47 episodes
Accused Wondery
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- True Crime
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4.4 • 7.2K Ratings
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Season 4: When Rhoda Nathan's lifeless body was discovered in her hotel room, it was assumed she'd had a heart attack. The autopsy proved otherwise: Nathan, 67, had been viciously beaten to death, punched so hard by her assailant that two of her teeth had been knocked out. Days later, a hotel employee went to the hospital to be treated for an infection in his hand, which was teeming with a bacteria most often found in human mouths. That, plus a pendant an officer said was discovered in the trunk of his car, sealed the fate of Elwood Jones, who awaits execution on Ohio's death row. For nearly 30 years, Jones has maintained his innocence -- and accused police of straight-up framing him. The journalists of Accused are reexamining the case to learn if Jones truly belongs on death row, or if a botched investigation let someone else get away with murder.
Season 3: In 1984, a father of three disappeared while working at a mysterious Cincinnati plant. It turned out he’d met a gruesome fate: Pieces of bone, his eyeglasses and walkie-talkie were uncovered inside a vat that reached 1350 degrees Fahrenheit. Two months later, the Fernald Feed Materials Production Center was revealed to have been processing uranium – and polluting the region. The dead man’s children believe their father was murdered because he intended to expose how the plant had been releasing millions of pounds of uranium dust into the atmosphere. We’re hoping to figure out: Did 39-year-old David Bocks kill himself, as Fernald officials alleged, or was he more likely killed?
Season 2: A soft-hearted prison minister was found killed in her Kentucky apartment, and Newport police zeroed in on an ex-convict she’d counseled. Thirty years later, the conviction is overturned and the case is once again unsolved. The Cincinnati Enquirer investigates: Was William Virgil wrongly convicted for murder?
Season 1: When Elizabeth Andes was found murdered in her Ohio apartment in 1978, police and prosecutors decided within hours it was an open-and-shut case. Two juries disagreed. The Cincinnati Enquirer investigates: Was the right guy charged, or did a killer walk free?
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Chapter 1: The Crime
When Elaine Shub opened the door to the hotel room she was sharing with her best friend of 48 years, she saw such a gruesome sight that she collapsed in the suburban hotel hallway. Rhoda Nathan, a kind-hearted New Jersey grandmother who had just stepped out of the shower, lay on the floor, unrecognizable from the vicious beating she’d endured. Who could have done this? What could have been the motive? Who had access? Who had motive? And why did Rhoda have to die?
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Chapter 2: The A-Hole
The prosecutor handling the case against Elwood Jones had some choice words to describe the suspect on national television. In this episode, we explore: Who is Elwood Jones? Was he really an a-hole? Is being one now, steadfast as he is in refusing to cop to the 27-year-old crime? And does being an a-hole also mean he was a killer?
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Chapter 3: The Investigation
Investigating any crime scene requires finesse, but in the case of Rhoda Nathan’s 1994 beating death, at least some of the detectives arriving at the Embassy Suites hotel, many who had never investigated a murder before, thought they were dealing with a heart-attack victim. As such, they say they didn’t immediately secure the scene, allowing outsiders to tromp through a room that was already teeming with all kinds of hotel-user DNA.
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Chapter 4: If Not Elwood, Who?
While investigators testified at trial that Elwood Jones was always their best and only real suspect in the 1994 slaying of Rhoda Nathan, the police files say otherwise. Three people – two with violent criminal pasts on their records – seem equally as suspicious, so much so they were given lie-detector tests in the days after the murder. Do their alibis hold? And if Elwood as such a good suspect with such good evidence to indicate his guilt, what took the police and prosecutors a year to indict him?
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Chapter 5: The (Supposed) Confession
More than a decade after Elwood Jones was convicted of killing Rhoda Nathan, he learned that a woman had stepped forward saying she knew who the real killer was. Tracking down this mysterious figure became something of an obsession for Elwood’s current defense team. And for us.
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Chapter 6: Deserving of Death?
Hamilton County, Ohio, is known nationwide as having one of the highest capital punishment rates per capita – and a recent 25-year study shows that race plays a huge role in determining who’s sent to die. Elwood Jones is Black. His victim was white. If the pandemic had not intervened and last-minute attempts for a new trial put on hold, Jones would already have been dead. If he is innocent, that’s a tragedy. If he is not, did the punishment fit the crime? He is again scheduled to be executed in 2023.
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Customer Reviews
S1 Excellent - Captivating! Just finished S4 - Excellence.
Perfectly crafted. Coudn't be better.
Please keep providing updates on Season 4 and previous season.
Loved Accused; now hard left woke journalism
I was such a big fan of the first season of Accused. As time goes on, she leans more and more into political activism infused reporting and storytelling. A tragic waste of talent in my opinion.
Biased!
This season was so obviously biased…she interviews an anti-capital punishment lawyer who says the case stunk…well of course he’s going to think that and interview as such. Amber doesn’t even give an aside about it. As much as she tries to play devils advocate, she fails poorly in this season. She very clearly had an agenda this season and it was extremely difficult to listen to it without rolling my eyes. Yes cops can be dirty, yes people can be innocent and sentenced to death row but this ain’t it. Also she leans heavily on his innocence based on the confession of a lady saying her husband did it, y’know the husband that was beating her and she hated (cuz you know she wouldn’t be trying to set her husband up…but yes the cops would frame this guy for what purpose?!?!).