S4|E12: Time of Death

Summary

Gone South: S4|E12 - "Time of Death"

Released January 2, 2025

Introduction

In the twelfth episode of the fourth season of Gone South, host Jed Lipinski delves into one of Mobile, Alabama's most infamous cold cases: the 1980 murder of Katherine Foster. Through meticulous storytelling and insightful interviews with key figures involved in the investigation, Lipinski uncovers the intricate details and eventual resolution of this Southern crime that captivated both the local community and law enforcement for decades.

The Katherine Foster Case

Katherine Foster, a 19-year-old freshman at the University of South Alabama, disappeared on a Thursday morning in 1980. Her lifeless body was discovered two days later in a wooded area near her dormitory. The autopsy revealed she had died from two bullet wounds to the head, one at close range. Strangely, there were no signs of robbery, sexual assault, or restraint, leaving detectives baffled by the lack of a clear motive.

Initial Investigation and Suspects

Jim Barber, a seasoned officer with the Mobile Police Department and a criminal investigations instructor at the University of South Alabama, took a keen interest in the Foster case. In the spring semester of 2002, Barber decided to involve his criminal justice students in profiling the unsolved murder, utilizing behavior, motive, and evidence to identify potential suspects.

The FBI's Behavioral Science Unit had previously profiled the killer as a white blue-collar male between 25 and 35 years old. This led investigators to two primary suspects:

1. A Security Guard: Exhibited an unusual obsession with the case. Three years post-murder, he committed suicide, leaving behind a home filled with Katherine's autopsy reports and detailed notes, suggesting a possible connection.

   David Wilhelm, Detective (03:05): "She had not been robbed or sexually assaulted... no signs of ligature marks to indicate she'd been tied up."

2. A Maintenance Worker: Had a history of attempting to abduct a female medical student during Hurricane Frederic in 1979, resulting in her death by an M16 rifle.

However, Barber remained unconvinced about both suspects due to the lack of a clear motive and inconsistencies in their profiles.

Jim Barber's New Theory

Working alongside his students, Barber narrowed down the possible motives to two: jealousy and the removal of an impediment. This led him to consider the unsettling possibility that the killer might be female—specifically, someone close to Katherine.

Jim Barber (05:13): "Jealousy and getting rid of an impediment... were lesser known but not uncommon motives for murder."

Convincing himself that Jamie Letson, a friend of Katherine's, fit this new profile, Barber revisited the case files. Despite Jamie having a solid alibi initially—being in Baldwin County during the estimated time of death—Barber theorized that Katherine's death occurred shortly before she was reported missing, making Jamie's alibi less relevant.

Jamie Letson's Alleged Confession

In December 2002, a breakthrough arrived when the Pascagoula Police Department received a confession from Jamie Letson. Mike Morgan, a sergeant in the Mobile PD's Homicide Unit, was tasked with verifying the confession. However, complications arose upon discovering that the AA sponsor who reported the confession had a tainted history, including manslaughter and perjury convictions, undermining the credibility of the confession.

Undeterred, Morgan expanded the investigation, interviewing Jamie's friends and family. Several pointed out Jamie's unhealthy fixation on Katherine's boyfriend, Tom, and her erratic behavior following Katherine's disappearance. Despite these suspicions, Jamie maintained her innocence, supported by her alibi and lack of physical evidence linking her to the crime scene.

Reopening the Case

The case remained stagnant until 2007, when Jim Barber, now Deputy Chief of Police, leveraged his new position to push for reopening the investigation. Collaborating with special prosecutors from the state attorney general's office, Barber and Morgan sought to challenge the original time of death determination made by the medical examiner.

Challenging the Time of Death

Upon reviewing the autopsy reports, Barber identified discrepancies in the estimated time of death. The medical examiner had originally concluded that Katherine died approximately 12 hours before her body was found. However, Barber noted that the body temperature and the state of rigor mortis suggested a much longer period of decomposition—potentially up to 44 hours.

To validate this theory, Mike Morgan visited the Body Farm at the University of Tennessee, an outdoor laboratory dedicated to studying human decomposition under various environmental conditions. The forensic anthropologist there confirmed that minimal insect activity, as observed in Katherine's case, was consistent with a time of death extending up to 48 hours under similar weather conditions.

Mike Morgan (35:21): "When we reached the first body, that's not what they saw... it could have been out there for 48 hours."

Indictment and Conviction

Armed with this new evidence, the medical examiner re-evaluated the time of death, conceding that Katherine could indeed have been dead for up to two days. This revelation invalidated Jamie Letson's alibi, as it aligned her timeline with the estimated time of death.

In November 2008, a grand jury indicted Jamie Letson for Katherine Foster's murder. During her trial, despite her claims of fabrication regarding her confession, the jury deliberated for merely six hours before finding her guilty. Jamie was subsequently sentenced to life in prison.

David Wilhelm, Detective (39:56): "That does her confession match up to the evidence? And it matched up 100% what the evidence showed."

Aftermath and Reflections

The resolution of the Katherine Foster case marked a significant milestone for the Mobile Police Department and the community, providing long-awaited closure. Jim Barber, now the City of Mobile's Chief of Staff, reflects on the case as a standout achievement in his nearly three-decade-long law enforcement career.

Jim Barber (40:53): "Solving Katherine Foster's murder stands out."

Detective David Wilhelm echoed these sentiments, highlighting the profound impact of bringing the perpetrator to justice after such a protracted investigation.

David Wilhelm (40:53): "Bringing this particular case to justice was probably the highlight of my career."

Conclusion

"Gone South: Time of Death" intricately weaves the narrative of Katherine Foster's unsolved murder and its eventual resolution, showcasing the perseverance and analytical prowess of law enforcement officers. Through detailed examination of investigative techniques and the re-evaluation of forensic evidence, the episode underscores the complexities of solving cold cases and the enduring pursuit of justice in the Southern United States.

Notable Quotes

• Jim Barber (05:13): "Jealousy and getting rid of an impediment... were lesser known but not uncommon motives for murder."
• Mike Morgan (35:21): "When we reached the first body, that's not what they saw... it could have been out there for 48 hours."
• David Wilhelm (39:56): "That does her confession match up to the evidence? And it matched up 100% what the evidence showed."
• Jim Barber (40:53): "Solving Katherine Foster's murder stands out."
• David Wilhelm (40:53): "Bringing this particular case to justice was probably the highlight of my career."

Additional Information

Gone South continues to explore crimes deeply rooted in Southern culture, offering listeners not only thrilling narratives but also profound insights into human nature and societal impacts of criminal activities. For more information or to share feedback, listeners are encouraged to reach out via email at gonesouthpodcastmail.com or follow the podcast on social media platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.

Transcript

[Ana Garcia]

I'm Ana Garcia with True Crime News. The podcast Every crime tells a story. Every story demands justice. True Crime News the podcast covers breaking crimes, investigating high profile and under the radar cases. Every week we dive beyond the headlines, exploring the effects of violent crimes on victims and search for justice. We hope you join us as your weekly source for true crime news. Listen to and follow True Crime the podcast on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Jim Barber]

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.

[David Wilhelm]

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.

[Jim Barber]

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.

[David Wilhelm]

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.

[Jim Barber]

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.

[David Wilhelm]

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.

[Jim Barber]

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.

[David Wilhelm]

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.

[Jim Barber]

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.

[David Wilhelm]

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.

[Jim Barber]

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.

[David Wilhelm]

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. On his shrine, the security guard had.

[Jim Barber]

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.

[David Wilhelm]

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.

[Jim Barber]

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.

[David Wilhelm]

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.

[Jim Barber]

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.

[David Wilhelm]

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

[Jim Barber]

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.

[Unknown]

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.

[Jim Barber]

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.

[Unknown]

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.

[Jim Barber]

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.

[David Wilhelm]

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.

[Jim Barber]

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

[Unknown]

One, 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.

[Jim Barber]

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.

[David Wilhelm]

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.

[Jim Barber]

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.

[David Wilhelm]

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

[Jim Barber]

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 to Kathryn Foster's murder.

[Jenna Fisher]

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[Jim Barber]

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[Jim Barber]

18/ DNC supply In December 2002, Mike Morgan was a sergeant in the Mobile Police Department's 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.

[Mike Morgan]

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.

[Jim Barber]

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.

[Mike Morgan]

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.

[Jim Barber]

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.

[Mike Morgan]

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've 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.

[Jim Barber]

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.

[Mike Morgan]

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 is showing him like, this is the girl I killed.

[Jim Barber]

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

[Mike Morgan]

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.

[Jim Barber]

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.

[Mike Morgan]

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.

[Jim Barber]

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.

[Mike Morgan]

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.

[Jim Barber]

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 1989 months after the murder. 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?

[Unknown]

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.

[Jim Barber]

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

[David Wilhelm]

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.

[Jim Barber]

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.

[David Wilhelm]

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.

[Jim Barber]

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.

[Mike Morgan]

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.

[Jim Barber]

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.

[Mike Morgan]

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.

[Jim Barber]

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

[Mike Morgan]

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?

[Jim Barber]

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.

[Mike Morgan]

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.

[Jim Barber]

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.

[Mike Morgan]

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.

[Unknown]

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[Jim Barber]

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.

[Mike Morgan]

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.

[Jim Barber]

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, selfish moment. After rereading the letter five or six times, Mike ran it up the chain of command.

[Mike Morgan]

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.

[Jim Barber]

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, and she just.

[Mike Morgan]

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.

[Jim Barber]

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.

[Mike Morgan]

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

[Jim Barber]

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 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.

[David Wilhelm]

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.

[Jim Barber]

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 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.

[David Wilhelm]

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

[Jim Barber]

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.

[David Wilhelm]

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.

[Jim Barber]

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.

[David Wilhelm]

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

[Jim Barber]

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.

[Mike Morgan]

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.

[Jim Barber]

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.

[Mike Morgan]

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.

[Jim Barber]

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.

[Mike Morgan]

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 as.

[Jim Barber]

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.

[Mike Morgan]

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.

[Jim Barber]

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.

[David Wilhelm]

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 going to have all the theories in the world. Nobody's going to listen to me unless he agrees.

[Jim Barber]

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.

[David Wilhelm]

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.

[Jim Barber]

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.

[David Wilhelm]

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

[Jim Barber]

Wow. So that was in his notes, right?

[David Wilhelm]

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.

[Jim Barber]

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.

[David Wilhelm]

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.

[Jim Barber]

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

[David Wilhelm]

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.

[Jim Barber]

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.

[Mike Morgan]

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.

[Jim Barber]

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.

[David Wilhelm]

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

[Jim Barber]

If you have information, story tips, or feedback you'd like to share with the Gone south team, please email [e-mail] that's gonesouthpodcastmail.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 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, Maddie Sprung Kaiser, Tom Lipinski, Lloyd Lockridge, and me. Our story editors are Tom Lipinski, Maddy Sprung Keyser and Joel Lovell. Gone south is edited, mixed and mastered by Chris Basil and Andy Jaskowitz. Production support from Ian Montana and Sean Cherry. Special thanks to J.D. crowley, Leah Rees, Dennis, Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney and Hilary Shuff. If you want to hear more of Gone south, please take a few seconds to rate and review the show. It really helps.