On Jan. 3, 1882 — the day after three men were arrested for the Ashland murders — as many as 1,500 people descended on Catlettsburg, Ky., for a preliminary hearing. That is more than the population of the town itself.

The railroads ran extra trains. People came from 50 and 60 miles away. Business in the town stopped entirely. Then the court delayed for want of witnesses, and by 10 that night reporters were writing that a crowd had gathered at the public square and there were fears of trouble before morning.

The next day, 77 newspapers across the country carried the story, most on the front page. Editorials openly questioned whether men accused of murdering children deserved the protection of the courts at all. Ashland's leaders spent that winter fighting on two fronts — keeping their own neighbors from lynching the prisoners, and keeping the rest of the country from branding their town a lawless place.

The Ashland Tragedy Case, Pt. 2: Justice covers what happened when the case reached a courtroom: a judge who moved the prisoners downriver using three steamboats and a deception played out in front of thousands of spectators, and two murder trials held less than a month after the crime.

Hosts Marcus Roland and Emily Steele are joined by historian Joe Castle, author of The Ashland Tragedy: Murder, a Mob and a Militia in Kentucky.

Content warning: this episode contains graphic descriptions of violence and sexual assault drawn from trial testimony.

This is Part 2 of a four-part series.

Keywords: Kentucky true crime, Kentucky Case Files, Ashland Tragedy, Ashland Kentucky, Catlettsburg, Boyd County, George Ellis, William Neal, Ellis Craft, 1882 trials, accomplice testimony, Judge George Brown, Ohio River, steamboats, Gilded Age justice, historical true crime, Joe Castle, true crime podcast, Kentucky history podcast

Around 4:30 on the morning of Christmas Eve 1881, a woman in Ashland, Ky., looked toward her neighbor's house and thought she saw lamplight. It was fire.

By the time neighbors forced their way inside, three teenagers were dead: 17-year-old Robbie Gibbons, his 14-year-old sister Fannie, and Fannie's best friend Emma, who had been sent next door the evening before so the Gibbons children wouldn't be alone in the house. Daylight revealed what the darkness had hidden — blood on the bedsheets, an axe and a crowbar matted with hair, an overturned can of coal oil. Three physicians examined the bodies and reached the same conclusion. The children had not died in the fire. The fire had been set to conceal what killed them.

Pt. 1 of The Ashland Tragedy Case follows the first two weeks of an investigation that gripped the nation — and went badly wrong. A citizens' committee hired a respected Ohio detective, who arrived promising to examine every fact before settling on a theory — and settled on one within days: that the children's own father had done it. Newspapers across the country printed it. John Gibbons had been in West Virginia for more than a month. It took a deputy U.S. marshal named James Heflin, a train ride deep into the mountains and a stack of sworn affidavits to prove it. Then an ordinary conversation in an Ashland store cracked the case open for real.

Hosts Marcus Roland and Emily Steele are joined by historian Joe Castle, author of The Ashland Tragedy: Murder, a Mob and a Militia in Kentucky, the definitive work on the case.

This is Part 1 of a three-part series.

Listen at Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Keywords: Kentucky true crime, Kentucky Case Files, Ashland Tragedy, Ashland Kentucky, Boyd County, 1881 murders, Gibbons family, Emma Thomas, historical true crime, Ohio River, Gilded Age crime, wrongful accusation, yellow journalism, Joe Castle, true crime podcast, Kentucky history podcast

"He made bad choices." That's what Joseph Smith's family says they were told, in one form or another, from the night he died forward.

On March 5, 2021, the 25-year-old was shot and killed in a parking lot in Upton, Kentucky. The man who shot him, Ryan Woodrum, admitted to police that he fired the shots and claimed self-defense. No arrest was made. No charges were filed. No judge or jury ever weighed that claim.

In the case finale, hosts Marcus Roland and Emily Steele turn to the people who knew Smith — a licensed welder, a hunter and fisherman, a man who lost his mother before he was old enough to remember her and who struggled with addiction and homelessness in the years before his death. His cousin Keeshia Hendrix describes the notification her family received in the middle of the night, the years of unanswered calls to Kentucky State Police, and the moment she finally read the case file. Since then she has written the Kentucky governor's office, the state attorney general, the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice, put yard signs across Hardin County, and refused, in her words, to shut up about it.

The season closes with what the record does and doesn't answer, why a self-defense claim that costs a life deserves scrutiny, and what it means when a victim starts to look like a defendant.

This is Part 4 of a four-part investigative series. Listen to Parts 1, 2 and 3 first. The admitted shooter, Ryan Woodrum, claimed self-defense. No charges were filed. Kentucky Case Files reached out to Ryan and Brianna Woodrum for comment; they did not respond. Kentucky State Police provided records but declined to comment on our other inquiries.

Listen at Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Keywords: Kentucky true crime, Kentucky Case Files, Joseph Smith, Upton Kentucky, Hardin County, self-defense shooting, Ryan Woodrum, Keeshia Hendrix, Kentucky State Police, reopen the case, victim advocacy, addiction and homelessness, criminal justice, true crime podcast, Kentucky podcast