Investigation: Homicide

investigationhomicide
  • 5.0 (30)
  • True Crime
  • Updated Weekly

Telling Mississippi’s crime stories from an eyewitness perspective.

  1. 5d ago

    Episode #78 -- Not Guilty

    In September 2022, Jaylen Lewis, 25, was shot and killed during a Capitol Police stop at West and Mayes streets in Jackson. Two officers fired that night: Steven Frederick Jr. and Michael Rhinewalt. Both were charged with manslaughter, and the case drew strong reactions from every direction, about the shooting itself and about the two men on trial.   After almost a week in Judge Faye Peterson's courtroom, a Hinds County jury deliberated less than five hours before finding Frederick not guilty. Jurors could not reach a verdict on Rhinewalt, and Attorney General Lynn Fitch announced hours later that her office will not retry him.   In this exclusive interview, Therese Apel and Amanda Johansson sit down with Steven Frederick to hear firsthand what the past four years have been like, from the night of the shooting through the verdict, and how he says God carried him through it. Produced by Daniel Anderson at Audio Alchemy Productions.

  2. Sep 24

    Episode #77: 1 in 66 Quintillion: The State vs Skaggs

    August 1990. A young mother working the late shift at the Western Sizzlin in Flowood stops at a Brandon Texaco for cinnamon rolls for her kids' breakfast. She's inside for only a few minutes. Half a mile from home, a man rises from the back of her van with a knife to her throat. Thirty days later, a nurse leaving a Memphis hospital lives through the same nightmare. The attacker made both women the same threat, and then he disappeared for more than three decades.   The case went cold, then colder. A false confession from a Missouri inmate went nowhere. Early DNA testing produced a profile but no name, and the evidence sat in a vault for years. But one Brandon officer never let it go, and a Rankin County prosecutor who had read everything he could find about the Golden State Killer had an idea. Forensic genetic genealogy, a trash pull in Oklahoma, a discarded CPAP mask, and a match of 1 in 660 quintillion led investigators to Daniel Ray Skaggs, a truck driver whose crimes spanned the 1970s through the 1990s and multiple states across the Southeast.   Tonight on Investigation: Homicide, Therese Apel and Sara Perkins Ricks sit down with that prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Ryan Berry. A career prosecutor with nearly 20 years in the Twentieth Circuit Court District, Berry won the Mississippi Prosecutors Association's Trial of the Year Award for State v. Skaggs. He has since presented the case at the International Symposium on Human Identification in Denver and at Bode's annual conference in Atlanta, and it was featured on Bloodline Detectives with Nancy Grace. We'll talk about how the science finally caught up, what it took to tell a victim face to face after 33 years that her attacker had a name, and why prosecutors believe the women in Brandon and Memphis may not have been Skaggs's only victims.   Produced by Daniel Anderson at Audio Alchemy Productions.

  3. Sep 10

    Episode #76: 25 Years on High Alert: What Has Living Through 9/11 Done to Our Bodies?

    Twenty-five years after 9/11, the toll of a quarter-century spent on high alert is written into the bodies of the people who answered the call. This week, Sara Perkins-Ricks and Therese Apel sit down with Sgt. Jordan Jones to talk about what constant high-intensity service does to those who serve, and how they recover. Jordan is the founder and CEO of Holos, a performance optimization and wellness company built for military personnel, law enforcement, first responders, and other high-stress professionals. He brings more than two decades of military service to the conversation — more than half of it as a Special Forces Medical Sergeant — along with his experience as a Human Performance and Wellness Coordinator within Army Special Forces, where he helped design programs to strengthen resilience, recovery, and well-being for elite operators. He launched Holos to bridge the gap between tactical excellence and holistic wellness, giving professionals science-backed strategies to sustain peak performance without sacrificing long-term health.   At the center of the conversation is Operator Syndrome, which is the cumulative physical, neurological, and psychological toll carried by elite military personnel and Special Operations Forces after years of constant high-intensity service. Rather than a single standalone condition, it shows up as an interconnected web of clinical symptoms driven by years of high allostatic load. And as it turns out, it's not just in the military.   On the 25th anniversary of 9/11, Jordan, Sara, and Therese look at the challenges facing not just the military, but first responders and everyone whose work lives at the intersection of high stress and high trauma, and what the last quarter-century has asked of the people who carry that weight.   Produced by Daniel Anderson at Audio Alchemy Productions.

  4. Sep 3

    Episode #75: The War Within

    There are many voices around Mississippi speaking on behalf of first responders in the field of mental health. One of the more prominent currently is Kevin Whitsell, a 20-year veteran paramedic and firefighter and the founder and host of “A Silent War Within,” a podcast dedicated to confronting and destigmatizing mental health challenges among first responders and healthcare professionals. A Mississippi native, Whitsell spent years in critical care transport, including pediatric and neonatal patients, before moving into supervisory roles. His advocacy is rooted in his own journey through the mental health struggles that come with the job. Therese Apel and Amanda Johansson discuss some of Kevin‘s experiences in the business, and the importance of making mental health a priority as a first responder.   Produced by Daniel Anderson at Audio Alchemy Productions.

  5. Aug 27

    Episode #74: What Happened at the Po' Folks.

    In April 1996, a spring afternoon in South Jackson turned into a scene of terror the metro area has never forgotten. This week, Therese Apel and Sara Perkins-Ricks sit down with Charlie Smith, a former Jackson Police Department Crime Scene Investigator, who walks them through one of the most harrowing cases of his career, from the inside. On April 12, 1996, Larry Wayne Shoemake barricaded himself inside an abandoned Po' Folks restaurant at the Ellis Isle shopping center near Ellis Avenue and Interstate 20. From within the building he opened fire on people in and around the center, in a siege that stretched roughly 40 minutes to an hour and left more than 100 shots fired. Early reports counted one person killed and several others wounded by gunfire and flying glass, with later accounts describing an even higher toll. Shoemake ultimately died in the fire that consumed the restaurant. From the first shots to the smoke rising over the shopping center, Smith recounts the investigation as only the man who processed it can: what he saw, what he documented, and what it took to make sense of a day that captivated and terrified an entire community.   Produced by Daniel Anderson at Audio Alchemy Productions.

  6. Aug 20

    Episode #73: The Story of Mike Dill.

    Some of the people who change our lives never know they did it. Capt. Barbara Folsom-McNeal was eleven years old when a police officer walked into the worst night of her childhood and carried her out. She'd been whipped with an extension cord, and to a terrified kid, he was a promise that someone would come through when it mattered most.  She didn't learn his name that night, but because of him, she grew up to wear the badge herself in order to continue to fulfill that promise to others.  A few months ago, Barbara sat down with us and told that story, and said that as she neared the end of her career, she'd made up her mind to find the officer who set her on this path. So we went looking. And we found his family. Tonight, Therese Apel and Amanda Johansson welcome Barbara back, and this time she isn't alone. Chris Dill joins us to talk about his father, Mike Dill, the officer who once lifted a little girl out of harm's way and, by every account, went to his grave with no idea he'd shaped the whole course of her life. This is the episode where the dots connect. It's about the long reach of a single heroic act, the echo it leaves behind, and how the memory of the same good man has shaped two entirely different lives.   Produced by Daniel Anderson at Audio Alchemy Productions.

  7. Aug 14

    Episode #72: The Coroner's Call -- Counting the Toll

    Jackson has held the highest homicide rate per capita in the nation for five years running. Behind every one of those numbers is a name, a family, and a death someone has to answer for. In Hinds County, that responsibility runs through Jeramiah Howard.   As County Coroner, Howard oversees an office that investigates them all: every scene, every call in the middle of the night, every hardest conversation of someone's life. This week, Therese Apel and Sara Perkins Ricks sit down with the man who carries the weight of a city's losses to ask the questions most people never think to: What is that life actually like?    What do you learn about a place from the way its people die? And how do you keep doing this work, year after year, in the deadliest city in America?   It's a raw conversation about death, duty, and the human cost behind the statistics from the man who knows them better than anyone. Produced by Daniel Anderson at Audio Alchemy Productions.

  8. Aug 6

    Episode #71: Not a TV Cop

    From Olivia Benson to Dana Scully to Ziva David, we’ve all got a TV idea of what it looks like to be a female cop. Spoiler alert: you can’t actually run in those heels, and the cases don’t wrap up in 42 minutes. Tonight, Therese and Amanda sit down with Warren County Sheriff’s Office Lieutenant Stacy Rollison, and her story is the real thing. She started as a part-time jailer while raising three kids as a single mom, and she didn’t stop until she became Warren County’s first female patrol deputy, then investigator, then Chief Investigator. AND she’s currently in her third year as Secretary/Treasurer of the Mississippi Deputy Sheriffs’ Association, because apparently she sleeps at some point but we’re not sure when. Stacy talks about what it actually takes to build a career in law enforcement as a woman, the moments that tested her, and why she believes in a department that reflects its community and treats every single person who walks through the door with dignity no matter what they’ve done or where they’ve come from. This is the episode for every woman who ever wondered if there was a place for her in this field, and for everyone who wants to know what real service looks like. Investigation: Homicide — tonight.   Produced by Daniel Anderson at Audio Alchemy Productions.

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5
out of 5
30 Ratings

About

Telling Mississippi’s crime stories from an eyewitness perspective.

Information

  • Creator
    investigationhomicide
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    80
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2024 All rights reserved.
  • Show Website
    Investigation: Homicide

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