The Boy Who Watched and Stayed Silent: The Murder of Christy Mullins

A fourteen-year-old girl walked into the woods behind a shopping center on a Saturday afternoon and never walked back out. The man who reported finding her body described the killer in precise detail — tall, thin, scraggly black hair, shirtless, wearing cut-off jeans. That description matched the clothes he was wearing when he walked into the shopping center minutes later. How does the first witness on scene describe himself as the suspect?

In this episode, we explore a six-hour interrogation of a man with an IQ of 56 who had no legal representation, a ten-year-old boy told by his mother never to speak about what he saw that afternoon, and a degraded male DNA sample recovered from Christy's clothing forty years after her murder. Was the wrong man sentenced to life in prison within eleven days of the crime — while the real killer gave police his own description? The forensic science and the witness testimony tell two stories that cannot both be true.

Case Details

Victim: Christy Mullins, 14 years old, student and athlete, five days from her fifteenth birthday.

Date: August 23, 1975.

Location: Clintonville, Ohio, USA.

Case Status: Cold case officially resolved without prosecution. In November 2015, Columbus police publicly confirmed Henry Newell as the killer. Newell died in September 2008, making criminal charges legally impossible. No one has ever been convicted of Christy's murder.

Episode Key Points

- Henry Newell's own witness statement described the suspect as shirtless and wearing cut-off jeans — the exact outfit a shopping center clerk confirmed Henry was wearing when he entered her store moments after allegedly finding the body.

- Bobby Newell, Henry's ten-year-old stepson, was told by his mother to never speak about what he saw; when he testified at age twelve, he stated Henry was gone thirty to forty-five minutes — not the few minutes Pam had claimed under oath.

- Jack Carnes, a man with an IQ of 56, was charged, entered a guilty plea, and sentenced to life in prison within eleven days of the murder, with no physical evidence connecting him to the crime.

- A Newell family member stated that Henry confessed to the killing while driving together — but his version contained two specific factual errors about how Christy's hands were bound and which side of her skull sustained the fatal damage.

Christy Mullins, Clintonville Ohio homicide, Columbus cold case 1975, false confession wrongful conviction, Henry Newell murder, homicide, investigation, forensic science, true detective, criminal minds, murder, unsolved mysteries, true crime English.

The Bite Mark Nobody Wrote Down: The Death of Lauren Agee at Wakefest 2015

A 21-year-old woman was found floating face-down in a cove at a Tennessee lake festival, and investigators declared it an accident before the autopsy was even complete. The lead investigator had no homicide training, no sexual assault kit was ever requested, and a bite mark found by a private forensic expert never appeared in the original autopsy report. How does a body end up 700 feet from camp — against the direction of the current — if nobody moved it?

In this episode, we explore a physical experiment that proved Lauren's body could not have reached the water from a fall alone, a threatening statement made twice by one of her companions directly to a responding officer, and an Instagram post captioned "best weekend ever" published the morning after her body was found. Was this a catastrophic investigative failure, or something the investigation was never meant to find? The forensic science and the body's location tell two stories that cannot both be true.

Case Details

Victim: Lauren Agee, 21, Tennessee resident and aspiring criminal justice professional.

Date: August 2, 2015 (body discovered); incident occurred night of August 1–2, 2015.

Location: Center Hill Lake, Tennessee, USA.

Case Status: The death was ruled accidental. No criminal charges have been filed. A wrongful death civil lawsuit filed by Lauren's family in December 2016 survived dismissal after an appeals court ruling in February 2019 and remains part of the ongoing legal record.

Episode Key Points

- A private forensic expert found no water in Lauren's stomach, indicating she did not drown — contradicting the mechanism of death in the official finding.

- Lauren's clothing was described as pristine with no rips or tears, which does not align with a 35-to-45-foot fall down a rocky cliff face.

- Lauren's body was found approximately 700 feet from the campsite in a cove running opposite to the lake's natural current direction.

- A bite mark on Lauren's right breast was identified by a private forensic expert but was never documented in the original autopsy report.

Lauren Agee, Center Hill Lake Tennessee, Wakefest 2015 homicide, Smith County Tennessee death investigation, accidental drowning disputed, true crime, forensic science, investigation, homicide, murder, unsolved mysteries, criminal minds, true crime English.

The Door That Locked From The Wrong Side: The Double Murder of Arushi Talwar and Hemraj Banjadeh

A thirteen-year-old girl was found in her bed with a blanket pulled neatly over her body — throat slit, skull fractured, blood soaking through the mattress. The door to the terrace had been locked from the outside. And for more than twenty-four hours, while police searched the city for a missing suspect, that door stayed shut. The body on the other side was decomposing in the morning sun.

In this episode, we explore a whiskey bottle that carried DNA from both victims, a terrace door that should have been physically impossible to lock the way it was found, and vaginal swabs that were officially retested — and turned out not to belong to the victim at all. Who was inside that flat when Arushi died, and how did they leave without a trace? The homicide investigation that followed would contaminate evidence, change autopsy findings, and ultimately convict two parents — before a higher court threw everything out.

Case Details

Victim: Arushi Talwar, 13, student; Hemraj Banjadeh, adult, live-in domestic worker from Nepal.

Date: Night of May 15 into May 16, 2008.

Location: Jalvayu Vihar, Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India.

Case Status: Unsolved. Rajesh and Nupur Talwar were convicted in November 2013 and sentenced to life in prison. Convictions were overturned in October 2017. A Supreme Court petition filed in 2018 by the CBI and Hemraj's wife remains unresolved.

Episode Key Points

- Arushi's bed sheet and blanket were disposed of before India's Central Bureau of Investigation took over the case, and her mattress was thrown onto a neighbor's terrace so the flat could be cleaned.

- Twenty-four of twenty-six fingerprints collected at the crime scene were rendered useless by incorrect collection procedure; the two valid prints match no one connected to the case.

- Vaginal swabs taken from Arushi during the original autopsy were sent for retesting in 2009 and were found not to belong to Arushi — raising questions of contamination, loss, or substitution.

- Two post-mortem doctors independently changed their official findings more than a year after the murders, with no new physical evidence presented to justify either amendment.

Arushi Talwar, Noida double homicide 2008, Hemraj Banjadeh murder, Jalvayu Vihar India, honor killing India, true detective, forensic science, homicide, murder, criminal minds, investigation, unsolved mysteries, true crime English.

She Vanished Before Help Arrived: The Disappearance of Maura Murray

A school bus driver stopped at a crashed car on a dark New Hampshire road and spoke directly to a young woman standing outside it. She told him she had already called for help. There was no cell service at that location — he knew that. Within fifteen minutes, every officer on scene agreed: she was simply gone.

In this episode, we explore the seven-minute gap between Butch Atwood's 911 call and the first official responder's arrival, a police SUV marked 001 placed nose-to-nose with Maura's car by a witness — on a night its registered chief was not on duty, and a handwritten name and phone number found in the car that took nineteen years to trace to a property just twenty-five miles from where Maura's car came to rest. Was this a young woman running from something she believed she could outrun, or did someone reach her first?

Case Details

Victim: Maura Murray, 21, nursing student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Date: February 9, 2004.

Location: Route 112, Haverhill, New Hampshire, USA.

Case Status: Unsolved and officially open. No charges have ever been filed. The case has remained active for over twenty years with no public investigative movement and no suspect identified.

Episode Key Points

- The school bus driver who spoke to Maura knew there was no cell service at that location, yet she told him she had already called AAA — a call that no record confirms was ever made.

- A witness driving past the scene observed Maura's car positioned nose-to-nose with a police SUV labeled 001 — the chief's personal vehicle — on a night he was neither on duty nor scheduled to work.

- Sergeant Cecil Smith's first bulletin described Maura as five feet seven inches tall — her exact height — despite his official claim that he never saw her or confirmed her identity at the scene.

- Cadaver dogs searching a local property years later alerted on a downstairs closet and a section of upstairs carpet; luminol testing by later owners returned a positive result for human blood showing a mixture of male and female DNA, too degraded to identify.

Maura Murray, Route 112 Haverhill New Hampshire, missing person 2004, UMass Amherst disappearance, unsolved mysteries, homicide, true detective, investigation, forensic science, criminal minds, murder, morbid, true crime English.

The Tire That Wasn't Flat by Accident: The Murder of Jodi Sanderholm

A slashed tire on a January morning kept Jodi's best friend from driving away — and sent Jodi home alone instead. Campus security footage would later show exactly who walked toward that parking spot. The question investigators had to answer wasn't who did it. It was how many times this man had done something like this before, and how many people had already reported it.

In this episode, we explore a surveillance record spanning more than a decade of documented predatory behavior that never resulted in a single conviction, a light blue Cadillac spotted four days before the murder that was never reported to police, and a forensic trail — DNA under fingernails, matched shoe prints, and a single hair in a submerged car — that placed one man at every point on the timeline. How does a pattern that visible go uninterrupted for thirteen years?

Case Details

Victim: Jodi Sanderholm, 18, pre-pharmacy student, Cowley College; class valedictorian and two-year captain of the Tigarette dance line.

Date: January 5, 2007.

Location: Arkansas City, Kansas, USA.

Case Status: Justin Thurber was convicted of aggravated kidnapping, rape, sodomy, and capital murder in 2009 and sentenced to death. The sentence remains active; Thurber is on death row in Kansas.

Episode Key Points

- Three friends named by Justin as his alibi for January 5 each independently denied being with him and produced verified alibis placing them elsewhere.

- A shoe print found in a wooded lot directly across the street from the Sanderholm mailbox matched the sneakers seized from Justin's home — still wet and drying on a towel when investigators arrived.

- Justin had confided to a friend in approximately 1994 that he had been sneaking into the Sanderholm family's yard to watch Jodi and her sister through windows — when Jodi was approximately eight years old.

- Flip-flop prints alongside larger sneaker prints led into the wildlife area woods, then stopped completely — only the sneaker prints continued inward for the full seventy-plus steps.

Jodi Sanderholm, Arkansas City Kansas homicide, Cowley County 2007, capital murder Kansas, Justin Thurber death row, true crime, homicide, forensic science, criminal minds, investigation, murder, stalking, true crime English.

The Girl Who Ran But Nobody Came: The Alphabet Murders of Carmen Colon, Wanda Walkowicz, and Michelle Mayenza

A ten-year-old girl jumped from a moving car on a Rochester expressway in broad daylight while strangers watched from their own vehicles. Three witnesses called police. None of them stopped. Within hours, Carmen Colon was dead — and the man who took her was already gone. This homicide investigation would repeat itself twice more, with the same initials, the same age range, and the same unanswered question at the center.

In this episode, we explore the four-day delay that cost investigators their clearest witness to Michelle's abduction, a Good Samaritan who physically confronted the suspect roadside at dusk and lived to describe him in detail, and the serology test from 1979 that eliminated the strongest suspect and left the case without a direction. How does a killer take three girls with matching double initials, leave each body in a town matching that initial, and still remain unidentified more than fifty years later?

Case Details

Victim: Carmen Colon, 10, elementary school student; Wanda Walkowicz, 11, elementary school student; Michelle Mayenza, 10, elementary school student.

Date: November 1971 – November 1973.

Location: Rochester, New York (Monroe County), USA.

Case Status: Officially unsolved. No charges have ever been filed. DNA from Wanda's case has been profiled and entered into comparison databases, but as of 2023, all tested suspects have been eliminated.

Episode Key Points

- A witness saw Michelle crying inside a light-colored car on November 26, 1973, but her mother waited four days before calling police — a delay that pushed the composite sketch publication to December 3.

- The Good Samaritan who confronted the suspect roadside noted the driver's long, dirty fingernails — a detail that matched scratch marks found on Carmen Colon's body two years earlier.

- Dennis Termini, the strongest suspect for years, was eliminated in 1979 not by alibi but by serology: he was a secretor, and the killer was confirmed to be a non-secretor.

- The odds of three random victims each sharing double initials and each being found in a town matching that initial has been calculated at approximately 0.03 percent.

Carmen Colon, Wanda Walkowicz, Michelle Mayenza, Rochester New York murders, Monroe County homicide, Alphabet Murders 1971 1973, unsolved mysteries, true detective, forensic science, homicide, criminal minds, investigation, murder, true crime English.

The Man Who Was Already Gone: The Murder of David Carter

A son knocked on his father's apartment door on a Sunday afternoon — and stood just feet away from a crime scene while a woman told him his dad had stepped out for a walk. That same morning, David had texted that he was too sick to even speak on the phone. Someone was lying, and David Carter was already gone.

In this episode, we explore the impossible gap between the last text David sent and the moment his son stood at that door, a sleeping bag found along Interstate 75 in Ohio that a highway worker feared might contain a child, and a kitchen knife that a coroner says was used for hours inside a Melvindale apartment. Was this the act of one person acting alone — or did someone plan every detail, including how to cross state lines undetected? The forensic evidence and the timeline cannot both point in the same direction.

Case Details

Victim: David Carter, 39, father and youth football coach.

Date: On or around October 28–29, 2018.

Location: Melvindale, Michigan, USA; remains recovered along Interstate 75, Ohio.

Case Status: Tamara "Tammy" Williams was charged with first-degree murder, moving a dead body, and tampering with evidence in December 2018. She remains a fugitive as of 2024, listed on the U.S. Marshals' fifth-most-wanted list. No trial has taken place.

Episode Key Points

- David texted his son saying he was too sick to speak, yet Tammy told that same son hours later that David had stepped out for a walk — both statements cannot be true.

- A highway worker mowing grass along I-75 in Ohio found a sleeping bag containing the lower half of a human body, with no upper remains recovered at that location — the rest of David was found in two separate locations across a ten-mile stretch.

- The coroner determined dismemberment was carried out with a kitchen knife over a period of several hours, meaning someone remained inside David's apartment long after his death.

- Tammy fled Michigan using her real identity, left a credit card trail from Ann Arbor to Chicago to New York City, and was last confirmed on surveillance at a Bronx fish market in October 2020 — she has not been located since.

David Carter, Melvindale Michigan homicide, Interstate 75 remains Ohio, dismemberment murder 2018, fugitive Tamara Williams, homicide, investigation, true detective, forensic science, murder, criminal minds, unsolved mysteries, true crime English.

The Empty Urn She Never Should Have Opened: The Disappearance of Angela Green

A daughter spent seven months mourning her mother — grieving a death her father had described in careful detail, including the ashes delivered by a stranger for fifteen hundred dollars cash. When she finally opened the urn, it was completely empty. No death certificate existed anywhere in the state of Kansas, and Angela's passport, purse, and flip phone had never left the house.

In this episode, we explore the seven-month gap between the night Angela Green vanished and the moment her daughter filed a missing persons report, a mound of freshly turned dirt at a second property marked with Angela's favorite flowers, and phone records showing zero calls to any hospital or mental health facility during the weeks Jeff claimed his wife was committed. Was Angela Green the victim of a carefully staged disappearance designed to look like a mental health crisis, or did something happen inside that Prairie Village home that no one is willing to confirm? The forensic science and the timeline point in one direction — but a body has never been found.

Case Details

Victim: Angela Green (née Guo), 51, Chinese immigrant and homemaker.

Date: On or around June 20, 2019.

Location: Prairie Village, Kansas, USA.

Case Status: The case remains an open missing persons investigation with suspected homicide. Prairie Village PD, the FBI, and the Kansas Bureau of Investigation are all involved. No arrests have been made and no remains have been recovered as of the most recent public reporting.

Episode Key Points

- Jeff Green purchased an urn in Angela's favorite colors — red and black — online, shortly after announcing her death, and it was found completely empty when opened.

- Angela's passport, wallet, purse, and flip phone never left the family home, yet Homeland Security confirmed she never departed the United States.

- Jeff's phone records show zero calls to any hospital, psychiatric facility, or mental health provider during the period he claimed Angela was involuntarily committed.

- Jeff's brother's wife, upon being told Angela was reported missing, said immediately: "Jeff should get a lawyer — an accident might have happened."

Angela Green, Prairie Village Kansas missing person, suspected homicide Kansas 2019, Jeff Green investigation, no-body homicide case, homicide, criminal minds, true detective, investigation, forensic science, murder, unsolved mysteries, true crime English.