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

In any homicide investigation, the physical evidence doesn't take sides. It can contradict. It can clarify. And sometimes, it raises questions that the official record leaves unanswered.

In Part 2 of Kentucky Case Files' four-part investigation into the death of Joseph Smith, hosts Marcus Roland and Emily Steele turn to the forensic record — the state medical examiner's autopsy, the toxicology findings, and the bullet trajectories — to examine whether the physical evidence is consistent with the account authorities accepted the night Smith was fatally shot in a grocery store parking lot in Upton, Ky., in March 2021.

The autopsy found seven gunshot wounds. All five shell casings recovered at the scene were photographed inside the vehicle. The medical examiner's report documents bullet paths on the left side of Smith's body that traveled upward and to the right — findings the hosts examine alongside the admitted shooter's own account to police.

Methamphetamine was detected in Smith's system at the time of death. The prosecutor assigned to the case told Kentucky Case Files that the finding would have made it harder to convince a jury that Smith wasn't behaving erratically. But toxicologists have long cautioned that blood meth levels cannot reliably predict impairment — and according to official records, the admitted shooter never described Smith as acting violently or out of control.

More than three months after the shooting, the case went to a Hardin County grand jury. A veteran criminal defense attorney with 42 years of experience, who was not involved in the case, weighs in on what is standard grand jury practice — and what he found unusual. The grand jury did not return an indictment.

This is Part 2 of a four-part investigative series. Listen to Pt. 1: Hell Is Real first. The admitted shooter claimed self-defense. No charges were filed.

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

Keywords: Kentucky true crime, Kentucky Case Files, Joseph Smith, autopsy, forensic evidence, toxicology, self-defense shooting, grand jury, Hardin County, Upton Kentucky, Kentucky State Police, true crime podcast, homicide investigation, Kentucky podcast, Season 2

Kentucky authorities considered the Joseph Smith case resolved. A grand jury declined to indict. The file was closed. His family was told he made bad choices.

But the closer Smith's cousin Keeshia Hendrix looked at the official accounts — the police records, the recorded interviews, the investigation that lasted less than two weeks — the more she saw cracks. And she isn't alone.

In Part 3 of Kentucky Case Files' four-part investigation of The Joseph Smith Case, hosts Marcus Roland and Emily Steele examine the questions that Smith's family says were never seriously pursued: about the confrontation, about the self-defense claim, about whether investigators made any meaningful effort to speak with people who knew him. A veteran criminal defense attorney with 42 years of experience, who was not involved in the case, weighs in on the legal realities of what happened that night.

And then there are the bystanders. Since Parts 1 and 2 aired, Kentucky Case Files has been contacted independently by people who say they were in that IGA parking lot the night Smith was killed — none of them connected to Smith, Woodrum, or their families. Kentucky Case Files found no record that police ever spoke with them. Their accounts differ on some details, as memories of traumatic events often do. But on one point, every one of them agreed: Something felt off about how this case was handled.

It's not just Smith's family asking questions anymore.

A Mountain of Questions is Part 3 of a four-part investigative series on The Joseph Smith Case. Listen to Parts 1 and 2 first. The admitted shooter, Ryan Woodrum, claimed self-defense. No charges were filed. Bystander identities are protected. Kentucky Case Files cannot independently verify every detail of their accounts.

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

Keywords: Kentucky true crime, Kentucky Case Files, Joseph Smith, self-defense law, Hardin County, Upton Kentucky, Kentucky State Police, witnesses, bystanders, wrongful death, true crime podcast, homicide investigation, Kentucky podcast, Season 2

Season 2 of Kentucky Case Files begins with a case that state authorities consider closed — but Joseph Smith's family does not.

On the night of March 5, 2021, 25-year-old Joseph Smith was fatally shot in the parking lot of a small grocery store in Upton, Ky. The man who shot him admitted to it, claiming self-defense. No one was ever arrested. No one was ever charged.

Hosts Marcus Roland and Emily Steele spent months independently investigating the case, filing open records requests with authorities and obtaining crime scene photographs, police records, and recorded interrogation footage — because there was almost nothing in the public record to rely on.

What they found raises questions that Smith's family says have never been answered. The first interview with the admitted shooter was conducted by a state trooper who knew him personally — and was not recorded. And according to Smith's relatives, police never meaningfully reached out to people who knew him.

Along a busy stretch of Interstate 65 near Mammoth Cave, a billboard reads "HELL IS REAL" — a warning about eternal damnation. For Joseph Smith's family, those words mean something else entirely.

This is Part 1 of a four-part investigative series. Kentucky Case Files obtained records through the Kentucky Open Records Act. The admitted shooter claimed self-defense. No charges were filed.

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, Kentucky State Police, open records, wrongful death, true crime podcast, Kentucky podcast, small town crime, gun laws Kentucky, Season 2

On March 5, 2021, a 25-year-old man named Joseph Smith was shot and killed in a grocery store parking lot in Upton, Kentucky. The man who shot him claimed self-defense. No arrest was ever made. No charges were ever filed.

His family was told he "made bad choices." They have never accepted that answer.

For Season 2, Kentucky Case Files spent months conducting original reporting — obtaining Kentucky State Police records, recorded interviews, and 194 crime scene photographs through the state's Open Records Act, and interviewing the people closest to this case.

The Joseph Smith Case is a four-part series examining what the evidence shows, what the investigation missed, and why one family is still asking questions five years later.

Season 2 begins June 16. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Some stories live on through investigation — others through art.

In the season one finale of Kentucky Case Files, Marcus Roland and Emily Steele sit down with Louisville author Ellen Birkett Morris, whose short story "Lost Girls" was inspired by Ann Gotlib’s disappearance. Growing up near the mall where Ann was last seen, Morris transformed a city’s grief into a powerful meditation on loss, fear and resilience.

Through interview and dramatic reading in The Ann Gotlib Case, Pt. 3: Lost Girls, Kentucky Case Files explores how creative expression can give voice to tragedy — and how Ann’s story, though never fully resolved, continues to echo through time.

Listen at https://pod.co/kentucky-case-files, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music or wherever you get your podcasts.