainment and Message Heard. Follow @sonypodcasts and discover more at sonymusic.com/podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices at podcastchoices.com/adchoices. The Binge — feed your true crime obsession. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, binge crew. When you're finished listening to this true crime story, go see Hunting Matthew Nichols in theaters. This film has all the elements of the true crime stories we love, a sprawling mystery, intrepid investigators, powerful people who know more than they let on. Two decades after her brother mysteriously disappeared on Vancouver Island, a documentary filmmaker sets out to solve his missing person's case. But when a disturbing piece of evidence is revealed, she comes to believe her brother might still be alive. The film is in select theaters now, but you can immerse yourself in the story by going to hunting matthewnichols.com right now. That's hunting matthewonickles.com. And welcome to The Hunt. Listen to every episode of my mother's lies, add free right now when you

subscribe to The Binge. You'll hear the entire series before anyone else. Get exclusive bonus episodes and unlock more than 60 other true crime podcasts. Just head to the binge channel on Apple Podcasts and tap subscribe or visit getthebinge.com to listen wherever you are. The binge, feed your true crime obsession. There's an old Greek myth you might know. The one where a woman named Pandora is given a tightly sealed jar by Zeus and told never to open it.

All Pandora must do is keep it safe and leave well enough alone. But curiosity gets the better of her. She opens the jar and lets loose all sorts of evil. Sickness, envy, death. The contents wreak havoc across the world, leaving misery in their wake. Pandora didn't open the jar out of malice or stupidity. She was curious. She simply wanted to know the truth.

however uncomfortable. Well, the story I'm going to tell you across the course of this series is in part the story of a man who opened his own version of Pandora's box. Not a jar sealed by the gods, but a dusty box taken from his garage. Inside it are notepads, letters,

and dog-eared photographs that belong to his mother. But these are not sentimental memories. This is a vault of clues, and secrets. And just like Pandora, once the man opened the box, there was no going back. It's early November 2025.

Just before Thanksgiving, Kentucky has been gripped by a cold front. Just outside of Mayfield, in a brightly lit hotel lobby, our producer, Alice Arnold, is meeting Ray McCord. As you heard last time, Alice is no stranger to the Jessica Curran murder,

nor Susan Galbra's role in solving it. Alice has been looking into this story for several years now, but today is the first time she's speaking with Ray face-to-face. You see, Ray knows a lot about the real Susan. He's Susan Galbra's son, her only child. At the time of Susan's sudden death in 2018, Ray and his mom weren't talking much. They didn't exactly leave things on good terms.

So after he inherited a bunch of her belongings, Ray stashed the boxes in his garage. One of those boxes included Susan's research on Jessica Curran's murder. In 2021, Ray was contacted by producers from Blink, the British TV company who wanted to make a film about his mom. Their plan was to take a film about his mom. Their plan was to tell the heroic story of how a citizen sleuth,

with the help of an international journalist, had solved a gruesome murder in Mayfield, Kentucky. The timing felt right for Ray to finally confront some of his feelings towards his mother. So Ray went into the garage and opened the box. That was four years ago, and Alice, now working with us, was one of the TV producers who first got Ray digging into his mother's, story. Since then, they've both been on a journey of discovery. But today, they're finally going over it all in person. Should we rifle through your stuff and come show me what we've got? Together,

Alice and Ray go through his mother's files, transcripts of police interviews, official court documents, the autopsy report. They pause on some old photographs Susan took of each of the members of the Mayfield Police Department. You see, She was a keen photographer. How does she have these? Because she was working with all of them. But what she asked them for pictures? Probably just what she knew, like, just to get it, just to have stuff documented.

Look, there's her at the... Investigating the scene. He's good. Along with those case files, Ray also inherited a stack of Susan's notebooks. Inside, mixed in with grocery lists and doodles, are her notes about her own investigating. into Jessica Curran's murder. I always loved her handwriting, too.

I thought she had pretty handwriting. She does, yeah. And she's meticulous. For all their problems, Ray had always believed that against all odds, his mom actually helped a family get justice for the horrendous murder of their daughter. Lots of people believe that story.

As we said in the last episode, the Kentucky Bureau of Investigation even gave Susan an outstanding citizen award. So this is the award. That's from Greg Stumbo, the Attorney General at the time. I was very proud of my mom for everything that she had done and the award that she received. It was all, it was pretty cool.

How do you feel about this award now? It's obviously tainted. Tainted is one word for it. That award was his mother's crowning achievement. A rare moment of a moment of, triumph in the life of a woman looking for purpose. But when Ray finally started digging through his mom's case file, that image of his mom and her triumphed.

Well, it's because I went through everything. You know, I had all this stuff on the walls and, like, the yarn that was going from this to that. As I started looking into her stuff and started realizing, like, this wasn't the case. I was learning in real time the lies. There was a lot of lies. He saw how easily facts shifted to suit Susan's theories. At first, what seemed like inaccuracies or errors, began to look more intentional.

Was this outright deception or self-delusion on an epic scale? Either way, Ray realized the public had the wrong idea about his mother. Susan Galbraith was no hero. She hadn't been hell-bent to find Jessica's killer. or she wasn't driven to give Jessica's grieving parents peace. She had ulterior motives. She wanted it. She wanted fame.

She was just money, always, you know, just money, money, money. These revelations set Ray on a journey to discover the truth. He lives with the fear that his mother helped put away the wrong man. And in doing so, kept the currents from getting justice for Jessica's murder. It's something he now feels compelled to make right. If it's wrong, I should fix it, you know, or try to write it. From Sony Music Entertainment and Message Heard, you're listening to My Mother's Lies.

This is episode two, my mom, Susan. Ray is 50 years old now, and he's still got a lot of conflicting feelings about his childhood. When he looks back at family photos, sometimes he smiles, other times not so much. They might have ended up estranged, but on the whole, Ray remembers his mom fondly. She had a lot of dreams, but like many of us, lacked the follow-through. My mom was so all over the place.

She wanted to be a photographer. She wanted to be a jack of all trades, but a master of none. She had an idea for all kinds of stuff, but, you know, nothing ever panned out. Susan was born in Chicago in 1960, the men. little child of nine. By the time she was 15, she had given birth to Ray. Ray's father was even younger, but in spite of this, took full custody when Susan up and left for Kentucky. My dad was 14, my mom was 15. So you can see kind of like where the gap could come with our relationship, you know, how difficult it could have been for a young woman to mother, you know, a child.

and she's a child herself. Ray was raised with a lot of help from his paternal grandmother. As he grew up, his dad struggled with alcohol and would leave Ray alone for days with no food at home. During these early years, Ray had no contact with Susan. His father made sure of it. My dad had told me she was dead, so I didn't even know she existed.

And then when I was nine, she used to come up and visit me at school, and I didn't even know who she was. And so through that, we built a relationship. I found out she was my mother, and then I ended up running away with her. After years of neglect by his dad, Ray finally went to live with Susan in Mayfield, Kentucky. By that time, she was in her mid-20s and ready to take care of him. Was she a good mom?

Yeah. I mean, she did better than my dad. She fell short on some things, but I'm not going to knock her as a parent at this point. Susan paid attention to him, cared for him, bought him candy and presents, and made sure there was food in the house. It was a big change from his life in Chicago. I was growing up in the streets of Chicago, Mayfield was like heaven. Everything was just green and nice, and people were friendly and they were waving it. You know, everybody waved at everybody.

And that was just so foreign. Unlike at his dad's place, Susan's was filled with noise and people and fun. She loved music. In the box of her things, Ray found a notebook filled with page after page of her favorite karaoke tunes. Her and her sisters had their own line dance that they created. And so usually if a couple of them got together and music came on, mostly like the song, We Are Family, yeah, they would like get up and dance to it, you know, and do their little line dance. One thing Ray doesn't remember his mom ever having was a job.

She mostly supported him on her disability checks. Susan had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. She had some good days and some bad. But on the days she went in for her disability assessment, she made sure she looked like she was really struggling. So my mom went with my cousin Jennifer to go be evaluated for her disability. A crazy check, she called it. So she goes in there with her hair dishevel, like she put on a show for them to get her check.

She had her shirt buttoned all wrong, different colored stocks. She would cry in the interview. It wasn't fraud, but looking back, Ray feels like his mom knew what she had to do to get that check and did it to provide for her family. She was good at getting what she needed. Everything was a hustle with her. It was always a hustle, everything. At the time of Jessica's murder in 2000, Susan's marriage was breaking up, and she was feeling unmoored and unmotivated.

But this was the moment everything changed. Standing before Jessica Curran's body at the middle school, it seems Susan found the sense of purpose she was seeking, although it would be another four years before she acted on it. As we mentioned last time, Susan is the only Mayfield citizen to appear on the police log for that day. What do you know about your mom being at the crime scene and being in the crime scene log? That shouldn't have happened.

How did that happen? What compelled her to physically step into the crime scene is still something of a mystery. Frankly, even trying to figure out what exactly brought her there is up for debate. There's four different stories. My aunt has a story that my mom told her, my aunt Judy, and then my aunt Pat has another story that my mom told her. I have a story that my mom told me, and then she's got a story that she told the news people.

I've got a restaurant story here. The restaurant story? So this would have been in the morning, right? The restaurant don't even serve breakfast. Why do you think there are so many stories? Well, because, I mean, there's only, logically, it's a lie. Was your mom prone to lying? My mom used to tell me,

I'm going to tell you something, but if you tell anybody, you're a liar. She would call me a liar if I told somebody something that she told me. Susan told conflicting versions over the years depending on whom she was speaking to. As her story evolved, the truth became more elusive. So over the course of this podcast, using the contents of Ray's boxes, Susan's emails, letters, and her interview recordings, we're going to try to unpack her story. We're going to try to figure out how a housewife who didn't hold a job, who had no experience or investigative training, and was in the habit of lying,

ended up central to the state's prosecution to convict a man for Jessica's murder. I sold my car on Carvana last night. Well, that's cool. No, you don't understand. It went perfectly. Real offer, down to the penny. They're picking it up tomorrow. Nothing went wrong. So what's the problem? Is the problem. Nothing in my life goes a smoothie. I'm waiting for the catch. Maybe there's no catch. That's exactly what a catch would want me to think. Wow, you need to relax. I need to knock on wood. Do we have wood? Is this tablewood? I think it's laminated. Okay, yeah, that's good. That's close enough.

Car selling without a catch. So your car today on Carvana. Pick up fees may apply. Okay, quick question. Have you ever actually looked at your wireless bill? Like, really looked at it. Because I did recently and I genuinely could not explain half the charges. There were fees. Add on. quote-unquote perks I did not remember signing up for and suddenly my phone bill felt like a case I needed to investigate. Then I stumbled upon Mitt Mobile. Mitt Mobile keeps it simple. Premium wireless plans starting at just $15 a month. You get high-speed data and unlimited talk and text on the nation's largest 5G network.

But without the long contracts and inflated pricing, you get from big wireless carriers. And the switch is actually really easy. You can bring your own phone, keep your number, activate with and an e-sim in minutes and start saving right away. So if your wireless bill has been quietly draining your bank account every month, this may be the easiest case you'll over-solve. See what I did there? Ditch overpriced wireless and get three months of premium wireless service

from MintMobile for $15 a month. If you like your money, Mintmobles for you. Shop plans at mintmobile.com slash cases. That's mintmobile.com slash cases. Up from payment of $45 for three-month, five-gigabyte plan required, equivalent to $15 a month, new customer offer for first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra, Seamot Mobile for details. Let's go back to the start, the place where it all began to go wrong, the crime scene. Evidence collection is something you have to get right immediately.

Or it can hamper your investigation permanently. In this case, as we told you last time, the evidence was bungled from the start. But let's see exactly how it unfolded, how confusion turned to chaos, and how the void was created for Susan Galbraith to step into. Now, lawyer Miranda Hellman studied the police crime scene video from that day. She immediately identified a number of items that do not appear in the official evidence log. And so when I'm looking around the video, I'm seeing bottles everywhere. I'm seeing cigarette butts everywhere. I'm seeing trash everywhere.

I'm seeing pieces of fabric kind of spread all around, not just really, you know, located on her body itself. And none of that is in evidence. Items like hair clumps, a plastic bottle apparently smelling of gasoline, part of a black-braided belt and buckle, could all be vital for DNA testing and forensic analysis. Whose hair? Who's belt? What type of gas? Not to mention fingerprints. Yet much of this evidence never made it to the police station. And the items that did? Well, many were mishandled, mislabeled, or misfiled. For instance, evidence boxes were logged incorrectly. And as a result, unrelated rape swabs were found in the current evidence boxes, a critical contamination error. You know, if I handed this case file to my grandma and said, grandma, go investigate a murder,

I feel like she would collect the items of evidence on the body. She's played clue before, and she would know to at least start with the body. And if you see anything that looks like it could be a murder weapon or involved in, you know, here we're talking about a fire, we should collect those things too. With the crime scene and evidence now contaminated, it would prove nearly impossible to rely on any forensics. From this point on, the Jessica Current investigation would come down to other police work, conducting interviews, identifying witnesses, and generating leads. A job lead detective Tim Fortner was better equipped for. In the months following the murder, local police went house to house,

talking to Jessica's friends and family, establishing her movements that day, which over time led them to two suspects. In the last episode, you heard how the indictment against them was thrown out because of an inadvertent discovery violation on the part of law enforcement. But there's something we didn't tell you

that one of those two original suspects allegedly confessed to Jessica's murder. Those two suspects were Carlos Saxton, Jessica's new boyfriend, better known locally as, Lolo, the second was the father of her child, Jeremy Adams. Both men were reported to be prone to violence. Lolo was said to be the jealous type, possessive even.

They were also both rumored to be involved in drug circles. But after sifting through the local gossip and hearsay, Mayfield cops focused on Jeremy Adams as their primary suspect. Here's attorney Miranda Hellman again. Remember, she would come to represent a different suspect years later in 2008. Jeremy, he has a fairly long criminal record. It's sort of well-known, I think, in Mayfield that he struggles with substance abuse and mental health. He was in and out of shelters and sort of living on the street.

His arrest record kind of shows a lot of the same things. Some of it's violence. Some of it is domestic violence-related. This view of Jeremy is shared by John Poole, a local private investigator. who would also end up on the defense team for one of the accused. If you look into Jeremy's background, he has a real history of selling drugs, assaults, all sorts of things. From the interviews that I did, people that knew about him,

said he had a bad childhood, he had all kinds of problems. And Joe Curran's opinion of Jeremy hasn't changed over the years either. He's kind of a wild guy. most of everybody is kind of scary of him because he's he does crazy things. Mayfield police detectives looked for someone with a reason, a motive to kill Jessica. According to some witnesses they interviewed, Jeremy didn't want his current girlfriend, Net Todd, to find out he had fathered a child with Jessica.

But Jessica was a single mom and needed government assistance. She had to name a father on the paperwork to get those benefits. Another piece of gossip was that Jessica might have been. been holding drug money for Jeremy and Lola. And there's more. Remember Jessica's 16-year-old cousin Benicia Stubblefield, the one who told police that she last saw Jessica walking off into the night alone? Well, you're about to hear a tape of a police interview with two other Mayfield teens

who claimed that at the time of the murder, Benicia apparently admitted to knowing exactly what happened and who did it, something she had not told police initially. According to these witnesses, Benicia told them that she and Jessica were walking home when a white car pulled over. She was telling me that that happened in Jessica's going to her and got killed. She said that she was there.

They was walking. That old police tape is hard to hear. So I'll summarize what they said. They claimed Venetia had admitted to them that she had been sitting in the white car with Jessica, Lolo, Jeremy, and a man named Austin Leach. And that's when the men started beating Jessica. They parked the car by the middle school and got Jessica out of it.

According to the tape, the young girl said Benicia told them she stayed inside and that she heard screaming, then silence, before the men ran back to the vehicle. So, I mean, that's pretty explosive information, if true. But here's the problem that the Mayfield cops were faced with. New names pop up and disappear. And these young girls are repeating something someone else told them. They don't witness it, so it's hearsay, but leads the police can follow up on. Also, the issue of the white car will be a point of contention and confusion throughout the case.

So to be fair, Mayfield police had their work cut out, trying to corroborate rumors, chasing gossip, and dealing with witnesses who are afraid to speak out. It was slow work. But over the course of two years, the witness statements kept stacking up. Here's a 2003 police interview with the then-boyfriend of Jeremy's mother, Donna. He claimed Jeremy burst into their apartment in the hours after the murder in a state of panic. Two, maybe three in the morning, something like that. Well, me and Donna, I'm laying in bed.

Donna's like, you come in here, Ben, Jeremy will talk to you. I'm like, man, I've got good work. Anyway, he's paying some floors, man. He got funny, you know. He just told me, man, he said, I think I fucked up. Again, let me clarify. This guy is claiming to the police that Jeremy woke them up in the middle of the night talking about how he'd screwed up.

He didn't say what he'd done, just that he was going to go to prison for it. Anyhow, he said, if I want to go to prison for this shit, and he didn't tell me what happened. It's just that he'd just get them over and over and over that I fucked up. I'm going to be crazy. In that same interview, Detective Tim Fortner asks if Jeremy's mom, Donna Adams, knew anything about the crime. It seems to put Donna's boyfriend in an awkward position.

But his answer is telling. You think Donna knows anything? Yeah. She's a good grade, too. And so? You. She loves that kid. For the Mayfield cops, the final piece of evidence were statements from Jeremy's own cellmates.

You see, Jeremy was in and out of jail on drug charges in the years since the murder, between 2000 and 2004. And various inmates reported similar things to the police. According to them, Jeremy outright confessed that he murdered Jessica. He was worried that Annette was going to find out that she had had, that he had a baby with her, that he had been cheating with Jessica. He said that she had, they said it was arguing. He grabbed a hole over and I guess it had startled her, or what have you, and she had struck him.

And she struck him, he said that he lost control of himself and picked something up. He had described it as a piece of metal and struck her. She was running when he struck her, and she had fell. He said, where he hit her at? He said, in the back of the head. Again, I mean, that's pretty compelling evidence, if true. Now, in fairness, we should note here that Jeremy's defense later claimed that these accusations were false and that any statement from a jailhouse informant came from bad policing.

Regardless, Mayfield police eventually charged both Jeremy Adams and Lolo Saxton with the murder of Jessica Curran. Not only did they feel they had probable cause based on circumstantial evidence and witness statements, But they also felt it was proof beyond a reasonable doubt, sufficient to support a conviction at trial. But the defense attorneys were well prepared. Even before a trial date could be set, lawyers for Lolo and Jeremy got the case moved outside of Mayfield to a neighboring county. As the pretrial hearing approached, local news started circling. The judge moved the trial of the accused Jeremy Adams to Marshall County because of pretrial publicity. Recently, the victim's friends and family pushed to reverse that decision.

They argue the new location would not provide a fair trial in this case of a white man accused of killing a black woman. Marshall County's population is almost entirely white. The suggestion that race might have played a part in the jury's decision is worth bearing in mind when we come back to the eventual 2008 trial of Quincy Cross, a black man who eventually is convicted of this crime by a mostly white jury. In the end, the concerns over where Jeremy's trial should take place were never put to the test. I want to tell you guys about a podcast that is near and dear to my heart, and I cannot believe it already came out a year ago. And you can all go listen to it ad free by subscribing to the binge podcast channel. What podcast, Corin? Tell us.

Oh, it's called Blink Jake Handel's story. I created it about a man named Jake who I met, who is the only survivor of a terminal brain illness. brought on by heroin use, but there is a lot of mystery and medical malpractice and true crime elements that are very shocking and surprising and even some supernatural elements. It is definitely an amazing story. It's very unique. Did such an incredible job telling the story and cheering it with the world. So if you have not listened to it yet, my goodness, where have you been?

Because Blink is so freaking good. Thank you. Search for Blink wherever you listen. And subscribers to The Binge will get the entire season. ad-free. Plus, you'll get exclusive access to the over 60 other true crime stories on The Binge podcast channel. Hit subscribe on Apple Podcasts or head to getthebinge.com. Infamous is the gossip show that's smart. We talk about Tyra Banks and bringing down top model. We talk about Jenna Jameson and how she dominated the 90s. You know, she's horny and she's in charge.

She just was very smart about marketing herself. We talk about celebrities. who maybe shouldn't be celebrities, like the Beckham guy. Brooklyn is their first kid. He's had a little bit of the Nepo baby curse. We investigate orgasm cults. A woman's erotic power can unlock many other powers in her life. And, of course, we discuss people who have gotten into lots of trouble. My name is Molly McLaughlin.

I am one of Jen Shaw's many victims. She was defrauding the elderly and her tax. The tagline was the only thing I'm guilty of is being shamazing. Listen to Infamous, the gossip show that's smart. The show's called Infamous. In early 2003, after the cases against Jeremy Adams and Lolo Saxon were thrown out, the community was in turmoil. The mayor of Mayfield publicly demanded an investigation into his own police department.

Tim Fortner was removed and then resigned before the Mayfield Police Department. handed the case over in its entirety to the Kentucky State Police. Now, it's important to note here that the case against Jeremy and Lola was never heard. It was dismissed but without prejudice. That means the same charges can be brought again, the same evidence presented, the same suspects brought to trial. So with her son still in the spotlight, Donna Adams was determined to see Jeremy cleared of suspicion. And as you heard from her ex-boyfriend, Donna wasn't one to take things lying down. Over a decade later, she still seemed angry about her son being charged with Jessica's murder.

You can hear how strongly she defends her son. Motherfucker, I may not have no money, but I'm going to tell you something. You fuck with the wrong kid because he didn't do this. And it may take me 20 years and it may kill me doing it, but I'm going to clear my kid's name. Donna was something of a force of nature and really took matters into her own hands. With no experience or training, it seems like she started her own amateur detective agency. I knew what was up. I had to do what I had to do. This was my kid's life. You know what I mean? So I went out, was wired. I turned in 16 tapes at the Mayfield Police Department.

You heard that right. Donna Adams. main suspect's mother turned in 16 tapes to the police. Now, she means audio tapes, as in interviews that she conducted on her own with witnesses and suspects of her choosing. Many of them, by the way, were covert recordings. She was basically going around wearing a wire. But that's legal in Kentucky, since it's a one-party consent state, meaning only one person to a conversation needs to consent to a recording. and of course, Donna was consenting. Still, it's all pretty bizarre. And that's not all.

Jeremy also got in on the act. During interviews with the police, he let them know that he could help them find the real killer. It was a concerted campaign to clear Jeremy's name. Needless to say, the new investigators from the Kentucky State Police weren't having any of Donna's self-serving investigation to clear her son, and they weren't about to start sharing information with their prime suspect and his family.

So by 2004, Donna felt she needed help. She needed someone who could be seen as neutral, someone the police might listen to. As it happened, she had someone in mind, Susan Galbraith. Well, I'm sorry, but you fuck with the wrong bitch and the wrong kid. That's how I got so involved. As it turns out, Susan and Donna were friends, good friends by most accounts. Once Susan Galbraith moved to Mayfield, Donna and Susan Galbraith essentially lived in an apartment-type situation where it was a house that was split.

Everything I've seen and believe in what have been told and reviewed shows that Donna and Susan were friends for quite some time. And that's really how Susan met Jeremy Adams and I think explains sort of her involvement. She and Donna often threw parties together. Susan's son Ray was a young man in his 20s by this time, and he remembers Donna at one particular party. One memory I have of hers, I was walking through the house, and she, like, grabbed my face, and she was loud, like very loud and obnoxious.

I have to say, even ignoring the strength of the case against Jeremy, whether he's innocent or not, just taking this in isolation. Susan teaming up with the lead suspect's mother and girlfriend? I'm sorry, whatever her motivations might have been at the outset, I just can't see how she could have been impartial. I suspect she never really looked at the strength of the evidence against Jeremy, rather that she was laser-focused on looking elsewhere. Private investigator John Poole goes further.

He believes that Susan had a clear agenda from the outset. Susan Galbert, as I investigated and others investigated and found, was a very good friend of Jeremy Adams' mother. And I believe her whole goal was to take any interest or any problems away from Jeremy Adams. According to Miranda Hellman, Susan and Jeremy was soon writing to one another, speaking on the phone, even meeting in person. and that in her communications with him, Susan was crystal clear about her role. She was also very close with Jeremy, that she was getting calls from the jail, that she was really out and out saying that her job, her goal, her mission, was to clear Jeremy's name. And not because she didn't know, you know, that she knew he didn't do it.

It was just that she was going to clear his name. So in early 2004, Susan took up Jeremy's goal. cause, joining forces with Donna and Nett. But the question remains, why did she get involved? What's in it for her? Did she simply want to help a friend in need? Was it because she'd hit a rough patch in her life and needed a purpose? Or was there a more practical reason?

Like, the reward money, perhaps? Back when Susan first got involved, Mayfield City Hall was offering $9,000 for information. leading to a break in the case. That's more like $15,000 today, to a woman living on a disability check? That's a lot. Of course, we can't ask Susan ourselves,

but her son Ray thinks that reward played a significant part. My mom let money cloud her decisions, cloud her thoughts, and she was very smart. The idea that his mom, Susan, far from being an outstanding citizen may have been involved in an awful con

defending the son of a friend who for all she knows could be the killer for a reward? It's a terrible legacy for Ray to inherit. But Ray, to his credit, is trying to find out exactly what his mother did and face it. Remember the story at the beginning

about Pandora opening the box? People often forget the end. that as all the evils of the world flew out, she managed to slam down the lid and trap one thing inside, hope. The point is, hope is what remains to help us endure. I'm supposed to do this. If it's wrong, I should fix it, you know, or try to write it. But it's not easy for Ray.

He's struggling. He knows in many ways he's going against what his mother would want. For my mom, I think, If she were alive, she wouldn't want me cooperating with anybody the way I am. But I think where she's at now, I think she would want to rest in peace. And if there's any way that I can use the stuff that she has to bring peace to anybody, even her, that's all worth it. Next, on My Mother's Lies, we see how veteran British journalist Tom Mangled comes to her

assistance and opens up a world of possibilities. Everything that she wanted for herself, it was in her reach now, you know, with Tom being involved. Like, she wanted big things for herself. And how together they unlock the doors and the files that would lead Susan to a new suspect. I had Jeremy's motion to discover you know, it was stuff like that. Did you give all that stuff to Sue? Yeah, she's got every bit of it.

That's next time on My Mother's Lies. At the time of release, we have not received a response from Carlos Saxton or Jeremy Adams regarding allegations reported in this episode. Net Todd responded, denying having any knowledge of the crime nor any involvement with Susan's investigation.

The Mayfield Police Department responded saying none of the investigators that worked on the current case 26 years ago remain employed by the department. And the department was, quote, not in a position to respond to the allegations. When Westcham first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion, inline skates were everywhere, and two out of three women rocked the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get. when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to WestJetting since 96. Travel back in time with us

and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. This is My Mother's Lides, an original production of Sony Music Entertainment and Message Heard, hosted by me, Beth Karras. From Message Heard,

Alice Arnold is our investigator producer, Robin Simon, our producer, McAllister Bexon, our series producer, Tiago Diaz, our assistant producer, Alan Lear is our supervising sound editor, supported by sound editors Lizzie Andrews and Ivan Easley, with original composition by Mike Mainz. From Sony Music Entertainment, our executive producers are Catherine St. Louis and Jonathan Hirsch. From Blink Films, our executive producer is Justine Kirschoff, and a big thing to the whole Sony Music Entertainment team.