Something Stinks

Summary

Bone Valley – Season 3, Episode 1: "Something Stinks"

Host: Maggie Freleng
Released: September 17, 2025
Podcast by Lava for Good Podcasts

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Overview:

This premiere episode of Bone Valley’s third season, subtitled "Graves County," launches an in-depth examination of the brutal murder of Jessica Curran in Mayfield, Kentucky. Host and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Maggie Freleng investigates not only the crime itself but also the questionable investigation, the search for justice, and the long trail of devastation among families and communities. The story challenges the easy narratives of amateur sleuths-turned-heroes and forces listeners to confront the messy legacy of wrongful convictions, unreliable witnesses, and a legal system eager for closure, even at the expense of truth.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights:

1. Setting the Scene: Mayfield, Graves County, Kentucky

• The episode opens with a warning about graphic content, signaling the gravity of the story (01:46).
• Mayfield: a small, tight-knit, largely rural town of 10,000, marked by traditional values, high school football pride, and deep-seated power structures (21:30).
• "A half truth is a whole lie." (01:46, Maggie Freling) — a recurring motif describing the community’s fraught relationship with rumors and truth.

2. The Crime: Murder of Jessica Curran

• August 1, 2000: Jessica Curran, an 18-year-old new mother and daughter of a local fire lieutenant, is found murdered and set on fire near Mayfield Middle School (02:21).
• Her murder goes unsolved for several years, with circulating rumors and few solid leads (07:28).

3. The Citizen Sleuth: Susan Galbraith

• Susan Galbraith, a Chicago transplant and Mayfield homemaker, becomes obsessed with the case after hearing about the murder (06:11).
• She is initially driven by personal aimlessness and a series of family deaths, seeking "purpose" through her involvement (07:08).
• “Somebody had to do something. And if it somebody was me, so be it.” (03:20, Susan Galbraith)
• Susan's efforts and eventual partnership with British journalist Tom Mangold garner massive media attention and her being officially honored (03:25, 03:44).

4. Breakthrough and Prosecution: The Case Against Quincy Cross and Others

• With Mangold’s help, Galbraith and police focus on crucial witness Victoria Caldwell, who at age 15 claims to have been an accomplice and provides a shocking, detailed narrative implicating Quincy Cross, Tamara Caldwell, Jeff Burton, and others (10:38—15:08).
• Victoria's lurid testimony, central to the state’s prosecution, outlines a night of drugs, violence, and assault — leading to convictions after years of investigation (15:20).
• Fast convictions: Quincy Cross given life without parole; co-defendants take plea deals in exchange for testimony (15:42).

5. Reexamining the Conviction: Persistent Doubts

• Years later, host Maggie Freling foregrounds the ongoing doubts and alternate perspectives—especially from those convicted, who continue to maintain innocence:
  • "That story Victoria told at trial was a lie." (19:10, Maggie Freling on Quincy & Tamara’s claims)
• Tamara Caldwell and Quincy Cross’s lives are detailed — from their backgrounds and family ties to the way their lives are upended by the conviction and incarceration.
  • "I was taken away from my family for something I didn't even do." (28:29, Tamara Caldwell)

6. A New Advocate: Dara Woolman and the Fight for Exoneration

• Enter Dara Woolman, an outsider determined to free Quincy Cross and clear the names of the others convicted (33:21).
• Dara, a self-described misfit and founder of the "Department of Collaborators," organizes support and brings evidence to journalists like Maggie (34:32).
  • “We just group of, you know, misfits that can't let go of this case.” (34:58, Dara Woolman)
• Dara’s methods, personality, and access to vast case files frame her as a contemporary echo to Susan Galbraith—albeit now working for exoneration, not conviction.

7. The Complexity of Truth and Justice

• Maggie highlights the difficulties of reporting wrongful conviction stories—her own doubts and past errors, and the burden of possibly retraumatizing victims’ families while seeking justice (39:15).
• Recent discovery of private correspondence and journalistic doubts from Tom Mangold further erodes certainty:
  • "I'm just beginning to wonder. This is but a tiny worm of an idea in my wine soaked brain that there is a teeny weeny, itsy bitsy chance that we've got this whole fucking murder story wrong and that there may have been a huge miscarriage of justice." (42:44, Tom Mangold via email)
• Community distrust and the self-perpetuating nature of rumors keep the case mired in uncertainty.

8. The Human Cost: Families, Reputations, and Closure

• Maggie explores the deep cost to both convicted individuals and their families. Loss of time, stigma, and the impossibility of true closure pervade these stories.
  • "I won’t never get that time back. I was taken away from my family for something I didn’t even do." (28:29, Tamara Caldwell)
• The episode closes by questioning who really knows the truth, as even those closest to the case are unsure who is truly responsible (44:07).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Media Narratives:
  • "Catnip for the press. And who could blame them? It's a good one, maybe too good to be true." (04:13, Maggie Freling)
• Susan’s Motivation:
  • "I think that I’ve always felt that I was meant to be there the day that they found Jessica’s body…through her, I somehow got my purpose back." (07:08, Susan Galbraith)
• Disillusion from Within:
  • "I’m just beginning to wonder…that there is a teeny weeny, itsy bitsy chance that we’ve got this whole fucking murder story wrong and that there may have been a huge miscarriage of justice." (42:44, Email from Tom Mangold)
• On Closure:
  • "Don’t let nobody ever tell you you get closure because you’re gonna always miss a person like that the rest of your life." (43:54, Susan Galbraith)
• On Truth:
  • “Good luck deciphering the fucking lies in this case. My apologies for cussing, but that's what it is. There are so many lies.” (31:16, Dara Woolman)

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Important Segment Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment Description | | :--------- | :-------------------------------------------------------- | | 01:46 | Maggie opens the show, sets the tone with Southern proverb | | 02:21 | Discovery of Jessica Curran’s body | | 06:11 | Introduction of Susan Galbraith | | 10:38 | Victoria Caldwell's key witness testimony | | 15:20 | Convictions and sentencing | | 17:58 | First-person account by Quincy Cross from prison | | 21:30 | Description of Mayfield and community context | | 28:29 | Tamara Caldwell describes the impact of her conviction | | 33:21 | Introduction of Dara Woolman and her mission | | 34:58 | Dara describes the Department of Collaborators | | 39:15 | Maggie’s reflections on wrongful conviction reporting | | 42:44 | Tom Mangold expresses doubt about the case in private | | 44:07 | Refrain that no one truly knows who did it |

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Tone and Style

• Language: Direct, conversational, raw — capturing both the Southern setting and the emotional gravity of wrongful conviction stories.
• Tone: Investigative, skeptical, and often wary of neat narratives or "hero" stories.

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Summary Takeaway

"Something Stinks" initiates a new season of Bone Valley by laying out the troubling complexities behind a sensational small town murder. It scrutinizes the eagerness for heroes and closure while refusing easy answers. As new doubts surface about convictions achieved through community pressure and untested witness accounts, listeners are left questioning whether the zeal for justice led Mayfield – and perhaps the country at large – further from the truth. A compelling exploration of fallible justice, human motivations, and the ripple effects of crime and punishment in rural America.

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For further episode context, a detailed cast list is available in the show notes.

Transcript

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[Maggie Freeling]

Heads up. This series contains graphic descriptions of violence. There's a saying I heard on a recent trip to the South. A half truth is a whole lie. And if there's a place that breathes life into that proverb, it's the town of Mayfield in Graves County, Kentucky.

[Brian Christopher]

A horrific murder went unsolved for six.

[Book Narrator]

Years in Mayfield, Kentucky, a town of 10,000 people.

[Brian Christopher]

Then one local resident decided to take.

[Dara Woolman]

Matters into her own hands.

[Maggie Freeling]

On August 1, 2000, the body of Jessica Curran was found outside of the Mayfield Middle School. It appeared as though she'd been beaten and set on fire. Jessica was just 18 years old, a new mom, and the daughter of a lieutenant with the Mayfield Fire Department. And her case would go unsolved for.

[Brian Christopher]

Years when police in Mayfield, Kentucky found a body. Susan Galbraith found a purpose. She had to know who murdered Jessica Curran.

[Maggie Freeling]

Until a local homemaker and a handful of girls came forward with a story. A story that police would use to convict six people lending Susan Galbraith in the newspapers and the radio and on national tv.

[Brian Christopher]

Galbraith was a housewife, married three times and drifting. She had no law enforcement training and she'd never even met Jessica Curran. But whatever grabbed her wouldn't let go.

[Susan Galbraith]

Somebody had to do something. And if it somebody was me, so be it.

[Maggie Freeling]

Years later, the Kentucky Attorney General would even honor Susan with an outstanding Citizen Award for finding the key witness in the Jessica Curran case. It's a made for TV story. Ordinary woman helps solve murder, brings justice to a small town.

[Brian Christopher]

Susan Galbraith was named Citizen of the Year by the Kentucky Bureau of Investigation.

[Susan Galbraith]

And to know that I had just the slightest part in it, it just.

[Dara Woolman]

I feel like I was meant to.

[Brian Christopher]

Susan Galbraith has done more than just prove one person really can make a difference. Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran.

[Maggie Freeling]

Catnip for the press. And who could blame them? It's a good one, maybe too good to be true. Because this story will go beyond one woman. It's about the lengths our legal system, our communities and the press will go in order to find someone to blame. And it's about the tales we tell and choose to believe in pursuit of justice. The repercussions of which have uprooted lives, shattered families and exposed a deep rotation in Kentucky's halls of power. This is Graves County, Chapter one. Something stinks. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer winning journalist and producer who has spent years reporting on the criminal legal system. That's how I first heard about this case and about Susan Galbraith. I didn't get a chance to meet Susan in person. She died in 2018 at the age of 58. A lot of what I've learned about Susan comes from her interviews with the press and her own writings, emails I've had the chance to review and from her testimony in the trial for the murder of Jessica Curran.

[Susan Galbraith]

When I was a child, I either wanted to be a comedian or a police officer. So I'm neither of course. I've just always had a fascination with the law and things like that.

[Maggie Freeling]

Had you taken an interest in other cases? Susan Galbraith was born in Chicago and moved to Mayfield, Kentucky in her early 30s. She liked living in a small town with a tight knit community and she had a son she loved. But by the time her 40th birthday hit, Susan was in a rut. A self described cigarette smoking busybody. She was on her third marriage to a man who drank too much and she'd lost her job from an injury. She was aimless. On top of that, she had a string of deaths in her family.

[Susan Galbraith]

In 1999, I had the death of my brother, father and mother. So it was a real rough year for me.

[Maggie Freeling]

Here she is talking to a local public radio station, WKMS in 2013.

[Susan Galbraith]

And I think that I've always felt that I was meant to be there the day that they found Jessica's body. And I often refer to it as through her, I somehow got my purpose back because it was a real rough year.

[Dara Woolman]

In 99.

[Maggie Freeling]

In her telling, Susan was sitting at a restaurant on a summer day when she overheard a waitress saying that police had found a body. What happened after that can only be described as spiritual. An epiphany of sorts. She just had to go to the scene of the crime and see it for herself. And what she found horrified and captivated her. She would spend every waking hour wondering what kind of monster could have done such a thing. But time passed and the case went unsolved. And after four years, the police had little to show for their work except for some failed leads and a string of rumors about what had happened to Jessica Curran. That's when Susan says her curiosity turned into an obsession. If the cops weren't going to crack the case, she would. She'd play detective and string tidbits of information together. Chase leads, find the truth. But this amateur sleuth needed help. So she started emailing people, important people like Oprah and Julia Roberts, anyone who could connect her to resources or give this case much needed attention. But she heard nothing.

[Quincy Cross]

A federal investigation in Brooklyn.

[Maggie Freeling]

And then on TV one day she saw a British investigative journalist by the name of Tom Mangold.

[Quincy Cross]

And I'll be revealing how they've lied, deceived and manipulated the truth for 40 years.

[Maggie Freeling]

So she wrote him as well.

[Susan Galbraith]

Date 04042004 from susangcharter.net this is Susan.

[Maggie Freeling]

Reading part of that email for a radio piece Tom produced for the BBC in 2012. It was a retrospective on the work Susan ended up doing for the case.

[Susan Galbraith]

Hello Mr. Mangold.

[Dara Woolman]

I am writing concerning a murder in.

[Susan Galbraith]

A small town in the state of.

[Dara Woolman]

Kentucky here in the US.

[Susan Galbraith]

The victim, a beautiful 18 year old black girl.

[Maggie Freeling]

Tom flew to Kentucky about a month after getting that email in 2004. It was the Beginning of a years long partnership with Susan and the launch of their investigation. They were an odd duo. Here are segments on how they describe each other in Tom's radio piece.

[Dara Woolman]

When I first met Tom, I thought he was prim and proper. Like he had a stick up his ass. I mean, he was just really formal, you know.

[Quincy Cross]

When I first met Susan, I liked her on site. She's chubby, lively, great sense of humor, sexy, deep voice. And passionate about the one thing she.

[Book Narrator]

Needed to be passionate about.

[Quincy Cross]

The murder of Jessica Curran.

[Maggie Freeling]

Tom, then in his late 60s, said he brought his experience as a seasoned investigative reporter and taught Susan how to parse gossip from truth. They drank bottles of Sauvignon Blanc together, chased leads, discussed theories, and eventually they pinpointed a local girl who turned out to be key to solving the case. Victoria Caldwell.

[Victoria Caldwell]

Doris Victoria Caldwell.

[Maggie Freeling]

And what do people call you?

[Victoria Caldwell]

Victoria.

[Maggie Freeling]

She came forward saying she was an accomplice to the crime and she ended up being the state's key witness.

[Quincy Cross]

So In July of 2000, how old were you?

[Victoria Caldwell]

I was 15.

[Maggie Freeling]

15 years old. Victoria's account about what happened to Jessica Curran would be the driving force in the conviction of her accused killers.

[Quincy Cross]

Commonwealth versus Quincy Omar Cross.

[Maggie Freeling]

This was the story Victoria told. We've edited her statements for length and warning. It contains descriptions of physical and sexual violence.

[Quincy Cross]

Your Honor, the condo does Victoria Caldwell.

[Maggie Freeling]

On a summer night in 2000, Victoria says she was hanging out with a few kids from around town, including Jessica Curran and Venetia Stubblefield. All of them teenagers at the time. According to Victoria, they eventually ended up in a car with some older kids, all in their early 20s, including Victoria's cousin Tamara, Tamara's boyfriend, Quincy Cross, and a guy they knew from school named Jeff Burton. The only white person in the group.

[Victoria Caldwell]

Quincy started passing out the drugs. Coke.

[Maggie Freeling]

She says they did cocaine and other drugs in the car.

[Victoria Caldwell]

Yes, Ecstasy.

[Maggie Freeling]

Tamara and Quincy were driving in the front with Jessica and they started touching her.

[Victoria Caldwell]

Quincy and Tamara were rubbing on Jessica's legs. She was telling them to stop and no.

[Quincy Cross]

Did they stop?

[Susan Galbraith]

No. Yeah, he didn't want that.

[Victoria Caldwell]

Then when we got to the driveway of Jeff's house, Quincy, he wrecked under his seat and he had a bat and he hit her in her head like a. A small, like little bat.

[Maggie Freeling]

She says Quincy reached under the seat and then hit Jessica in the head with a souvenir bat.

[Victoria Caldwell]

I'm not really sure how to explain it.

[Maggie Freeling]

After that, they drove to Jeff's house and they carried Jessica's unconscious body inside. According to Victoria, Quincy And Jeff raped and beat Jessica with the help of Tamara.

[Victoria Caldwell]

And that's when Jessica started to wake up.

[Maggie Freeling]

Jessica was in and out of consciousness, actually woke up.

[Victoria Caldwell]

She was saying, like, she wanted to go home. She just wanted to go home to her son. She's kept her son Zion's name.

[Maggie Freeling]

She was pleading for her life and calling out the name of her seven month old son.

[Susan Galbraith]

Then what happened?

[Victoria Caldwell]

Quincy. He hit her.

[Maggie Freeling]

He hit her with a ratchet and.

[Victoria Caldwell]

She just knocked back out.

[Maggie Freeling]

Victoria says Quincy then started strangling Jessica with his leather belt.

[Victoria Caldwell]

He was just choking her.

[Susan Galbraith]

How was he choking?

[Victoria Caldwell]

She just kept pulling and pulling and pulling on it.

[Maggie Freeling]

What was she doing?

[Victoria Caldwell]

She was. He could, like, hear, like, gasping for air.

[Susan Galbraith]

Did she keep gasping?

[Victoria Caldwell]

Yes.

[Maggie Freeling]

Huh?

[Victoria Caldwell]

Yes.

[Maggie Freeling]

Did she keep gasping?

[Victoria Caldwell]

Yes.

[Maggie Freeling]

But it didn't end there. Victoria says that after Quincy killed Jessica, he ordered the girls to have sex with her ravaged, lifeless body.

[Victoria Caldwell]

Quincy had told me that he had told everyone in the room that they had to do something.

[Maggie Freeling]

She describes the sexual acts in lurid detail, but I'm not going to share those specifics here. It's gruesome. Did other people perform sexual acts on Jessica Kern's body?

[Victoria Caldwell]

Yes.

[Maggie Freeling]

According to the prosecution, this would implicate them all in the murder and ensure their silence. After it was all done, Victoria says they wrapped Jessyca's body in a blanket and hid her in Jeff's garage for a few days until she started to smell. Then she says a few of them drove Jessica's body to the middle school where they dumped her and set her on fire. Victoria says she took the blanket, Jeff poured the gas, and Venetia lit the match.

[Victoria Caldwell]

And then we left.

[Quincy Cross]

Has the jury reached a verdict? If you'd hand it to the Bailiff, please.

[Maggie Freeling]

On April 8, 2008, after only three hours and 45 minutes of deliberating, a Kentucky jury convicted Quincy Cross on all charges.

[Quincy Cross]

We the jury, find the defendant guilty of kidnapping, guilty of murder, guilty of rape in the first case, guilty of abuse of a court, guilty of tampering with physical evidence under instruction number 15.

[Maggie Freeling]

He was later sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Tamara and Jeff took pleas and were sentenced to 10 and 15 years, respectively. Venetia and Victoria got lighter sentences for cooperating with the prosecution. Remember, Victoria was the state's key witness. The case would make headlines because it took eight years to find and punish the accused killers and because of Susan and Tom. Susan stayed on the case and Tom stayed on the story long after the convictions. In an email, a Few months after the trial, Tom informed Susan he was writing an article on her for the Times of London. He writes, quote, unquote, I'll make you famous yet. To which Susan responds, quote, I couldn't be happier about this. I can only hope I don't let you down. Tom and Susan would appear in interviews like the one you heard earlier from a public radio station celebrating their feet. Tom told WKMS that he had received about 15 film offers from movie studios interested in their story.

[Quincy Cross]

And they were all interested in the relationship between an aging British hack and this lovely young lady originally from Chicago.

[Maggie Freeling]

He and Susan ended up signing a contract with BBC Films.

[Quincy Cross]

And don't ask me who's going to play me, because I wanted Brad Pitt to play.

[Dara Woolman]

That's what I was thinking, Tom.

[Susan Galbraith]

It would have been a perfect match.

[Quincy Cross]

He's far too old for me. I know the talk is of Susan, sound and type actress, to play Susan. It's an interesting story, and we have had a remarkable relationship and one that has given me intense pleasure in a.

[Maggie Freeling]

Perfect world where good guys win and the bad guys are punished. This is where the story would end. Roll credits. To accept this free call, press 1. To refuse this pre call, press 2. Thank you for using Securus. You may start the conversation now.

[Susan Galbraith]

Hello?

[Maggie Freeling]

Okay. Hey, Quincy.

[Quincy Cross]

Hey. How you doing?

[Maggie Freeling]

I'm well. How are you doing today?

[Quincy Cross]

I'm just, you know, still doing time, that's all.

[Maggie Freeling]

But then again, I wouldn't be here if things worked the way they should. Quincy, what is that like for the world to think you're somebody as terrible as a murderer?

[Quincy Cross]

It's painful. Yeah, it's very painful. And it's something that I've never adjusted to living by.

[Maggie Freeling]

To understand this story, you need to know the people accused and convicted of Jessica Curran's murder.

[Quincy Cross]

My story is not just about me, but it's about Jessica, the victim, and it's about Tamara and Jeff Burton, too. All our stories, we was portrayed to be something that we noticed. So, you know, the whole world looked at us different. They still do. So, you know, my story is to, you know, to help clear all that up.

[Maggie Freeling]

I've gotten to know two of them well, Quincy and Tamara. And from the very beginning, they have maintained that the story Victoria told at trial was a lie.

[Susan Galbraith]

People still talk about me to this day, but I don't care, because I know I sleep great at night. I know I didn't do anything. I know I didn't do a thing.

[Maggie Freeling]

Other people ensnared in this story have told me the same thing. They did not kill Jessica Curran. That's after the break.

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[Maggie Freeling]

Mayfield, Kentucky is in the dead center of Graves county, tucked away in the southwestern corner of the Commonwealth. There's more crops than people. Corn, soy and tobacco fields stretch as far as the eye can see. Legacy of a time when African people were bought and sold like chattel to cultivate these same crops. Alcohol laws in Graves county date back to the Dry Crusade or Prohibition era, so there's not many places to gather and grab a drink on a Friday. Folks in Mayfield are damn proud of their winning high school football team, the Cardinals, but other than game night, locals tell me there's not much to do. Just under 10,000 people live in Mayfield. The population hasn't grown in decades and like in many small towns across the country Lack of activity or opportunity often leads to mischief and petty crime. A lot of it in the county is drug related, people selling or possessing drugs. And a lot of people have kids young in their teens and twenties. That was the case for Tamara Caldwell. So you were 17, you got pregnant, and was there any question about keeping.

[Susan Galbraith]

The baby or were you, oh, yeah, I'm keeping it.

[Maggie Freeling]

Tamara always knew she wanted to be a mom. So when she got pregnant as a teen with her first child, a boy, Tamara was happy. You're like, I'm ready to be married.

[Susan Galbraith]

I'm ready. Yep, I'm ready. I'm not getting rid of it. I'm ready.

[Maggie Freeling]

And when another baby, a daughter, came just two years later and another one a few years after that, she knew she'd adore those little girls just as much. There was love to spare.

[Susan Galbraith]

I enjoyed being with my kids because they were my life.

[Maggie Freeling]

Tamara also knew that she wouldn't need a man to raise the kids, just like her mom and grandmother before her. Who is your dad?

[Susan Galbraith]

My mother is my dad. She's always been my dad and will always be like that.

[Maggie Freeling]

Men would come and go, but Tamara's family would stay together. That's not to say that some men didn't stay a little while. One of them was Quincy Cross. Before they were both accused of murder, their names tied to a brutal crime. They were just two kids in their early 20s who fell in love. Quincy was from a town just across the border in Tennessee, about a 40 minute drive southwest of Mayfield. Quincy had the kind of swagger that comes from being a young man without a care in the world. Unlike Tamra, who says she's always been more of a homebody, content on the couch with her kids, watching soap operas or Jeopardy. Quincy was a bad boy getting in trouble.

[Quincy Cross]

We was drinking and drugging, hear me?

[Maggie Freeling]

Quincy says he and his friends would run the streets.

[Quincy Cross]

It was selling drugs, it was hanging out late, you know, it was, you know, hanging out with female, a whole bunch of female, different females all the time. It was, it was, you know, kids, a whole bunch of kid things going on, you know what I'm saying? Like I said, drinking and drugging, man. We was most of the time doing it all, man, doing what kids do.

[Maggie Freeling]

And those things usually landed Quincy in and out of jail. That's actually how Tamara and Quincy met. He was locked up in the same jail as Tamara's brother in Graves County. And in one of her visits, Tamara says she saw Quincy looking at her. He was cute, a little short. He's five' four, with big cheeks and a warm, dimpled smile. And she remembers thinking, maybe I oughta talk to him. So she did, and he turned out to be nice as well. He was friendly, cute, friendly and funny.

[Susan Galbraith]

Quincy was a comic. Quincy was just a fun person.

[Maggie Freeling]

I enjoyed talking to him, and Quincy enjoyed Tamra.

[Quincy Cross]

Tamara had a nice heart. Tamara had a nice heart, man. Tamara was a friend before she was anything else, man. Tamara was. We was good to hang out with each other, man. She was a good person, man. For real.

[Maggie Freeling]

Tamara was already pregnant when she got serious with Quincy. She didn't party, so they liked watching movies together, eating pizza. Quincy even moved in with Tamara and her mom for a bit. He was there when Tamara had to have an emergency C section and her youngest girl, Sade, was born.

[Quincy Cross]

I held Sade before she did. Oh, man, I cried. I cried. I was a soft man. I ain't gonna trip. I cried. I shedded some tears right there. That was a beautiful thing. Yeah, that was a beautiful thing. Those bring back some good memories right there.

[Maggie Freeling]

Tamara says Quincy was good with the kids. She even gave Sade his last name, even though he wasn't the biological dad.

[Susan Galbraith]

Even though he didn't have no kids. My kids were his kids.

[Maggie Freeling]

He didn't seem to mind the mess that comes with children.

[Susan Galbraith]

Literally, before he got in the door, before he opened the door, he would change shirts because he knew that BB was going to throw up.

[Maggie Freeling]

Yes, Bibi is Shade's nickname, and he was okay with that.

[Susan Galbraith]

Yes, he was the best.

[Maggie Freeling]

Tamara says Quincy loved Bebe and her whole family. He was even a pallbearer at her Grandma Doris funeral. He was fully in her life.

[Susan Galbraith]

We were like best friends.

[Maggie Freeling]

But after a few years, their relationship faded, the way relationships do.

[Quincy Cross]

I just had to go back home.

[Maggie Freeling]

Back home to Tennessee.

[Quincy Cross]

I just want to go back home, man. Mayfield was. Mayfield is.

[Maggie Freeling]

You have one minute left.

[Quincy Cross]

It's corrupt down there, man. There's a lot of corrupt things going on down there. And I figured it was time for me to come back home.

[Maggie Freeling]

Tamara and Quincy broke up around 2005 and lost contact for a bit. But he wasn't able to shake Mayfield off for long. A few years after the breakup in 2007, he'd returned to Kentucky. And even though he'd never get back together with Tamara, their names would be forever linked to each other and to Mayfield's most infamous murder.

[Susan Galbraith]

I got out of prison in 2012. I was in there 5 years, 8 months is 2 days. 5 years, 8 months is 2days. Yeah.

[Maggie Freeling]

I'm sitting with Tamara at her mom's house in Mayfield. She's bold and bright, with shimmery makeup and colorful braided hair. Tamara says since she was a kid, she's always had colorful hair. Today it's blue. Her favorite. But inside, Tamara is guarded, scarred by prison and the events that led her there.

[Susan Galbraith]

I used to be outgoing. I was always the positive one. Not no more. Not like I used to. Not like it used to be. It. It won't never be like it used to be. Because I can't get. I won't never get that time back. Can't never get that time back. I was taken away from my family for something I didn't even do. If I knew what I know now, then it's been a whole different story. It's crazy when you call home and your kids. There's something wrong with your kids. You can't do anything because you're locked up. It's hard. But I had to keep the faith because I wanted to go home. Because if I didn't keep the faith, I probably wouldn't even be here now.

[Maggie Freeling]

I've spent the last two years traveling to Mayfield, talking to people there, sorting through hundreds of hours of law enforcement interviews and interrogations, court transcripts, private investigator findings and records, trying to figure out if there's any truth to their claims of innocence. What would it be like to have your conviction cleared for you? What would it be?

[Susan Galbraith]

Oh, great. Oh, a great deal. I can't even get a job because of my conviction, what my charges are. Yeah, I won't never get five years, eight months, and two days back. But I deserve something. I want my name cleared. And Jeff's name's cleared. And Quincy. Out of jail, out of prison. That's all I want. Clear my name.

[Maggie Freeling]

Two years of sifting through lies, rumors and stories, picking out any discernible bits of truth, trying to figure out how they were accused in the first place. At times, it's been almost impossible to discern truth from rumor. And it's made me question, who can I trust when so many people obscure the truth. Now, over the course of time, I have grown to trust one woman in particular. And she warned me from day one that this case was going to be a hard one.

[Dara Woolman]

Good luck deciphering the fucking lies in this case. My apologies for cussing, but that's what it is. There are so many lies.

[Maggie Freeling]

That's after the break.

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[Maggie Freeling]

In 2004, Susan Galbreath, the Kentucky housewife who you met at the top of the show, wrote journalist Tom Mangold asking for help solving the Jessica Curran case. Almost two decades after that, a woman named Dara Woolman would contact me and my team saying the man in prison for the crime had been wronged. Much like Susan, Dara is not a detective or a lawyer. She's not even from Mayfield yet. She has dedicated years of her life to this case. But if Susan helped put Quincy Cross in prison, Dara is dead set on getting him out.

[Dara Woolman]

I don't believe he was there and I don't believe that he did it and I don't believe he had anything to do with COVID up and it's just a gut feeling.

[Maggie Freeling]

Has your intuition ever led you astray?

[Dara Woolman]

I mean look at the fuck toys I've dated. Yeah, absolutely. Sorry. My intuition has led me a lot of times astray.

[Maggie Freeling]

In 2021 she launched an endeavor aimed at helping people in PR.

[Dara Woolman]

I started the Department of Collaborators. I really wanted to call it the Department of Correctors, but I felt like that was too cunty the doc, you know, I do not have a website. I do have a bank account.

[Maggie Freeling]

The Department of Collaborators, a group of folks from all walks of life who volunteer their time to finding people they think have been wrongfully convicted and connecting them with folks like me who can give them a voice.

[Dara Woolman]

We just group of, you know, misfits that can't let go of this case.

[Maggie Freeling]

Dara got in touch with my colleague Jason Flom, who's long worked in criminal justice reform, and he passed the case along to me. Dara has asked me point blank to not compare her to Susan Galbraith. But the irony of it all the similarities are not lost on me. I be crazy not to point them out. And one of them is that I am taken by Dara the way Tom was taken by Susan. Dara is a character. She's constantly calling and sending me voice messages at all hours.

[Dara Woolman]

So anyway, again, I'm sorry for my monotone voice talking like I have marbles in my goddamn mouth, but that's just the way I talk tonight.

[Maggie Freeling]

Dara is a born and bred Southerner who plays to every stereotype for laughs. Like these are the kinds of phrases she signs off with.

[Dara Woolman]

God bless the USA and fuck Nancy Grace.

[Maggie Freeling]

Dara grew up in Mississippi, but lives in a McMansion neighborhood outside of Nashville now. My producer Rebecca and I went to visit in the summer of 2024.

[Dara Woolman]

Welcome to the Jungle.

[Maggie Freeling]

The Jungle is a very nice jungle. Dara lives with her mom, son and Ludacris. Hi, Ludacris. You're so cute. A dog? Not the rapper. A scruffy white terrier mutt who's always by her side.

[Dara Woolman]

He doesn't identify as a dog.

[Maggie Freeling]

Dara is a striking woman in her 40s with icy blue eyes and long blonde hair. As we walk past the foyer into what appears to be the sitting room, there are three huge paintings on the wall. What is this? Just you? Oil paintings of Dara in a revealing mini dress that her mother painted.

[Dara Woolman]

But my boobs are really enhanced.

[Maggie Freeling]

Dara says the southern blonde stick works. It leads people to underestimate her, but you shouldn't be fooled. She's tenacious and full of moral outrage over what she perceives as a deep injustice and the proof of Dara's tenacity. Where do you have all your documents and stuff?

[Dara Woolman]

All in my office, baby.

[Maggie Freeling]

Downstairs. Oh, that's your office? Okay, not me.

[Susan Galbraith]

Here.

[Maggie Freeling]

Dara's home office is a bright room, jam packed with tons of memorabilia from the years, like Dolly Parton figurines, Kate Moss's mugshot, and, of course, documents. Filing cabinets full of papers and binders of CDs containing hours of court proceedings, security footage, interrogations, interviews, everything. Like emails between Susan and Tom, wondering how did someone get her personal emails? Who was that? Who was able to get these?

[Dara Woolman]

Some of it's supposed to be part of discovery. I mean, she was a witness.

[Maggie Freeling]

She was a witness. That makes sense. And she's giving me full access. Dara hasn't collected all of this alone. In the department of collaborators, there's a person who gathers all the data, one who organizes it, and there's Dara, the connector, staying in touch with everyone involved. And it's grown past a little volunteer job. Dara says it's become personal.

[Dara Woolman]

The truth of the matter is, is that I fell in love with Quincy's family. They've fallen in love with me and.

[Maggie Freeling]

With all the other people who've been touched by this case.

[Dara Woolman]

Tamro, Jeffrey. You know, like, that's the truth of when it comes to Quincy Cross's case, it's not about solving the murder of Jessica Kern, because at the end of the day, who I'm allowed to think I can solve it. I'm just trying to get a man that's wrongfully imprisoned out, and I'm trying to get his other two co defendants exonerated.

[Maggie Freeling]

So that's what Dara wants. And what I want is to get it right for a few reasons. I'm a white girl from New York parachuting into this community in the south where the victim and most of the accused are black. I'm painfully aware of the stereotype white lady saves the day. Susan, Dara. And we've heard this from people in town who are wary of outsiders. I don't want to give them more reasons to distrust people like me. On top of that, a few years ago, I got it really wrong, covering what I was convinced was a wrongful conviction out of Alliance, Ohio. I dedicated a year of my life and 20 podcast episodes trying to find out if a man was in prison unjustly, only to learn midway that he'd most likely done it. And my instincts were wrong. A lot of listeners commended my honesty, but I also got slammed for hurting the victim's family by dragging all this up. I felt like a failure and went on hiatus for a few months, dug a hole and burrowed in it, licking my wounds. My mistake is always in the back of my mind. But I'm not the first journalist with doubts about their own work. And it turns out I'm not the first journalist with doubts about the convictions in this case. When Susan Galbraith died in 2018, Tom Mangold wasn't able to fly from England for the funeral, but he wrote Susan's family an email expressing his condolences. He called Susan a, quote, life force. He wrote that Susan's enthusiasm for the investigation infected him and eventually infected law enforcement. And it was, quote, unquote, wholly because of her drive and cunning that the perpetrators were caught and sentenced. Publicly, Tom was and continues to be certain that the case Susan helped bring forward and the one he covered for years was not only right, but righteous. But privately, I found a different story, one that plants a seed of doubt. This is from Susan to Tom. I'm sitting with my producer Rebecca, going through hundreds of pages of documents we got from Dara and from court filings. They include years of Tom Mangold's emails from Susan, law enforcement and many other people in Mayfield.

[Victoria Caldwell]

This email is between Tom Engle and Lacy Gates, a friend of Susan Galbraith.

[Maggie Freeling]

Yeah, I thought she was working with.

[Susan Galbraith]

Mingled and and Galbraith.

[Maggie Freeling]

These specific emails are from around the time Tom was preparing to release yet another piece on Susan four years after Quincy, Tamara and Jeff were convicted. It's the radio documentary you heard earlier from the BBC titled Something Rotten in Mayfield. In it, he rehashes the story of Susan helping to find Jessica's killers and he features Victoria Caldwell retelling her version of events. Yet this is an email he sent to Susan's friend a few months before the piece aired.

[Victoria Caldwell]

Oh my God.

[Maggie Freeling]

This is from Tom to Lacey in 2012. January 2012.

[Victoria Caldwell]

Lacey.

[Maggie Freeling]

I'm just beginning to wonder. This is but a tiny worm of an idea in my wine soaked brain that there is a teeny weeny, itsy bitsy chance that we've got this whole fucking murder story wrong and that there may have been a huge miscarriage of justice. A renowned journalist talking about a case that he helped solve that went all the way to the Kentucky Attorney General that sent six people to prison. And he's saying there's an itsy bitsy chance that they got this whole murder story wrong. This season on Graves County, I mean, you should hear all the stuff that goes around and, you know, some of.

[Victoria Caldwell]

It might be as true as it comes. You just can't never tell what's rumored and what's not.

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You look so pathetic faking those rocking.

[Quincy Cross]

In that chair and telling that lie.

[Maggie Freeling]

They accused a lot of innocent people. They hurt their families. They hurt their friendships.

[Susan Galbraith]

Don't let nobody ever tell you you get closure because you're gonna always miss.

[Maggie Freeling]

A person like that the rest of your life. So it sounds like a lot of people have come forward saying, I know who did this, but no one has said who did it.

[Dara Woolman]

That's correct.

[Maggie Freeling]

Why?

[Dara Woolman]

I don't know.

[Susan Galbraith]

Some of them that I've dealt with.

[Dara Woolman]

That'S involved in this are perpetual liars.

[Susan Galbraith]

I did not know her and I.

[Brian Christopher]

Did not kill her or rape or.

[Maggie Freeling]

Burn or any of that other stuff that y' all said.

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[Maggie Freeling]

Graves county is a production of Lava for Good in association with Signal Company Number One. This show is written and produced by me, Maggie Freeling and Senior producer Rebecca Ibarra, Jason Flom, Jeff Kempler and Kevin Werdes, our Executive producers. Our editor is Martina Abrahams. Ilunga Dania Suleiman is our fact checker. Sound design and mixing by Joe Plord Music created by Wrench. Our theme song is the Gangsta Grass version of the one whose horror holding the Star by Leo Schofield and Kevin Herrick. Dara Wolman is Investigative producer. Our Head of Marketing and Operations is Jeff Clyburn. Ismani Guadarrama is our Social Media Director and our Social Media Manager is Sarah Gibbons. Andrew Nelson is Art Director with additional production help from Jackie Pauley, Kara Kornhaber and Kathleen Fink. Be sure to follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and threads. Ava for good and follow me at Maggie Freeling and we know there's a lot of names for you to keep up with in this series, so for a detailed list of characters please go to Our show Notes Every day has a to do list, but adding Enjoy Belvita to yours can help you knock out the rest of it. Belvita Breakfast Biscuits are a tasty and convenient breakfast option when paired with low fat yogurt and fruit that provide steady energy all morning while Belvita Energy Snack Bites give you the perfect mid morning refuel. Best part? They both taste great so make the most out of your morning with a bite of Velveeta. Pick up a pack of Velveeta at your local store today.

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