Afleveringen
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After Kevin Abel died, and his death was ruled a suicide, Stacie Reeves was scared. Kevin’s friend Jordan said that Stacie told her that Kevin was in serious trouble - that he owed a lot of drug money to people - and that she was planning on talking to police officers about what she knew. One of the officers she spoke with was Jerome LaStraps, an officer Jordan didn't trust.
There’s no evidence that Jerome LaStraps did anything wrong, but police did later call him in for questioning about KK’s Corner, asking what he knew, and when he knew it.
We’re trying to understand all these relationships, because in Calcasieu Parish, they run deep.
Jordan told us about one of her last conversations with Stacie:
"Stacie goes, 'Hey, do you know a Jerome LaStraps?' And I looked at her and I said, 'Yes, I do.' And she said, 'Because I've been talking to him about Kevin's case.' And I said, 'Stacey, you don't need to do that. He's dirty.' She said, 'Well, I know who killed Kevin.' And I said, 'Who?'"
If you have a case you’d like Catherine Townsend to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.
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On July 6, 1997 in Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana, Marty LeBouef, Stacie Reeves and Nicole Guidry were all shot execution style in the head. Their bodies were left in the cooler at KK’s Corner. Thedr murders were shocking. And soon, people were talking about another death. One that some people in the community thought could be linked to KK’s Corner’s massacre.
On Saturday, May 17, 1997, not even three weeks before the triple homicide at KK’s Corner, Kevin Abel was fatally shot in the head at home.
Police ruled Kevin’s death a suicide, but Stacie Reeves, who had been dating Kevin, believed that he had been murdered and that his murder could be tied to law enforcement, and possibly to alleged drug deals at KK’s Corner.
Stacie Reeves arrived at that crime scene with her young twin daughters only minutes after police showed up there. She told police that she and Kevin were going on a date that night and that she had been planning to pick him up with her girls. And she said that he owed a LOT of money to drug dealers, who had been taking his truck as collateral.
What really happened to Kevin Abel. Did he kill himself? Who were the drug dealers that he owed money to? And did Kevin’s death have anything to do with the KK’s Corner killings?
If you have a case you’d like Catherine Townsend to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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Just after midnight on July 6, 1997, 21-year-old Marty LeBouef, 26-year-old Stacie Reeves and 14-year-old Nicole Guidry were fatally shot in a triple homicide at KK’s Corner convenience store near Lake Charles, Louisiana.
The killings shocked the community. For months police struggled to find answers. No one seemed to have seen anything, and there was no real physical evidence.
Eventually, a suspect was arrested: Thomas Cisco.
Police questioned Cisco. He confessed that he had been at KK’s Corner on the night of the murders and said that he was involved. But as we explained last week, Thomas told a lot of conflicting stories, and a lot of the details that he gave to detectives trying to confirm his stories didn’t make sense.
Was it Thomas or something else? Was he even there that night? And if he was there, who was the second man? And could the killers or killers still be out there?
If you have a case you’d Catherine Townsend to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.
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It was a few minutes before midnight on Saturday July 5, 1997. 21-year-old Marty LeBouef was working behind the counter as a cashier at KK’s Corner convenience store on Highway 14 in Calcasieu Parish, a few miles from Lake Charles, Louisiana.
Marty and his co-worker, 26-year-old Stacie Reeves, were working together that night. There was someone else there too. Stacie had a friend, 14-year-old Nicole Guidry, there with her.
Nicole sometimes babysat for Stacie’s twin daughters, who were 23 months old, and was keeping Stacie company until the store closed. Then the plan was for her to ride home with Stacie and spend the night with her kids while Stacie went crabbing.
Nicole was turning fifteen later that summer and was about to start the ninth grade.
Marty hadn’t been scheduled to work that night, but one of his coworkers had called in sick, so Marty stepped in.
Closing time was midnight. That time came and went.
And Marty, Stacie and Nicole never made it home.
Around 5 a.m. on July 6, one of Marty and Stacie’s coworkers showed up to open the store, and she immediately noticed that something was very wrong.
The cash register was open. Money was missing from the drawer. The alarm was off. And Marty and Stacy were nowhere to be found.
The employee went to the office to use the phone there and called the police.
Once the deputy got to the store, he noticed Stacie and Marty’s cars in the parking lot. Inside, he found the door to the back office had been kicked in, and the safe was open. At first he thought that this had been a robbery and that Stacie and Marty may be restrained in the back of the store, locked in the cooler.
But once he opened the door to the cooler, he saw the bloodbath. There were three bodies - Marty, Stacie and Nicole lying on the floor. All three had been shot multiple times, execution style.
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On July 12, 2017, somewhere in the tiny town of Oil Trough, Arkansas, a 37-year-old mother of three named Brooke Allensworth vanished.
Two weeks later, the police found Brooke’s car. The car was near a boat ramp and looked like it had been abandoned there for days or possibly weeks.
The tire was flat, the doors were locked, and the keys were missing. And so was Brooke. Her family, including her three children and a father and half sister, never saw her alive again and are still searching for answers.
If you have a case you’d like Catherine Townsend to look into, you can reach out to the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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On November 5, 2005, a jogger found the body of 32-year-old mother of three Brandy Dyson floating in a lake behind the Lake Charles Civic Center.
Brandy had been struggling with mental health issues and with addition.
For a while she was doing well, and settled into an apartment. But then she lost her apartment after taking refugees in from Hurricane Katrina. She then moved to the Civic Center in Lake Charles with a lot of other evacuees from the storm.
After that, Brandy was caught drinking, which broke the rules of the Red Cross, the organization that was running things at the Civic Center, so she was asked to leave. This seemed to start what would turn out to be her final downward spiral.
Police believe she set up camp on a pier nearby and had been living there for a few weekends when the next massive hurricane, Hurricane Rita, hit and devastated the state.
Sometime in the midst of the storm chaos, Brandy was brutally murdered. The bruising on her neck was so bad that her father said that she had to be buried in a turtleneck sweater.
It’s been almost 20 years. The person arrested and at first charged with her murder has been released, and no new suspects have come forward. But the unsolved case is still on the minds of the detectives at the Lake Charles police department.
Down there, Brandy’s family tells me, they have a nickname for her. They call her The Lady in the Lake.
If you have a case you’d like Catherine Townsend to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.
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On November 5, 2005 a jogger was out running beside a lake in Lake Charles, Louisiana, behind the Civic Center, when he saw something floating in the water. When he took a closer look, he realized it was the body of a woman.
Police identified the body as 32-year-old Brandy Renee Dyson, a mother of three who had recently been made homeless after Hurricane Katrina and then Hurricane Rita, which devastated the state.
It’s been almost 20 years, there’s been one arrest and a lot of controversy, but her case is still unsolved. There's a lot we don't know about Brandy's murder, but we do know that it was violent.
Her father Adley Dyson told a local news station, "We had to bury her in a turtleneck sweater because she was strangled and she was thrown in the lake."
If you have a case you’d like Catherine Townsend to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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It was July 29, 2022, just another quiet summer night in Atlanta, Texas. The sun had just gone down when 28-year-old Shommaonique Oliver got a panicked phone call. That’s when her nightmare began. Three of her children- her middle daughters, nine-year-old Zi’Ariel Robinson-Oliver, eight-year-old A’Miyah Hughes, and little five-year-old Te’Mari Robinson-Oliver were missing. Law enforcement found them a few hours later. Divers dragged their lifeless little bodies out of a neighboring pond.
Initially this was described as a drowning in the local media, but months later, law enforcement said that these three little girls had been murdered. The cause was strangulation. And this person could strike again at any time.
If you have a case you’d like Catherine Townsend to look into, you can reach out to the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.
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On July 30, 2020, in Starke County, Indiana, a 911 call came from North County Road 1025 East just before 3:30 a.m.
The caller, a man named Zachary, had worked late that night and had gotten home and climbed into bed when he said that he and fiancé were woken up by someone pounding on their door.
The man was 27-year-old Nicholas Rudd. Nick said that he had been shot, but neither Zachary nor his fiancé had heard gunshots.
What he didn’t know was that Nick had not been shot, he had been attacked with a hammer, and stabbed in the neck. He was bleeding to death on their doorstep, and the killer was still outside.
If you have a case you’d like Catherine Townsend to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.
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Six bodies were found in Wonder Valley between December of 2019 and January of 2021. Some of the bodies in the desert, including the disappearance of 37 year old single mother Erika Lloyd, started making local, then national, news. But there were no national news reports about James Escalante.
We’re going to dive into the missing persons report and compare accounts from the last people who saw James to see if we can shed more light into what really happened out there in the desert on June 25, 2020.
If you have a case you’d like Catherine Townsend to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.
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On June 25, 2020, 56-year-old James Escalante, who also went by Blackhawk, left home on a red mountain bike to help Dee, a friend of his and his girlfriend Sherry’s, whose truck had gotten stuck in the desert.
But he never made it back home, and no one reported him missing until September 7th. Heather Escalante and her husband Jon, James’ son, began their own search.
After Heather started posting on social media and looking for information, she heard that remains were found in the desert on August 8th by a hiker. The body was a John Doe. Half his face was missing, he had long black hair and there was no ID found.
Heather contacted the detective working the case to say that she believed that the body could be James, and on December 15th, the family’s worst fears were confirmed. They got a call from the coroner. James Escalante was dead. His cause and manner of his death were undetermined.
What happened out there in the desert?
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On June 25, 2020, a 56-year-old named James Escalante, who had Native American heritage and was also known by his nickname, Blackhawk, left his home in Wonder Valley, California on his mountain bike
James lived with a girlfriend, Sherry, and she told law enforcement that he left the home that day to head down the road about 10 minutes from their place to help a friend of theirs named Dee whose car had gotten stuck in sugar sand, which is almost like dry desert quicksand.
It’s hot out there; the average temperature for that part of the desert in July and August is 89 degrees and highs regularly top out over 100, or even 105.
And out there in the desert it’s dry heat so it feels like you’re baking in an oven.
It happens every year - hikers go missing or people just wander off and get lost and don’t come back. But the terrain also means that when people do go missing under mysterious circumstances it can be easier for local law enforcement to write it off as just an accident.
Now supposedly the friend, Dee, had been out looking for rocks near Highway 62 and Shelton Road east of Twentynine Palms. And James had lived in that desert for a long time, and knew the area well. So the plan was for James to meet her at a specific intersection to rescue her.
But once he got out there, according to Sherry, he couldn’t find Dee. So James called Sherry on his cell phone to figure out what was going on. At that point, Sherry called Dee on a three way call, and James told Dee to honk her horn so that he could find her.
He seemed to think he could hear her, so he hung up. But he never got to Dee’s car. And no one ever saw James Escalante alive again.
If you have a case you’d like Catherine Townsend to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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On September 29, 2023, just over nine months after William Vick was found dead on his bedroom floor in Clarksville Arkansas, his house caught on fire and burned down under very suspicious circumstances.
If you have a case you’d like Catherine Townsend to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.
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Christine Harron, a book-loving teenager from Hanover, Ontario, leaves for school in the spring of 1993 and is never seen again. A suspect emerges, confessing to her murder, but the case falls apart and Christine's family are left without answers.
In Season 9 of the award winning podcast Someone Knows Something, David Ridgen, along with Christine's mother, reopen the investigation and come face to face with the man who said he killed Chrissy.
Someone Knows Something is the investigative true crime series by award-winning documentarian David Ridgen. Each season tackles an unsolved case, uncovering details and bringing closure to families.
More episodes are available at: lnk.to/beLwSGEq
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On January 23, 2023, just six days after William Vick was found dead on his bedroom floor at 1954 County Road 3259 in Clarksville Arkansas, police did a welfare check on his wife Larenda’s mother, 72-year-old Martha McLean, who lived in a detached house on the property with William and Larenda.
They found Martha struggling to breathe with drugs including lorazepam and morphine around her. Martha had overdosed and was close to death, but paramedics administered Narcan, a drug that blocks opioids. So Martha's breathing improved, and she survived.
Matt Foster with the Arkansas State Police wrote that Martha had a pen and a partially handwritten note in her hand when he found her. The note stated that Martha didn’t want to hurt anyone. And after he found her, he executed a search warrant for the property, and he found a second handwritten note where Martha confessed to tampering with William’s medication and to killing him.
But why did Martha kill William, and what really happened to her?
If you have a case you’d like Catherine Townsend to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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On January 17 2023 at 11: 22 PM the Johnson County deputy coroner arrived at 1954 County Road in Clarksville Arkansas and found the body of 53-year-old William Vick.
The case of death on William’s autopsy was listed as a combined mixed prescription and illicit drug toxicity. Manner of death: homicide.
William’s family was suspicious of his wife, LaRenda, but someone else confessed: LaRenda's mother, Martha McLean. She was in her late seventies, terminally ill with throat cancer, and lived in a separate structure on William and LaRenda's property. And she had written a letter confessing to the murder.
So why would LaRenda’s 72 year old mother want to hurt William. And with her supposedly being frail and ill, would she even be physically capable of something like that?
If you have a case you’d like Catherine Townsend to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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On January 17, 2023, 53-year-old William Vick was recovering at home in Clarksville, Arkansas. William was in good health. He loved making videos for his YouTube channel. But William had gone in for tonsillectomy operation the week before, and had been experiencing some complications. He had texted his daughter, Ashley to say that he believed that something inside him was broken and that he was throwing up a large amount of blood in the sink.
Ashley was worried, and told her dad that this didn't seem normal to her - she encouraged him to go see the doctor. But LaRenda had worked as an ER nurse and Ashley believed that her stepmother was taking care of her father.
A lot of what we know is pieced together after the fact from coroner’s reports and case notes. We do know that at 11: 22 PM, the Johnson County deputy coroner Dave Cogan arrived at 1954 County Road responding to an unexpected death. They spoke to LaRenda who, according to the coroner’s report, told the deputy coroner that she had been staying in a separate room because she had been sick recently and was worried about COVID.
The deputy coroner noted that William was already in full rigor mortis; meaning that he had been dead, lying on that floor, for a long time. William Vick was fifty three years old. He went in for what was supposed to be a routine operation, and a few days later, he was dead. And this was just the beginning of an investigation that involves charges of insurance fraud, two mysterious deaths, and a family torn apart.
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Last week, we talked about the mystery regarding whether or not Deputy Blake Hassell ever went out to the area in Kingston where on August 5th at 12:34 AM, a 911 caller reported that she heard a woman screaming - that it sounded like she was being raped or tortured.
The dispatch report reads, "A caller advised she believes that she heard a woman in the woods behind her house yelling. Stated she believes at one point the woman screamed for help. Caller advised there is not a physical address but it is in area where a bunch of homeless people were camped out.”
We know that the caller waited all night for the Madison County's Sheriff’s Office to respond, but no one ever came.
And that a few weeks later on September 9, Taylor Barksdale’s remains were found just a few hundred feet from where that 911 call was placed. Her death was labeled a homicide. The Madison County Sheriff’s Department said that only one deputy, Blake Hassell was working the overnight shift from August 4 to August 5. And Sheriff Ronnie Boyd said that Blake Hassell told dispatch that he responded to the call when he didn’t.
Later that same day, August 5 when his supervisor Sergeant Drew Scott questioned him, he said that he didn’t respond to the call because he ‘had just been out to that area 30 minutes or an hour earlier.” But is that true?
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We’ve been trying to figure out what happened to Taylor Barksdale in the last few weeks of her life that led her to Kingston, Arkansas
At 12:34 on August 5, a 911 caller reported that it a woman was screaming on a rural property in Kingston and that she sounded like she was being raped or tortured.
Just over a month later, on September 9, Taylor’s remains were found in a field near where the 911 call was made.
We have made some headway in finding out what was going on in Taylor Barksdale’s life during the last few weeks of her life.
We know that she had been staying on and off with her ex-boyfriend, Kenny.
Apparently, Taylor and Kenny got into an argument. After that, Kenny's neighbors say that they didn't see her come back to Kenny's residence. After July 20th, Taylor was staying on and off with different friends, and two of those friends who she was hanging out with were men. Men who were also, and two of those friends who she was hanging out with were mutual friends of hers and Kenny's.
One of the men lived in a camper on a piece of land near where the 911 call originated from. So who are these men? How do they know Taylor, and what happened to Taylor on that last day of her life that ended with her remains being found in a field?
If you have a case you’d like Catherine Townsend to look into, you can reach out to our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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The Madison County Sheriff’s Office got a 911 call in the early morning hours of August 5, 2024 from caller who heard sounds that she believed could be from a woman being raped or tortured.
But the police never came. Then a few weeks later, people were expressing concern about Taylor Barksdale, a 30-year-old woman who had been living in Huntsville and who had gone missing. When police finally went to the area of the 911 call to investigate on September 9, they went out to a residence in Kingston, and they found Taylor's remains.
Taylor was a mother of two young children, someone who was loved by her friends and family and someone who was vulnerable. Someone who died screaming in a dark field, desperately waiting for help that never came.
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