Presenting Gone South | Time of Death

Summary

---

Campus Files: Presenting Gone South | “Time of Death”

Original Theme & Purpose

This episode of Campus Files diverges from its typical exposés on campus scandals by presenting a special feature from the acclaimed investigative podcast, Gone South. Host Jed Lipinski revisits the chilling cold case of Katherine Foster—a college freshman murdered at the University of South Alabama in 1980. “Time of Death” unravels how this high-profile murder, long deemed unsolvable, was finally cracked open by new investigative thinking, persistence, and a close examination of forensic details. The episode not only explores the mystery and investigational breakthroughs but also dwells on themes of obsession, misdirection, and justice delayed but ultimately delivered.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Background and Initial Investigation

• Katherine Foster's Disappearance and Murder

  • Foster was a freshman who disappeared one Thursday morning in 1980; her body was found two days later, a few hundred yards from her dorm.
    • “It was just something out of a horror movie almost.” – Jim Barber, former Mobile Police, [02:38]
  • She had been shot twice in the head, but showed no signs of robbery or sexual assault.
  • The lack of clear motive and clues plunged the campus into fear, raising suspicions of a possible serial killer.

• Time-of-Death Confusion

  • The medical examiner initially concluded Katherine died Friday night, over 24 hours after she disappeared, meaning her whereabouts during that time were mysterious and fueled wild theories.
  • Various speculative and sometimes bizarre theories swirled—including that she was held captive or even made up post-mortem.

2. Jim Barber’s Re-Examination

• Barber's Return to the Cold Case

  • In 2002, experienced Mobile PD detective Jim Barber and his students reviewed the case as a class project, using profiling techniques to sift through old evidence and claims.
  • They came to believe jealousy—or removing an impediment—was the likely motive, and that a female perpetrator was just as plausible, turning attention to overlooked suspects.

• Casting Doubt on the Security Guard Theory

  • Despite the security guard’s suspicious 'shrine’ and a poem about Katherine, Jim discounted him due to his alibi and a lack of physical evidence supporting abduction theories.
    • “Her fingernails weren’t torn off… You’d make every effort to escape.” – Jim Barber, [08:13]

• Shift Toward Jamie Letson as Suspect

  • Jamie Letson, a friend of Katherine’s, had been the last to see her alive, was the first to report her missing, and left campus immediately after the disappearance.
    • “She never returned to the campus... withdrew from her courses two weeks later.” – David Wilhelm (original investigator), [11:16]
  • Letson had an apparent obsession with Katherine's boyfriend, frequently claiming he was hers, which others found strange.

3. Breakthrough: The Confession

• AA Sponsor’s Tip & the Written Confession
  • In 2002, a tip surfaces—Letson reportedly confessed the murder to her AA sponsor while working through her 12-step program. She detailed luring Katherine into the woods, shooting her, and discarding the gun.
    • “Jamie told her sponsor that Katherine had a boyfriend, and Jamie wanted Katherine’s boyfriend... so she killed her to do so.” – Mike Morgan (detective), [18:34]
  • The sponsor initially treats it with skepticism, but Jamie’s persistence—and subsequent presentation of news reports—convinces him.
  • Then, a second bombshell: her stepfather reveals he found a spiral notebook in which Jamie wrote, “Dear Katherine, it is me, Jamie, the one who killed you.”
    • “I close it, I hand it to my partner: don't let that out of your sight.” – Mike Morgan, [25:13]

4. Overcoming Hurdles: Time of Death and Legal Doubts

• Prosecution Reluctance

  • Despite the written confession and corroborating circumstantial evidence, prosecutors hesitate: Jamie’s AA sponsor carries a record of perjury and manslaughter, and her alibi apparently conflicts with the established time of death.

• Forensic Review & ‘Body Farm’ Evidence

  • Re-examination of autopsy and decomposition evidence, including a visit to the University of Tennessee ‘Body Farm’, supports the theory that Katherine had died soon after going missing, aligning with Letson’s opportunity and undermining her alibi.
    • “Well, I guess you have your answer. It’s definitely possible that she could have been out there for 48 hours.” – Forensic Anthropologist (relayed by Mike Morgan), [34:18]
  • Medical examiner’s own contemporaneous notes show the science actually pointed to an earlier time of death—vindicating Barber’s and Morgan’s argument.
    • “He finally just tells us that he was wrong in the time of death.” – Jim Barber, [36:24]

5. Arrest & Resolution

• Arrest and Confession

  • Armed with new forensic evidence and the written confession, Jamie Letson is indicted and arrested in 2007; she provides a further confession upon arrest, matching earlier details.
    • “Does her confession match up to the evidence? And it matched up 100%.” – Jim Barber, [37:36]

• Aftermath and Reflection

  • Letson pleads not guilty at trial, recanting her confession, but is found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.
    • "Once the jury came back and they found her guilty, it was kind of a relief... It is now over.” – Mike Morgan, [38:07]
  • For Barber, breaking the longest-running cold case in Alabama history is the proudest moment of his career.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "It was just something out of a horror movie almost.”
  – Jim Barber, [02:38]
• “There was a cage also found big enough to hold a human.”
  – Jim Barber, recounting theories, [07:42]
• “What indicated to be was that she knew the shooter and she trusted the shooter, or she never would have walked into the woods without crying.”
  – Jim Barber, [09:13]
• “She never returned to the campus after Catherine went missing and then withdrew from her courses two weeks later.”
  – David Wilhelm, [11:16]
• “Dear Katherine, it is me, Jamie, the one who killed you.”
  – Jamie Letson’s letter, [25:13]
• “I wiped out all the good in one evil, selfishness moment.”
  – Jamie Letson’s letter, recounted by Mike Morgan, [27:48]
• “We were getting nowhere. I mean, probably deeper than an Alabama tick at that point.”
  – Jim Barber, on conflicts with DA, [30:19]
• “He finally just tells us that he was wrong in the time of death.”
  – Jim Barber, on the medical examiner’s change of opinion, [36:24]
• “Bringing this particular case to justice was probably the highlight of my career.”
  – Jim Barber, [38:43]

---

Timeline of Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment / Topic | |-------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------| | 02:07–03:24 | Crime introduction; Katherine Foster's disappearance and discovery | | 04:00–05:34 | Theories: captivity, abduction, and security guard as suspect | | 09:13–12:22 | Focusing on Jamie Letson; last to see Foster, first to report her missing | | 15:20–19:47 | AA sponsor’s tip and Jamie Letson’s detailed spoken confession | | 24:19–26:42 | Recovery and verification of the written confession | | 29:03–32:15 | Legal hurdles and time-of-death dispute | | 32:15–34:44 | Visit to the ‘Body Farm’; forensic evidence supports new timeline | | 36:24–37:46 | Medical examiner concedes prior error; indictment and confession | | 38:07–38:43 | Conviction and reflections by those involved |

---

Tone & Narrative Style

Gone South's “Time of Death” weaves investigative clarity with empathy and suspenseful storytelling. The tone stays empathetic toward the victim, analytical on the evidence, and forthright about investigative missteps. The episode is rich in detail, respectful of all parties, and ultimately, hopeful as justice prevails after decades of doubt.

---

Summary prepared for listeners who want the facts, the key turning points, and the human angles behind this memorable Campus Files x Gone South story.

Transcript

[A]

Hi, I'm PJ Vogt and I want to tell you about my podcast search engine. We try to make sense of the world one question at a time. No question too big, no question too small. We will even answer your questions if you send them in. Stuff like what happens when a cemetery goes out of business? What should we do about teens using AI to do their homework? Who buys luggage at the airport luggage store? Follow and listen to Search Engine in partnership with Odysee. Wherever you get your podcasts.

[B]

Foreign.

[C]

Hey Campus Files listeners, it's Margot here. We're doing something a bit different this week. Today we're sharing an episode from the Edward R. Murrow Award winning podcast series Gone South. Gone south is hosted by acclaimed investigative reporter and documentary filmmaker Jed Lipinski. You may be familiar with some of his work, like Hulu's Fire Fraud and the Pharmacist on Netflix. On Gone South, Jed brings his sharp investigative skills and ability to unpack complex stories with nuance and clarity to some of the most mysterious crimes that have taken place in the American South. Across four seasons, Gone south has taken us deep into the unsolved Louisiana murder of former prosecutor Margaret Coon, explored the notorious Southern crime syndicate known as the Dixie Mafia, investigated the murders of four sex workers in Laredo, Texas, and in its latest season has featured standalone episodes about other fascinating crimes originating in the south. Like the episode we're sharing with you today. Titled Time of Death, this episode tells the story of the 1980 murder of college freshman Catherine Foster, a student at the University of South Alabama. It was the biggest cold case in Alabama history until police officer Jim Barber reopened the case. As you're listening, be sure to search for Gone south on your favorite podcast platform for a binge worthy listen.

[A]

Jim Barber spent 28 years with the Mobile Police Department. During that time, he was also on the faculty at the University of South Alabama, where he taught a course on criminal investigations, specifically how to use behavior, motive and evidence to develop suspects in a murder case. In the spring semester of 2002, Jim decided to profile the unsolved murder of Katherine Foster, perhaps the most famous cold case in Mobile history.

[D]

So I was already somewhat aware of the Katherine Foster case because it pretty much captivated a lot of the detectives that heard about it and worked on it. It was just something out of a horror movie almost.

[A]

Catherine was a freshman at the University of Alabama when she disappeared one Thursday morning in 1980. A search party found her body Saturday morning, two days later in a wooded area just a few hundred yards from her dorm the autopsy concluded that Catherine had died from two bullet wounds to the head, one at close range. But the motive was unclear. She was wearing the same clothes she'd been wearing when she disappeared. She had not been robbed or sexually assaulted. There were no signs of ligature marks to indicate she'd been tied up.

[D]

It had a huge impact on campus, as you can imagine. And there was some belief that they might be dealing with a possible serial killer. And so there was a fear of that, that there was a killer on campus that might kill again, mainly for the lack of motive.

[A]

You know, what put the campus even more on edge was the time of Catherine's death. The medical examiner determined that Catherine had died sometime Friday night, roughly 12 hours before her body was discovered, which meant her whereabouts were unknown. For at least a day after she disappeared, detectives struggled to understand where she'd been.

[D]

But there was always these theories that she was taken from the campus on a Thursday around lunchtime and then kept off campus, either in a room or in a cage.

[A]

Believe it or not, another thing that puzzled detectives was that Catherine's makeup seemed freshly applied. This fact caused some of them to propose that the killer had applied the makeup post mortem. Jim had heard these theories secondhand from other detectives over the years, but he'd never investigated the case himself. As a teaching exercise, Jim pulled the crime scene photos and some police reports to see if he and his students could develop a profile of the killer. According to the records, the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit in Quantico, Virginia, believed the killer was a white blue collar male between 25 and 35, someone who could move around the campus without suspicion. The cops later identified two suspects who fit that description. One was a security guard who'd shown an unusual interest in the case.

[D]

The other one was a maintenance guy that, during Hurricane Frederick in 1979, tried to abduct a female medical student who ran from him, and he shot her with an M16.

[A]

Why a maintenance worker who'd shot a female student with an M16 was still working on campus a year later, Jim didn't know. In any event, from what Jim could tell, neither man had a clear motive to kill Catherine. With the help of his criminal justice students, Jim listed all the possible motives on a chalkboard and began crossing them off one by one.

[D]

But I remember distinctly as we worked through that list of motives, that we ended up with two. And one of them was jealousy, and the other one was to get rid of an impediment.

[A]

Jealousy and getting rid of an impediment or removing something or someone that's in the way were lesser known but not uncommon motives for murder. And to Jim's way of thinking, neither one ruled out the possibility that the killer was a female. In fact, Jim and the class thought that if jealousy really was the motive, a female killer was probably the more likely scenario. Until now, Jim had been studying the case strictly as an educator. And yet the profile of a female killer that his class had developed stirred his law enforcement instincts. He'd started to think that Mobile's biggest cold case could actually be solved. I'm Jed Lipinski. This is gone south. When the spring semester ended in May 2002, Jim Barber decided to pull the entire case file on the Katherine Foster murder. The first thing that caught his eye had to do with One of Mobile PD's early suspects, the security guard, who'd shown an unusual interest in the case. The guard was never arrested, and three years after the murder, he'd committed suicide. But when the cops searched his home, they found a treasure trove of material that suggested to them that he may have been the killer after all.

[D]

After the suicide of this security guard, the investigation found articles about Katherine Foster's homicide. There was a copy of the autopsy, and some people described it that he had somewhat of a shrine with the articles about the homicide.

[A]

On his shrine, the security guard had highlighted portions of the autopsy and scrawled detailed notes in the margins. The investigators also found a poem he'd written about Catherine describing the light of the moon shining on the crime scene and other details that suggested he'd been there that night. When they entered his attic, they found something else.

[D]

And there was also, if you remember, some of the original theories about being kept in a locked room or a cage. There was a cage also found big enough to hold a human.

[A]

The purpose of the cage was unclear. Regardless, the investigation suddenly pointed at the dead security guard. But the more Jim studied the case file, the less faith he had in the security guard theory. For one thing, he was supposedly on duty at the time Catherine was killed. And the idea that Catherine had been kept in a cage at all made no sense to him.

[D]

The fact that looking at her hands, there were no cuts or abrasions, her fingernails weren't torn off or anything like that. I would imagine that if you were in a cage for 24 to 36 hours unattended, you'd make every effort to escape, and there would be indications that you're trying to get out of that cage.

[A]

Jim also focused on the fact that Catherine was wearing water soluble Mascara that hadn't run or smeared, meaning she hadn't cried before her death. What kind of 18 year old is held in a cage for a day, then marched through the woods to her death without shedding a tear? The notion that the security guard had applied the mascara himself struck him as absurd to Jim. The evidence pointed in a different direction. He believed that Catherine had only just put on her clothing, brushed her hair, and done her makeup when she died. He believed she was shot not after being held somewhere, but shortly before she was reported missing. All of this supported his earlier theory that the killer was a woman, someone close to Catherine.

[D]

What indicated to be was that she knew the shooter and she trusted the shooter, or she never would have walked into the woods without crying.

[A]

At this point, Jim reached out to some of the original investigators on the case to see what they thought. One of them was David Wilhelm. Though more than 20 years had passed, David had a vivid memory of the crime and its impact on both the university and the city of Mobile.

[B]

She didn't fit the normal victimology and homicides in Mobile at that time. I think it would be a stretch to say that she was considered to be a saint, but someone saintly, and she was just really well thought of and her family was very well thought of.

[A]

David had joined the investigation nine months after the murder. The campus was still in a panic, he said, convinced the killer was among them.

[B]

There were suspects littered all over the landscape. There were a lot of young people who were just saying, well, I think this guy did it. He acts strange. And so I remember one lived in a tent on some university property away from the main campus, but he lived in a tent and so people thought that he did it.

[A]

David shared Jim's skepticism of the theories that Catherine had been confined in a cage or made up at the crime scene. He interviewed dozens of people. He also shared Jim's belief that the killer was a female. In fact, he had a specific individual in mind, a friend of Catherine's named Jamie Letson. Jamie was a fellow freshman at South Alabama. She'd grown up with Catherine in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and ran in the same circle of friends. Several of those friends told David they thought Jamie had something to do with the murder. She had an unhealthy fixation with Catherine's boyfriend, they said, and she was always trying to insert herself in their relationship. But as David explained to Jim Barber, that was just one of many reasons he'd focused on Jamie.

[D]

He also reports to me that she's the last one to be seen With Catherine. She's the first one to mention that Catherine was missing. And she never returned to the campus after Catherine went missing and then withdrew from her courses two weeks later and moved to Birmingham.

[A]

David had interviewed Jamie on two different occasions in Birmingham, and she had not left a good impression.

[B]

1 I thought that Jamie was a deceitful manipulator. She could be very warm until you began to point out contradictions and responses to questions that were asked. In fact, at one point I said something along the lines of, you are telling me the truth, is that correct? And she said, I'm telling you the absolute truth. And I said, well, would you like to take a polygraph test? And that's when she became unhinged. She terminated the interview by standing up and beginning to scream at me and scream in a really unhinged sort of way.

[A]

And yet, despite all this, Jamie had been ruled out as a suspect early on for one reason. She had a rock solid alibi. Not long after Catherine disappeared, Jamie and some friends had left the campus and stayed in a neighboring county.

[D]

She was in a house in Baldwin county, so she wasn't even in Mobile county in the 8 to 24 hours time frame that the medical examiner said was the time of death.

[A]

But of course, Jim's theory, based on evidence from the crime scene, was that Catherine had died shortly after she went missing that Thursday afternoon, not the night before. She was found Saturday morning. Meaning Jamie's alibi didn't really matter. By now, Jim Barber was convinced Jamie Letson was a viable suspect. But he was not an investigator on the case and there wasn't much he could do. So he mentioned his theory to the head of criminal investigations.

[D]

That investigator thought it was interesting, but pretty much that's the extent of it.

[A]

The case was placed under review and Jim turned his attention back to his administrative duties. But then in December 2002, Mobile PD got a phone call from Mississippi claiming someone had just confessed that to Kathryn Foster's murder. Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back.

[E]

So I thought it would be fun.

[A]

If we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea of for the commercial, give it a [e-mail] Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3.

[C]

Month plan equivalent to 15 per month. Required new customer offer for first 3 months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes of networks busy taxes and fees extra.

[A]

See mintmobile.com hey there cats and kittens.

[D]

It's Brian from the commercial break, the.

[A]

Mediocre comedy podcast where my best friend Chrissy and I attempt to make sense of the world. We talk about the absurd, the ridiculous, and the stuff no one asked for, like Internet weirdos, pickup artists, and why everyone is obsessed with crystals and colonics.

[E]

It's all got to stop. The show is free, it's frequent, and.

[A]

It'S probably not for everyone. You can go to tcbpodcast.com [e-mail] the commercial break or check out the show.

[E]

Wherever you listen to podcasts.

[A]

We'll see you on the next commercial break.

[C]

And best to you Every week on the Moth podcast we hear from incredible people who have found their own voice.

[A]

There's this little bit of wisdom people say all the time, you know, that.

[C]

You should live in the moment.

[A]

Let me tell you something, there is nothing worse than being forced to live in the moment.

[C]

The Moth podcast features real people telling their stories live on stage to connect and learn from them. Follow and listen to the Moth on the Free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[A]

In December 2002, Mike Morgan was a sergeant in the Mobile Police Department Homicide unit. He was sitting at his desk one afternoon when his office got a call from the Pascagoula pd. They said they had some information about a cold case murder in Mobile from 1980.

[E]

The information that we received was that an individual in Biloxi, he was a sponsor in the AA program and one of the individuals in his group had confided in him that she had killed somebody at the University of South Alabama years earlier and that the individual responsible may be Jamie Letson.

[A]

Mike was a graduate from the University of South Alabama, and though he'd heard about the murder of Katherine Foster, he didn't know many details. Only after telling his supervisors that a woman had just confessed to it did he realize what a big deal this was.

[E]

When I notified my supervisor, I don't think it was very long where he cut him, notified everybody up the chain all the way to the chief. If you spoke to any of the old timers on the department, they would all tell you that was probably the biggest unsolved murder case in Mobile.

[A]

Word that Jamie Letson had just confessed to the murder of Katherine Foster quickly reached Jim Barber. Jim was stunned. The case had only just been placed under review on the assumption Jamie Letson was the killer. But they'd kept it under wraps and only a few detectives knew about It. Had Jamie somehow heard about the renewed interest in the case and decided to come clean? Or was the timing just a coincidence? To learn more, the department assigned the case to Mike Morgan. After reviewing the case file, he drove down to Pascagoula, where he met with the AA sponsor who'd reported Jamie's confession to the police.

[E]

His story basically, was that this individual, Jamie, was working through her 12 steps. And I believe it's the fourth and fifth steps where you kind of identify everybody that you wronged, and then you make an attempt to make amends. And so when I'm talking to the sponsor, he tells me that this is what he recommended to Jamie and that Jamie had confided in him that she had killed this person.

[A]

The sponsor didn't report her to the cops at first. Instead, he suggested she write a letter to Catherine and read it at her grave site. A few days later, they drove to the graveyard together, but they couldn't find Catherine's grave. Jamie had put the letter in a white envelope, the sponsor said, but he never saw it, and she never read it to him. The sponsor wasn't entirely convinced that Jamie had killed someone. A few months later, he confronted her about it and accused her of lying. Jamie was offended. She decided to prove that she was telling the truth.

[E]

And she went to the extremes to convince him, at one point going to the local library, printing out copies of News articles from 1980 and brought back to him and showing him, like, this is the girl I killed.

[A]

Jamie then went into detail about the crime itself and why she did it.

[E]

Jamie told her sponsor that Katherine had a boyfriend, and Jamie wanted Catherine's boyfriend. So that's kind of what led to her befriending Katherine and her boyfriend there on the campus. But ultimately, she determined that she had to get Katherine out of the way, and so she killed her to do so.

[A]

Jamie said she'd stolen a.22 from her grandmother's purse and brought it back to campus with her. On the Thursday afternoon when Catherine supposedly disappeared, Jamie said she'd lured her into the woods to look at some plants for a botany class she was taking.

[E]

And she said Catherine was walking in front of her and that she shot her in the back of the head. Now, when that happened, Jamie told her AA sponsor, the. That she did not fall right away, that she literally turned around and looked at her and just stood there. Jamie told her sponsor that it seemed like a minute before she actually fell. And then at that point, she walked over to her and put the gun closer to her head, near her temple and shot her a second time.

[A]

Having reviewed the case file, Mike knew that investigators had found Catherine's own blood on the soles of her shoes, suggesting she'd stepped in it before she died. This detail had baffled detectives, but it made sense in the scenario Jamie described. It was the kind of thing only the killer would know, Mike thought. After the shooting, Jamie told her sponsor that she'd thrown the gun into a dumpster and returned to her dorm. She then called a friend to say she couldn't find Catherine. The two of them went to Wendy's for lunch. When they got back and Catherine still hadn't shown, they called campus security to report her missing.

[E]

After he heard all of that, he became convinced that she was telling the truth. And that's when he went to the Pascagoula Police Department.

[A]

Mike was also convinced that Jamie was telling the truth when he got back to Mobile. One of the first people he told was David Wilhelm, the detective who'd interviewed Jamie Back in 1980, nine months after the murder.

[B]

When you heard that Jamie Letson, this young woman who you'd interviewed 20 years earlier and had some strong suspicions about, had written this letter essentially admitting to the murder, what did you think? I believed it because he had no motive to go to the police to say those sort of things that would be to his advantage in any way, shape, form or fashion.

[A]

When Mike later told Jim Barber what he'd learned from the AA sponsor in Pascagoula, Jim celebrated.

[D]

I was elated, thinking that we were going to finally bring closure to that homicide investigation that had haunted Mobile PD and the city of Mobile for a couple of decades.

[A]

But their enthusiasm waned as they started learning more about the sponsor. When Mike ran a criminal history check on him, he discovered the guy had been convicted of manslaughter and even worse, from a jury's point of view, perjury.

[D]

Which made him like the worst witness you could ever have in the world. No DA is going to touch him as a witness at that point unless you heavily corroborate what he said.

[A]

So not long after his conversation with Jamie's AA sponsor, Mike broadened his investigation. He started making contact with friends and family of both Jamie and Catherine to see what they thought of their new theory. Many of them repeated what they'd told David Wilhelm 22 years earlier, that they'd found Jamie's fixation with Catherine's boyfriend unnerving. In fact, Jamie's former roommates recalled Jamie telling them that Catherine's boyfriend was really her boyfriend.

[E]

Now, all of her friends thought this was very, very strange because they never saw this guy with Jamie. So they just couldn't figure out why Jamie is telling them that he is my boyfriend, that they spend all this time together because they all thought, that's not true. We just don't see that at all.

[A]

Another thing Mike learned was that Jamie's life seemed to have unraveled in the wake of Catherine's death. After leaving South Alabama, she bounced around to different colleges but never got her degree.

[E]

She ended up being arrested multiple times. She had written bad checks. There were fraud or theft issues, drug abuse. She had been married a couple of times. I think she spent some time in prison. Things were not good for her.

[A]

But the most important thing Mike learned had to do with Jamie's stepdad.

[E]

It was believed that Jamie's stepdad had found a letter at his house at one point where Jamie had basically said why she had to kill her. Apparently, the letter had been found at some point earlier. I don't know if it was years earlier, months earlier, I didn't know. But that became a big, big interest to me, is that I had to talk to her stepdad. It was vital for me to hear directly from him if, in fact, he had actually found a letter. And then what did it say?

[A]

Mike had avoided speaking with Jamie thus far. He asked everyone he spoke to to please keep their conversation confidential, to avoid tipping her off to the renewed investigation. And as far as he knew, he'd succeeded. The problem was Jamie and her two children were now living with her stepdad in Pascagoula. When Mike and his partner showed up at his door one afternoon in April 2003, Mike was hoping the stepdad would answer.

[E]

So I knock on the door, really hoping that he would just come to the door, since it's his house. And Jamie answers the door. And this is the first time that I've ever spoken to her. And I said, hi, I'm Mike from the Mobile Police Department. Introduce my partner. And she goes, I know who you are, and I'm Jamie. And so at that point, I knew it had gotten back to her. Somebody had said something and she had heard about it.

[A]

Mike braced himself for a heated confrontation. Instead, Jamie's stepdad appeared and calmly led Mike into his office. Jamie stayed in another part of the house.

[E]

So we're back in his office, and I tell him that I'm looking into this case and that I had heard that he may have found a letter from Jamie to Catherine. And I asked him if that, in fact was the case. If he had found a letter. And his response I found to be very odd because he goes, oh, you mean the letter? And so I'm like, yeah, the letter. What did it say? Because the way he said that, I'm thinking, oh, this is going to be good. And then he says, well, I'll let you read it. And I'm like, what? And he takes us to his garage and he's got lockers, like school lockers that you would have in the hallway at a school. He's got a padlock on the locker. He unlocks it, opens it up, and he hands me a spiral notebook. So I flip through it, just a couple pages, and I find this letter. The first part, it says, dear Catherine, it is me, Jamie, the one who killed you. And so I close it, I hand it to my partner, and I'm like, don't let that out of your sight.

[A]

After months of investigative work, Mike Morgan suddenly found himself holding a written confession to the murder of Katherine Foster. The stepdad told Mike that he'd found the notebook lying open on the kitchen counter a few months earlier. After reading the letter, he'd locked it away, mainly because he didn't want Jamie's two young daughters to read it.

[E]

He was really concerned about that, but he recognized the importance of what he had seen and he kept it, I guess, just in case someone ever came looking for it or in case it ever came up.

[A]

On the 40 minute drive back to Mobile, Mike could barely contain his excitement. He'd only glanced at the first line or two of the letter at the stepdad's house. As soon as he got back to the office, he read the entire notebook. It seemed that Jamie was using it to work through the 12 step program. There were letters of apology to other people in her life. The letter to Catherine was just three pages, but it contained everything Mike was hoping for. Dear Catherine, it began, after all these years, I have come to you. It is me, Jamie, the girl who took your life. Jamie then got right to the point. She admitted that she was obsessed with Catherine's boyfriend Tom, and that she shot her to get her out of the way. But her plan backfired. Tom suspected Jamie had something to do with the murder, she wrote, and he hated her for it. Jamie went on to say that she was, quote, acutely aware of what I did that day. Catherine had been a good Catholic girl, she wrote. She'd worked with the poor in Mexico and planned to travel to Northern Ireland to counsel children impacted by the violence of the conflict there. Only God knows what you might have contributed, Jamie wrote, adding, I wiped out all the good in one evil, selfishness moment. After rereading the letter five or six times, Mike ran it up the chain of command.

[E]

Ultimately, we got Jamie's fingerprints off of that notebook and off of that letter, specifically on those pages where she says that she killed her, where she explained why she had to kill her. And so with her fingerprints and her statement there, there was no question in my mind that we can prove that Jamie had killed Catherine. There was no question in any of our minds that we could prove that. We were all very, very excited.

[A]

Figuring they were days away from an indictment, Mike contacted the head of the district attorney's murder team, a woman named Jo Beth Murphree. She and Mike had done multiple trials together. Mike expected her to share his excitement.

[E]

And she just. She was not nearly as excited about it as I was. She was concerned that, yes, we had this letter from Jamie, but that Jamie, you know, she has a history of lying. She has a history of sometimes making up weird stories about things.

[A]

As Mike and the others had anticipated, Jobath thought the AA sponsors manslaughter and perjury convictions rendered him practically useless. She pointed out that no physical evidence connected Jamie to the crime scene. More importantly, she had that rock solid alibi during the time the medical examiner said Catherine was killed.

[E]

And so, based on all of that, she just was not willing to move forward with an arrest.

[A]

The stalemate lasted for more than four years. It wasn't until 2007 that the case gained traction again. That summer, Jim Barber was promoted to deputy chief of police. He'd lost track of the Katherine Foster case, but just days into his new role, he buttonholed Mike Morgan to ask why the DA hadn't prosecuted Jamie Letson yet. When Mike explained their reasoning, Jim was appalled. He decided to make his case to the DA's office himself.

[D]

We didn't get maybe halfway through the theory and the evidence before it got contentious. The voices did get elevated, and people began to dig in on their own opinions. I mean, probably deeper than an Alabama tick at that point, and we were getting nowhere.

[A]

But rather than give in, Jim pulled rank. He leveraged his new position to get a pair of special prosecutors from the state Attorney general's office appointed to the case. After reviewing the file, they agreed that there was enough to move forward. But first, they needed to deal with the time of Catherine's death.

[D]

And we began a very concerted effort to demonstrate that they had been working on a faulty time of death.

[A]

Basically, in reviewing the Autopsy, Jim noticed several things that suggested Catherine died two days before she was found, not the night before, as the medical examiner reported. One was her body temperature. The on scene investigation had revealed that Catherine's internal temperature was 66 degrees, while the temperature of the air was 70 degrees. Jim's forensic science textbook told him it could take at least 24 hours for a dead body to cool that much.

[D]

The other one that I looked at to try to figure out what the time of death might have been was that she was in rigor, but rigor was easily broken.

[A]

Rigor mortis sets in within two to six hours after death, but it takes another 24 to 36 hours to resolve or break, and even longer in colder conditions. If rigor was easily broken, it seemed possible that Catherine had been out there for 36 hours or more. Finally, the autopsy had found a lack of insect activity on Catherine's body, which to the medical examiner meant her body had been exposed for less than a day. Jim wasn't an entomologist, but Catherine had died in February. He thought it possible that the lack of fly eggs or larvae was due to the colder temperatures.

[D]

It was around that time when I came to that conclusion that I sent Mike Morgan to the body farm in Tennessee.

[A]

The body farm. The body farm is an outdoor laboratory run by the University of Tennessee's anthropological research unit. Mike Morgan had never heard of it.

[E]

I found out that basically they had a piece of property there at the university where they would literally put human bodies out in this area in the wide open to study the effects of decomposition, insect activity, all sorts of things in different environments, different weather conditions. So it is really, really fascinating.

[A]

Jim wanted Mike to go to the body farm to see if it was possible for a body to sit outside for 48 hours with little to no insect infestation. Mike jumped at the chance. The special prosecutor was less excited.

[E]

It really was funny because he really was apprehensive about going because he's a courtroom guy, he's not a crime scene guy, but this was really important. And so he was like, yes, let's go.

[A]

At the body farm, they met with the forensic anthropologist who managed the lab. They explained to her the conditions in which Catherine's body was found and their theory that she'd been outside for around 48 hours.

[E]

And so ultimately she says, look, I have a couple bodies that are out in the actual body farm location that have been out for about the same amount of time period. Our weather conditions over the past couple of days are pretty similar to the weather conditions that y' all experienced in 1980 when Kathryn's body was found. And she asked us, do y' all want to go take a look at it? And I was like, oh, yes, I'm all in. I definitely want to see this.

[A]

As the three of them walked into the wooded area where the bodies lay, the lab manager said she expected to see a decent amount of insect activity. But when they reached the first body, that's not what they saw.

[E]

So we look at it, and I am not seeing the level of insect activity that she just got finished telling us she expected to see. And so I'm looking at it, I look at her, she's looking at the body, and she goes, well, I guess you have your answer. It's definitely possible that she could have been out there for 48 hours.

[A]

When Mike reported his findings back to Jim Barber, Jim was convinced they finally had enough to indict Jamie Letson for murder. But a final hurdle remained, convincing the medical examiner that he'd made a mistake. Days after Mike's visit to the body farm, Jim and the special prosecutor arranged a meeting with him. Jim was nervous on the ride over.

[D]

He's a relatively ornery guy. I had to be very careful not to lead him to really look at the evidence and come to his own conclusions, because despite my theories, he's the me and Jim Barber to have all the theories in the world. Nobody's going to listen to me unless he agrees.

[A]

Once they'd all sat down, Jim gently floated his hypothesis for why Catherine's time of death might have been inaccurate. The medical examiner listened patiently. Then he took out the case file and began digging through his notes.

[D]

And I remember he pulled out a yellow paper, like legal pad paper. And on there, handwritten, was vitreous passive level. And then he had below that 44 hours, plus or minus four. And so I asked him about that.

[A]

Vitreous potassium level refers to the concentration of potassium inside the eyes. Normally, the gel like substance in your eye contains low levels of potassium. After death, though, the cells in the eyes break down, causing potassium levels to rise at a steady rate. Forensic scientists often use these levels to help determine time of death.

[D]

When he did that test, it indicated that she had been dead 44 hours, plus or minus four hours.

[A]

Wow. So that was in his notes, Right?

[D]

His handwriting, his notes from 1980. And he comes upon that note and then his expression changed. I mean, it was almost like a light bulb went off. And he finally just tells us that he was wrong in the time of death.

[A]

In other words, the Medical examiner had written in the days immediately following Catherine Foster's death that the potassium levels in her eyes suggested she'd been dead for 44 hours, give or take a few, not eight to 24 hours, as he'd written in his report. The medical examiner ultimately retracted the original time of death. He admitted Catherine could very well have been lying in the woods for the full two days that she was missing. With that, a sealed indictment was secured. Jim and another detective drove to Jackson, Mississippi, where they arrested Jamie at the halfway house where she was living.

[D]

And she's emotional and crying and upset, talking about her children. And then once we got her to headquarters, at some point, we were about to transport her to jail and she tells us that she wants to tell us what happened.

[A]

Jamie proceeded to tell the same story she'd recounted in her letter to Catherine more than six years earlier.

[D]

You know, I'm listening pretty intently that. Does her confession match up to the evidence? And it matched up 100% what the evidence showed.

[A]

In November of 2008, a grand jury indicted Jamie Letson for the murder of Katherine Foster. She would later plead not guilty, claiming that her confession was made up. But at trial, the jury deliberated for just six hours before finding her guilty. Mike Morgan was in the courtroom that day.

[E]

Once the jury came back and they found her guilty, it was kind of a relief that, hey, it finally happened. It is now over. She has been convicted and she's going to go to prison.

[A]

A federal judge gave Jamie a life sentence. Years after Jamie's conviction, Jim Barber rose to become the department's chief of police. Today, he's the City of Mobile's chief of staff. When he thinks back on his nearly 30 years in law enforcement, solving Katherine Foster's murder stands out.

[D]

Bringing this particular case to justice was probably the highlight of my career.

[A]

If you have information, story tips, or feedback you'd like to share with the Gone south team, please email [e-mail] that's gone south podcastmail.com we're on Facebook, TikTok and Instagram at Gone south podcast. You can also sign up for our newsletter on substack at Gone south with Joe Jed Lipinski Gone south is an Odyssey original podcast. It's created, written and narrated by me, Jed Lipinski. Our executive producers are Jenna Weiss Berman, Maddy Sprung Keyser, Tom Lipinski, Lloyd Lockridge, and me. Our story editors are Tom Lipinski, Maddie Sprung Keyser, and Joel Lovell. Gone south is edited, mixed and mastered by Chris Basel and Andy Jaskowicz. Production support from Ian Montana and Sean Cherry. Special thanks to J.D. crowley, Leah Rees, Dennis, Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney and Hillary Shof. If you want to hear more of Gone south, please take a few seconds to rate and review the show. It really helps. What's up guys?

[C]

I'm Jordan Robinson, host of the podcast.

[A]

The Women's Hoop Show.

[C]

We're heading towards the home stretch of the WNBA season and there is so much to get into every episode to twice a week I'm joined by one.

[A]

Of my amazing co hosts as we.

[C]

Dissect the biggest games, performances and even.

[A]

Some off court drama.

[C]

The playoffs are quickly approaching and now.

[A]

Is the best time to tune in. Who will come away as this year's champion?

[C]

The competition is heating up and so are we. Listen to and follow the Women's Hoop show available now. Wherever you get your podcasts.