Latest / Wrongful Conviction Podcasts / Introducing: My Mother's Lies
Transcript
- 00:00:07 Speaker 1: Y'all have heard about Jessica Kurrn's murder. I told you her story in the Graves County podcast, but there's a key piece I did not dive deep into and it's all coming out in a new series called My Mother's Lies from the Binge, and it's out now. It looks at the murder of Jessica Kurrn and the case against Quincy Cross from a different angle through the eyes of Susan Galbreath's son. Susan is seen as a hero to some, but now her son Ray brings that all into question. You can find My Mother's Lies in the description of this introduction, or by searching for My Mother's Lies wherever you've listened to podcasts, because if you've been listening to Bone Valley, Graves County, you know this case has never been just one story. Here's a sneak peek. 00:00:54 Speaker 2: Every murder trial tells a story. What happened, who did it, how did it happen, even why it happened. When there's strong corroborating evidence, that story is anchored to fact. But when there isn't, when the physical proof is missing, when there's nothing to go on by eyewitness testimony, the story that testimony becomes the case. This series is about a story that was repeated, reinforced, and eventually accepted as truth, a story that may have mattered more than evidence to the contrary, And at the center of it all is the woman who helped write that story. It's August first, and the year two thousand a bomby Tuesday morning in the small town of Mayfield in western Kentucky. Beyonce and the Boy, Vand and Sink are dominating the airwaves. Gladiator and X Men are playing at the local theater. At the local middle school, staff are now preparing for the coming year, though nothing could prepare teacher Tina Schlasser for what was to come. She steps outside to water the plants near the back of the school when she sees something out of the corner of her eye, something laying just behind the low brick wall. It's an item of clothing strewn on the grass, a single sandal, just laying there, she'd later say, as if someone had just run out of it. Walking closer, she peers around the corner and stops in her tracks. Standing rigid and horror. Before her lies the brutalized and partially burned body of a young black woman. The singed grass around her is a strange yellow color aside from the damaged dump by fire. The body is starting to decompose. Only later would they be able to identify the young woman as Jessica Curran. Her murder would shake this quiet town to its core and make headlines across the nation. 00:03:20 Speaker 3: Someone had murdered eighteen year old Jessica Curran, a local fire captain's daughter, a single mother. Her smile lit up her friends. 00:03:33 Speaker 2: Jessica was last seen by her parents, Joe and Gene Curran, on the afternoon of Saturday, July twenty ninth. They were taking care of her seven month old baby Cyon for the evening. 00:03:44 Speaker 4: We got up Sunday morning, and you know, my wife says she already knew something was wrong because Jesse normally calls and checks on Zion pretty often, and she hadn't called at night. We got up that morning and went by her house, knocked on the door, and we didn't get an answer. 00:04:02 Speaker 2: They didn't have to wait long to discover the awful truth. Less than forty eight hours later, the Mayfield Police Department, the local cops were scrambling trying to make sense of a chaotic crime scene. The police footage shows the half clothed, partially burned body of Jessica Curran. Her dress is torn, underwear discarded. The sandal lying nearby suggests she might have been attempting to flee her attacker. Plenty of theories about what happened and who did this would emerge, but for the police, it was too soon to say. 00:04:40 Speaker 3: Police say eighteen year old Jessica Alessa Current die from multiple blows to the body. Investigators say she was assaulted and her body set on fire. So far, police say there are no motives. 00:04:52 Speaker 2: And in the archive footage of the crime scene you can clearly see the yellow police tape blocking off the area. Cape is supposed to be a barrier between the crime scene and onlookers to protect the evidence from contamination, but it doesn't stop one curious Mayfield resonant from getting closer than she should. Susan Goalbreath. She's forty, white, slightly overlooked within the community, a little overweight, with bleached blonde hair, and a rough and ready charm brazen even She's not a journalist or a cop. She's a housewife. Exactly how she came to be at the crime scene is a matter of some debate, but here she is giving one version of events to a journalist. Some years later, a friend. 00:05:41 Speaker 5: And I are sitting at a restaurant and our waitress walked over and asked us if we had heard that there was a body that had been found at the middle school. As I'm heading towards home, I saw a crime scene tape and I started walking through this grass. As I come through the clearing of it, I just look up and there I see the body of a black woman. 00:06:05 Speaker 2: People kept fixated with true crime stories, and sometimes citizens sluice will jump in and try to solve or help the police, but they're doing it from afar. Susan lived in the same town where Jessica Curran was murdered, and Susan didn't know Jessica personally. In fact, she had no connection to her at all, and yet she felt so compelled as to physically step into the crime scene. Her name is there in black and white on the official police log. 00:06:39 Speaker 3: I knew that it had grabbed me. 00:06:42 Speaker 5: I knew it because I could not stop thinking about her. 00:06:51 Speaker 2: Susan's motivations will be a matter of debate for years. No one could know how this case would come to haunt Mayfield for the two decades, making Susan Gabre a hero to some and a villain to others. 00:07:08 Speaker 4: If you get somebody like that on the wrong track, they could take the ball and go to long divasion. 00:07:16 Speaker 2: What were Susan's real motives for trying to solve the Jessica current murder? She wasn't able to help them find the killer that killed their daughter. How did the authorities come to trust this middle aged housewife and her evidence? 00:07:32 Speaker 3: Is that normal? 00:07:32 Speaker 2: First, it says, to be walking around with case files motionless of discovery, it'd be very unusual. It's a question that has left many perturbed, including her son. It was just the lies. There are so many lives, so the narrative that's in front of us can't be the truth. Did Susan ultimately do more harm than good wine world? Would you allow them to get this close, especially somebody that would have a motive. 00:08:07 Speaker 4: I'm members economy said Nan, you need you on MySpace and look at this is I'm just like, you know, what do I know? 00:08:12 Speaker 2: Oh? 00:08:13 Speaker 4: My god? 00:08:14 Speaker 2: And perhaps the biggest question of all, did she help convict an innocent man? 00:08:21 Speaker 4: I do feel like that they got the wrong People. 00:08:27 Speaker 2: From Sony Music, Entertainment and Message heard you're listening to My Mother's Lies. I'm Beth Karas, a journalist and lego analyst who has been covering stories at the heart of our criminal justice system for decades. This is episode one, The Hero Housewife who sawd a Murder. 00:08:49 Speaker 1: You can keep listening to My Mother's Lies right now. Just search for it wherever you listen and subscribe to The Binge today to get all episodes early at free on Apple Podcasts or get Binge dot com.