Pod Insights The Binge Cases: Doctor Billions My Mother’s Lies | 3. Prime Suspect About this episode Susan and a British Journalist named Tom Mangold zero in on - a Black man who lives with his grandmother out of state. In just 10 days, Susan is convinced he’s the real killer.
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Transcript 0:01 Speaker 00 The wilderness can hide a lot, but it can't hide the truth forever. I'm Delia D'Amber, host of Park Predators. And every week I investigate true crime cases hidden in national parks, forests, and beaches. I follow every lead, every clue, and every overlooked detail. Because even when a trail seems to disappear, the truth has a way of resurfacing. Listen to Park Predators wherever you get your podcasts.
0:28 Speaker 01 Listen to every episode of My Mother's Lies ad-free right now when you subscribe to The Binge. You'll hear the entire series before anyone else, get exclusive bonus episodes, and unlock more than 60 other true crime podcasts. Just head to The Binge channel on Apple Podcasts and tap Subscribe, or visit getthebinge.com to listen wherever you are. The Binge: Feed your true crime obsession.
1:07 Speaker 01 It's early afternoon in April 2004 in the small town of Mayfield, Kentucky. In an ordinary suburban home, an ordinary woman sits at her desk. Her notebooks are scattered all around her. They're filled with names of witnesses and half-formed thoughts, a jumble of theories, rumors, even conspiracies. Names and ideas that need something or someone to help her make sense of. She opens up her email and pulls the keyboard toward her. And after a moment of thought, Susan Gabbath starts to type.
1:54 Speaker 01 It's been more than a year since the official Mayfield Police case against Jeremy Adams and Lolo Saxton was dismissed. A year has also passed since the Kentucky State Police took over the investigation. Things had stalled. The murder of Jessica Curran was a cold case, growing colder by the day. It needed an injection of energy from somewhere. As it turned out, that injection came from Susan Galbraith.
2:23 Speaker 01 But a nosy local on a personal crusade wasn't going to get lawyers, coroners, City Hall, or law enforcement agencies to talk with her. To start really investigating Jessica's murder, she needed transcripts, tapes, witness profiles, lab reports. Most of all, she needed to identify a new suspect. And for that, she needed help. Years later, Susan recalled how she wrote to TV celebrities and Hollywood stars to take up her cause.
2:55 Speaker 02 I started writing to so many people. I wrote to Oprah, I wrote to Julia Roberts, I wrote to Jay-Z, I wrote to Jerry Springer, and I never got a response from anybody. And I can remember watching a documentary, and I saw this strapping handsome man. I Googled him, and I wrote him a letter.
3:22 Speaker 01 Susan's eventual savior would come from stumbling upon a cable documentary hosted by renowned British journalist Tom Mengeled. This much you already know. But what you don't know is how this half-hearted "Hail Mary" email, typed on an ordinary spring afternoon, is the moment everything changed.
3:50 Speaker 01 It would be the first domino to fall in an escalating tragedy. A tragedy that would play out like a slow-motion car crash spanning the next two decades.
4:03 Speaker 03 Hello, Mr. Mangold. I am writing concerning a murder in a small town in the state of Kentucky here in the U.S. The victim, a beautiful 18-year-old black girl.
4:14 Speaker 01 You see, oftentimes, a tragedy is the work of just one person, acting alone. But in the case of solving Jessica Curran's murder, the case that would become The Commonwealth of Kentucky vs. Quincy Cross, that is the work of many people, from legal professionals and law enforcement officers to government officials, people who should have known better than to facilitate and enable the misguided work of this one ordinary woman. But it all started with this email to a journalist in England.
4:52 Speaker 01 Well, in this episode, we're going to take a real hard look at how it really unfolded. How a private citizen gained access to crucial documents and official files that, in my opinion, should never, ever have been shared with a non-journalist. How a journalist and a citizen sleuth crafted their own theory in the space of just 10 days, without physical evidence or forensic corroboration. A theory that started in a cheap motel room and spread like wildfire through the community.
5:23 Speaker 04 I was scared to even do an interview with her and Tom Mangold. That's why I laughed at you when you said his name. I have nothing to say to neither one of them.
5:29 Speaker 01 What might have started as a search for answers seemed to become something else entirely: the writing of a story. And once a story like that takes hold, it can be almost impossible to stop.
5:44 Speaker 05 Tom sending the names to Susan, and then Susan going, "It's those two."
5:49 Speaker 06 Yeah, and then getting people to say what they want them to say, man.
5:53 Speaker 05 Then writing this big story about what you supposedly did.
5:56 Speaker 06 Right, boom, here we are.
6:04 Speaker 01 From Sony Music Entertainment and Message Heard, you're listening to My Mother's Lies.
6:12 Speaker 01 I'm Beth Karas. This is episode three, "Prime Suspect."
6:38 Speaker 01 Much of what you're about to learn about Susan's investigation over the next few episodes comes from her emails, emails that have only recently been filed in court. To be honest, they read a lot like a diary, which gives us a unique insight into Susan's process, her thoughts and feelings at the time she's writing them.
6:58 Speaker 01 Let's go back to that very first email to Tom Mangold. I'll read it for you. It's interesting that, right from the jump, Susan opens with Jeremy Adams's innocence. She writes, "There was a person charged with this murder, and on the very eve of this trial, the charge was dropped due to a supposed goof by our local police. I not only think they had the wrong person charged with the actual murder, I believe there is a political cover-up involved also."
7:28 Speaker 01 When he received Susan's email back in April in 2004, Tom Mangold would have been 69 years old and a very well-respected journalist. From war zones to corporate conspiracies, he'd won awards and accolades for his pioneering investigative reporting. We did ask Tom to participate in this series, but he declined. But here, in a 2012 BBC Radio documentary, Tom is reflecting on the mysterious nature of that email.
8:03 Speaker 07 There was something about her email to me indefinable, but it touched the nerve of an old instinct. I couldn't delete it, but I couldn't ignore it. So I took the gamble. I just sensed that this might, might be a good story. Unusual location, crime, human interest. It just felt right.
8:23 Speaker 01 It seems that in the spring of 2004, around the same time he responded to Susan's email, Tom's career at the BBC had just come to an abrupt end. And the previous summer, there had been some controversy over a story he'd published regarding US intelligence. He'd also been unable to work for some time following a knee operation. So when Susan's email popped up in his inbox, he was, in his own words, quote, "grumpy and full of," quote, "self pity." Whatever it was that caught his imagination, it certainly moved him. In May 2004, he boarded a flight and traveled thousands of miles to western Kentucky
9:05 Speaker 01 to meet Susan in person. The two hit it off right away.
9:14 Speaker 07 When I first met Susan, I liked her on sight. She's chubby, lively, great sense of humor, sexy, deep voice, and passionate about the one thing she needed to be passionate about, the murder of Jessica Curran.
9:27 Speaker 01 That's Tom again, taken from his later BBC radio documentary charting their incredible tale. Apparently, Susan's first impressions of Tom were more uncertain, but she clearly felt pressure to make his visit worthwhile.
9:42 Speaker 02 When I first met Tom, I thought he was prim and proper, like he had a stick up his ass. I mean, he was just really formal, you know? Then all my nervousness really started coming. I started worrying, oh my gosh, what have I done? Is he gonna believe me? What if we don't find anything?
10:00 Speaker 01 Susan's concerns would turn out to be unfounded. Over the next 10 days, they found plenty.
10:08 Speaker 01 Tom arrived in Mayfield on May 28, 2004, the start of a humid Memorial Day weekend. He was due to meet Susan for their first official discussion about the case, but first he had an important matter to attend to. Here's an excerpt from Tom's 2016 memoir. Quote, "Mayfield is dry. I am not. In nearby Paducah, where I landed from Chicago, I bought two cases of high-quality Sauvignon Blanc and headed for the Days Inn motel, Mayfield's best, worst, and only lodgings." It was in this modest motel room, drinking white wine out of Styrofoam cups, that Tom and Susan planned their first move. They started at the beginning,
10:53 Speaker 01 Susan laying out what she believed were the "facts." Due to a lack of forensics and the condition of her body, the cause of Jessica's death had never been officially established. However, over the years, rumors had circulated that she may have been killed by strangulation. This seems to have come from, in part, the fact that a fragment of a black belt had been found at the crime scene. Other rumors persisted too, that the failure of the initial local police investigation was part of a conspiracy that ran all the way to City Hall, that Jessica might have been involved in a secret drug ring run by the cops themselves. Another rumor revolved around the familiar name
11:36 Speaker 01 of Venetia Stubblefield, Jessica's cousin. We spoke to Venetia recently. She knows as well as anyone the way stories move through a small town like Mayfield.
11:50 Speaker 04 Mayfield is not a secret town. As soon as you step foot in Mayfield, they know who you are, where you're from, how old you are, how many kids you got, what do you do for a living, and stuff like that.
12:00 Speaker 04 Anybody in Mayfield can pinpoint anything about anybody.
12:06 Speaker 01 Back in 2004, based on local rumors, Susan's working theory was that Jessica had been kidnapped by a group of people driving a white car, and she suspected that Venetia was one of those people. Another name Susan had latched on to is Austin Leach, who was seen around Mayfield in his white Cadillac that night. So what did Tom make of all this? Having just arrived in Mayfield, sitting in his motel room, drinking Sauvignon Blanc, jet-lagged and weary, clearly, he realized he had his work cut out, not only in sifting through the gossip, but in training his new colleague on how to separate rumor from reality.
12:49 Speaker 07 I became her news editor. She became my trainee cub reporter. I taught her my trade from the bottom up. Don't chase gossip. Check every reputation. Check and recheck every fact.
13:06 Speaker 01 After a good night's sleep, the first item on Tom's to-do list was establishing the facts, starting with Jeremy Adams. He set up a meeting with Jeremy's trial lawyer, Renee Tuck, which makes sense to me. He needed to make his own assessment about the strengths and weaknesses of the case against Jeremy. Here's a tape of Renee talking to Tom years later, recalling how strange Jessica's case was and how reluctant people were to speak with Renee about the murder.
13:35 Speaker 02 This was one of the more odd cases I've ever had, probably the most odd case I've ever handled. We would have people calling us on our personal cell phones or work cell phones, wouldn't tell us who they were. They wanted to give us information, but they were scared.
13:59 Speaker 01 During their meeting, in spite of the unusual nature of the case, Jeremy's attorney discussed the details of this open investigation with Tom, a journalist. This is a big red flag for me. After all, this was an ongoing murder investigation, and Jeremy was still the main suspect. But it's what happened next that is truly troubling.
14:23 Speaker 01 Apparently Renee Tuck not only discussed the case, she had signed permission from Jeremy to physically hand over much of his official case file. What she gave Tom is what we call discovery, essentially a treasure trove of evidence and investigation notes. Typically, it can include witness names, addresses and phone numbers, interview tapes, surveillance tapes, investigation reports, crime scene logs, forensic expert reports, basically just about everything the Mayfield Police Department would have gathered concerning Jessica Curran's murder in their case against Jeremy and Lolo. So naturally, we also reached out to Renee for an interview, but she declined. But she did confirm that she gave some of the discovery to Tom Mangold.
15:08 Speaker 01 Look, it's been a long time since I tried a case myself, but I've been reporting on criminal trials for decades, and I'm troubled by how quickly Renee gave the files to Tom. Even if Renee had her client's permission to release the files, personally, I question the wisdom in doing so, not to mention the ethics. This was an ongoing murder investigation, and her client was the prime suspect. Releasing this kind of information to a private citizen risks putting the investigation in jeopardy. What if Tom decides to share those files with other private citizens, like Susan? What if they then form their own opinions? What if they cherry pick certain details from those files to share with other private citizens?
15:53 Speaker 01 You get the idea. You can imagine the mess it could lead to. Leading witnesses to change their stories, false corroboration, contaminating the jury pool. So yeah, sharing the files with Tom Mangold was, at least in my view, not a good move. I'd say this was the second domino to fall.
16:18 Speaker 01 After meeting with Renee Tuck, next on Tom's agenda was a meeting with Donna Adams, Jeremy's mother. Presumably on Susan's advice, Tom was well-prepared, arriving at Donna's mobile home with a bottle of tequila under his arm.
16:35 Speaker 01 Next, Tom went to meet Jeremy for himself, a man he later said, quote, "didn't look like a killer." Whatever that means. I mean, Ted Bundy was a handsome man who didn't look like a killer either. Whatever the case, Tom was apparently as convinced as Donna and Susan. He, too, ruled Jeremy out as a suspect, as he would later state publicly on his BBC documentary.
16:58 Speaker 07 By the end of the first week, we'd established that Jeremy Adams, the local small-time criminal, had been wrongly charged by the cops.
17:06 Speaker 01 With Jeremy's innocence apparently well-established, Tom and Susan were given even more of the discovery documents directly from Jeremy's mother, Donna. Here she is confirming as much to the state police. I had Jeremy's motion to discovery. Did you give all that stuff to Sue? Yeah, she's got every bit of it.
17:28 Speaker 01 They now had most of the original police investigation into Jessica's murder, but not quite everything. This one's a real doozy. According to Susan's records, they also took possession of case documents from a disgruntled former Mayfield police officer. That is even more problematic than Jeremy's lawyer sharing some files. Let's face it, good journalists get a hold of documents that are off-limits all the time. But an ex-cop, possibly with an axe to grind? What is clear is that Tom's presence in Kentucky opened doors that Susan could only have previously dreamed of.
18:11 Speaker 01 Armed with a now bulging case file, they went back to Tom's motel, cracked open a bottle of wine, and started the task of reviewing the mountain of paperwork. And so began their own investigation. With so much to get through, Susan and Tom split the case file in half before returning and comparing thoughts. Over the coming nights, they swap files and share notes. They start to identify the key witnesses they need to interview. During the days, they hit the streets of Mayfield, conducting their own interviews, often taped covertly by Susan. Tom thought the fact that Susan wasn't an actual cop or reporter
18:56 Speaker 01 was an advantage, and he coached her on how to exaggerate her ignorance to get people to talk.
19:03 Speaker 02 While Tom was here, he would do his questioning. I would do my questioning. He would give me things to do. I was to play the bumbling Columbo character, which I did the entire time anyway. I always acted like I didn't know anything.
19:20 Speaker 01 By the sounds of it, it was just another hustle, like putting on an act for social services in order to get her, quote, "crazy check", as her son Ray had put it. As Tom and Susan pored over witness statements and police interviews, of all the names that crop up, one was at the top of their list. What you're about to hear is a covert recording made by Susan at the time. In it, she probes their key witness, Venetia Stubblefield. These recordings also capture Susan's approach, her assumptions, and the direction her investigation had begun to take. Jeremy didn't kill her. Jeremy didn't kill her. They don't have a case on Jeremy. That's why they let...
20:04 Speaker 03 Because we all know Jeremy didn't kill her. We know you were there. I'm telling you.
20:13 Speaker 03 In fact, I have got, in another hour and a half, I've got another meeting with someone here just shortly. And I am telling you, there's going to be a big arrest here. Now, if you will help with this, I can see that everything with you is going to work out okay.
20:36 Speaker 01 There's a lot in that clip. Declaring Jeremy's innocence, pretending an arrest is imminent, insinuating that Venetia is in trouble and that Susan can protect her.
20:50 Speaker 01 Right from the beginning, Susan is leading the witness, threatening, offering inducements. Whatever the truth of her involvement, don't forget, Venetia was just 16 when her cousin was brutally murdered, possibly in front of her, possibly by local drug dealers who threatened her as well.
21:10 Speaker 01 And after all that, she was still only 20 at the time that interview was conducted in 2004. Did she really have the power to make deals on behalf of the police? At this point, probably not. But Ray thinks she enjoyed giving people that impression.
21:26 Speaker 07 My mom might have been saying that stuff for clout, just to get some attention, notoriety, scare people too. You know, if you can do good for people, you can also do bad for people too.
21:38 Speaker 01 It was something Tom called Susan out on too. This is what he wrote about it in 2013. Quote, "As we drove back to the motel, Susan and I had our first and last row. I pointed out that this was not the way to deal with putative suspects or witnesses, that no one ever confesses easily or quickly, and that subtlety, tact, and rat-like cunning were the only tools we had to quarry the truth."
22:08 Speaker 01 To be fair to Susan, Tom also ruffled a few feathers in Mayfield. Since he was an outsider, people didn't quite know what to make of him. Much like Susan, Tom wasn't there to make friends. He was there to get things done. And they got a lot done in their 10 days together. From gaining entry into a prison using an expired press pass, to extracting sensitive case information from an ex-cop. One person who Tom did make a good impression on was Jessica's father, Joe.
22:43 Speaker 06 Tom Mangold was a little different than I thought he would be because, honestly, talking with him, I thought he would be younger than what he was when he got here. And he was kind of a smaller guy, a little older than I thought he would be with Gray, you know, her. And he seemed to be the kind of person that paid attention to small details.
23:05 Speaker 01 Even so, Joe worries that Tom is the type to push forward no matter what.
23:09 Speaker 06 If you get somebody like that on the wrong track, they could take the ball and go the wrong direction.
23:18 Speaker 01 They may have been an odd couple, but Tom's heavyweight credentials still needed Susan's local knowledge. And Susan was suddenly infused with a new energy. Her mission to solve Jessica Curran's murder was suddenly moving forward at breakneck speed. Here's Mayfield private investigator and former cop John Poole, who worked on the case for one of the defendants. He made her feel important because people in the community I've talked to thought she was a troublemaker and lazy, didn't work, on drugs, alcohol. And so he kind of glorified her, made her feel good. She was somebody again.
24:00 Speaker 01 It was on one of their last nights together, poring over police tapes, that Susan and Tom finally landed on the missing piece of their puzzle.
24:10 Speaker 01 A series of interview transcripts from a group who had all been at a house party that took place on the same night Jessica disappeared. This party was at an address on a street named Chris Drive, about four miles away on the other side of town from where Jessica was last seen walking home. A party which ended in a series of arrests in the early hours of Sunday, July 30. Here is Susan talking about that lightbulb moment of discovery in Tom's BBC documentary.
24:42 Speaker 02 I realized that there was an entire side of the case that the Mayfield Police Department did not look into at all.
24:55 Speaker 01 One of the partygoers was Jessica's then-boyfriend-of-two-months, Lolo Saxton, which naturally piqued their interest. But it was another name that would take center stage. It is in these transcripts and phone records, document Susan, and arguably Tom, should never have had access to, that led them to what they claim had been missing: a new prime suspect.
25:21 Speaker 01 Observe: The North American Dad. 50s, great polo collection. He enters his vehicle information on Carvana. An offer appears in minutes. Remarkable. He squints, reads it again, smiles, and says, "Dang, that's a good offer."
25:38 Speaker 00 The highest form of approval. No haggling, no hassle, no one called him "boss." He's still on the couch. Astonishing. Sell your car today on carvana.com. Pickup fees may apply. The wilderness can hide a lot, but it can't hide the truth forever. I'm Delia Diambra, host of Park Predators. And every week, I investigate true crime cases hidden in national parks, forests, and beaches. I follow every lead, every clue, and every overlooked detail. Because even when a trail seems to disappear, the truth has a way of resurfacing. Listen to Park Predators wherever you get your podcasts.
26:26 Speaker 01 Let's go back to the night of the murder. Not to the address on Chris Drive, but 40 minutes southwest of Mayfield, just across the Kentucky state border, in Union City, Tennessee. It's 7:00 PM on Saturday evening, July 29, 2000. The night is just getting started. Lolo Saxton and two friends are driving around in a blue Pontiac. They're looking to pick up some cocaine for the party when they run into a childhood friend of one of theirs, Quincy Omar Cross. The guys are headed back to Mayfield to go to a party, so Quincy decides to tag along.
27:11 Speaker 01 Sometime after midnight, the four men pull up to a house on Chris Drive. There are a few kids hanging out and partying, including the son of a prominent local cop. There are drugs, too, which isn't uncommon for a Mayfield house party. According to some, Quincy Cross is wired and is constantly on the house phone. Don't forget, cell phones weren't so common back then. Apparently, he's calling girls back in Tennessee. He complains that all the women at the party are with their boyfriends.
27:54 Speaker 01 Between 1:00 and 3:00 AM, some of the partygoers, including Lolo, took a couple of trips in a blue Pontiac to a local café. Quincy doesn't go with them on these trips. He stays at the house on Chris Drive.
28:17 Speaker 01 When the group returns to Chris Drive, Quincy is apparently still wired and still making calls on the house phone. A few of the partygoers reported that he was acting a little erratically. Some even mentioned him swinging a dark-colored belt around and just generally being annoying. As the night goes on, other people drift in and out. But by around 4:00 a.m., the party is winding down. The revelers start drifting off to sleep. Sometime between 5:00 and 5:30, Quincy asks to use the car, the blue Pontiac that's nearly out of gas. Quincy claims he wants to go down the street to see a girl he knows.
28:58 Speaker 01 The owner tosses Quincy the keys, but warns him he won't get very far.
29:07 Speaker 01 About an hour to an hour and a half later, around 6:30 a.m., Quincy Cross returns to Chris Drive. Quincy reports that the car had indeed run out of gas and that he stole a gas container from a nearby house and attempted unsuccessfully to get the car going. It was there, stranded on the side of the road, where he was spotted by a state trooper, who picked him up and drove him back to the house. Now, while Quincy was explaining all this to the bleary-eyed partygoers, that same state trooper was on his way back to the stranded vehicle to take a closer look. Apparently, on discovering the owner's firearm and various drug paraphernalia in the car,
29:50 Speaker 01 he called in some backup and returned to Chris Drive. The cops enter the house sometime around 7:00 a.m. to conduct a search. They discover weed plants and cocaine and proceed to arrest most of the occupants, including Quincy Cross. And that is how, in the spring of 2004, four years after the fact, Quincy Omar Cross suddenly appeared on the radar of a journalist and a citizen sleuth poring over the files in the cold case murder investigation of Jessica Curran.
30:26 Speaker 01 Now, before we go any further, I admit, I can see why Susan and Tom took an interest in Quincy. A man from out of town, a drug dealer, an outsider, restless, fueled by cocaine, possibly wearing a black belt, encountered by law enforcement just as the sun is rising over Mayfield, reportedly reeking of gasoline. All the same night Jessica disappears, just two days before her burnt body is discovered? Well, here's the problem. Right from the start, the statements from the Chris Drive party don't really support the story Susan would later come up with. Let's start with the belt.
31:09 Speaker 01 In the initial interviews, no one can really recall what Quincy was wearing. But one offhand comment would prove fateful. Here's Miranda Hellman again, a lawyer who would eventually end up representing Quincy in the years to come.
31:24 Speaker 05 When they interviewed some of the girls that were at Chris Drive, and those are part of Quincy's investigative file connected to the drug charges, they said that he was wild, he was, you know, partying, having a good time. And one of the girls was like, yeah, he was swinging his belt around like a lasso.
31:39 Speaker 01 That's the line right there. "A throwaway comment made by a girl at the Chris Drive house party after the cops busted them for drugs. It had nothing to do with Jessica Curran, yet."
31:52 Speaker 05 And so it's just like these key phrases of belt. Now, there was never a belt involved in the Jessica Curran case until Susan starts talking about, well, how was she murdered? And this belt becomes part of that narrative.
32:07 Speaker 01 This moment is worth remembering. The confusion of the belt will run the length of this story, its importance growing at every step.
32:16 Speaker 05 There was never a conclusive report as to what her cause of death was. The crime scene had a lot of issues. So there's a lot of evidence laying on the ground. There's a lot of things around her body that simply don't- don't have anything to do with the crime. And so one of the items that was found at the middle school did include what looked to be a piece of a leather belt.
32:40 Speaker 01 Rumors arose from the very beginning about whether this piece of leather belt was important. Was it near the body or on the body? It's a minor detail that would have devastating consequences.
32:56 Speaker 01 Interestingly, the state trooper who picked Quincy up on the side of the road early that morning noted that Quincy was wearing sweatpants, which don't typically require a belt. The next bit is even harder to reconcile: the timeline.
33:13 Speaker 05 Everyone at Chris Drive said Quincy never left unanimously. He never left. Yeah, he was partying. He was being wild. But once we settled in, you know, 10, 11 o'clock, Quincy didn't leave until the wee hours of the morning.
33:28 Speaker 01 Sometime between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m., the time when Jessica was supposedly making the 45-minute walk home, having left Venetia and friends, Lolo and others are driving around town getting food in the Blue Pontiac. But Quincy was never with them. Through those phone records and witness statements, Quincy has an alibi until about 5 a.m. That's about three hours after Jessica should have been home.
33:55 Speaker 05 I think that those call records probably corroborate some of the testimony and witness statements that come from Chris Drive. And, you know, that 4, 5 o'clock timeframe seems to really line up with exactly the point in time that the cop says he was pulled over on the side of the road without gas, you know, as the sun is coming up in the 6, 6:30 range. And so we have a timeline. You know, that timeline becomes really difficult to match to the story Susan brings in.
34:35 Speaker 01 Still, Tom and Susan were certain they'd found their man. Here's Susan in Tom's documentary recalling the moment of revelation.
34:45 Speaker 02 There was, there was a feeling of euphoria or whatever. We were so excited with the information of all these things coming together.
34:55 Speaker 01 Of course, Quincy had no idea of this at the time. The now 28-year-old former high school football player was back in Tennessee, living with his grandma. How could he know that just over the state line in Kentucky, a timer had just started ticking? Tom and Susan would need to find the evidence to support their fledgling theory. But they were convinced they had their guy. Quincy Omar Cross was now their main suspect.
35:26 Speaker 01 And with that, Tom's work in Mayfield was finished. It was time to head back to England.
35:34 Speaker 01 Tom and Susan handed all their findings, copies of their case file and their theory, to the man now leading the official murder investigation, Kentucky State Police Detective Jamie Mills.
35:50 Speaker 01 As Tom headed back across the Atlantic, he knew his part was largely finished. As he'd later say, quote, "It was now up to Susan alone to bring it all in."
36:02 Speaker 01 And bring it in she would.
36:06 Speaker 01 Over the course of the following year, Susan Galbreth would take the names and details she and Tom found in those Chris Drive transcripts and start writing a new story, moving around facts to fit her evolving theory of what really happened the night Jessica Curran was murdered. To me, the Chris Drive party is almost like the old expression, a red hair.
36:31 Speaker 05 They just looked at the highlights, you know, the key words, gasoline, belt, that he was on Chris' drive.
36:38 Speaker 01 When the Kentucky State Police start taking her theories seriously, suddenly, anything seems possible.
36:45 Speaker 05 The clout that came with working with the police that were active police in the community only seemed to give the things that Susan said more credibility.
36:56 Speaker 01 But as her influence grows, people start to take notice of her, apparently including Quincy Cross.
37:03 Speaker 07 She was beginning to take personal risks. Then to my horror, the killer began stalking her.
37:10 Speaker 01 That's next time on My Mother's Lies. At the time of release, we have not received a response from Jeremy Adams or Renee Tuck regarding allegations reported in this episode. Tom Mangold confirmed by email that he stands by his reporting. This is My Mother's Lies, an original production of Sony Music Entertainment and Message Heard, hosted by me, Beth Karas. From Message Heard, Alice Arnold is our investigative producer, Robyn Simon, our producer, McAllister
37:51 Speaker 01 Bexton, our series producer, Thiago Diaz, our assistant producer. Alan Lear is our supervising sound editor, supported by sound editors Lizzie Andrews and Ivan Eastly, with original composition by Mike Maines. From Sony Music Entertainment, our executive producers are Catherine St. Louis and Jonathan Hirsch. From Blink Films, our executive producer is Justine Kershaw. And a big thanks to the whole Sony Music Entertainment team.
38:29 Speaker 06 Welcome to The Haunted Library. Join me, Colin Morgan, as I read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. A story of science and ambition, loneliness and longing, and what it truly means to be human. Listen to The Haunted Library wherever you get your podcasts, or find us on YouTube.
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