1. Welcome to The Prosecutors

Hello everyone. It’s Brett and Alice, and we are so glad to have you along this crazy ride with us. We’re going to be talking about some of the most famous cold cases of all time, bringing our experience as prosecutors to bear on our favorite mysteries. We hope this website can become a repository of information on these cases, and any public documents we use or cite we will try to link here both to credit the authors and to give you access to them. The more eyes on these cases, the better. But before we do that, we wanted to introduce ourselves to all of you.

In this episode, we tell a little bit about ourselves, and we set out the rules we are going to do our best to stick to during our investigation. Here they are, our ten commandments of sorts.

  1. The simplest answer is the most likely to be correct.
  2. If there is no evidence of a crime, there probably wasn’t a crime.
  3. Usually, law enforcement can be trusted.
  4. Conspiracies are hard to pull off and even harder to keep secret.
  5. Do not mistake incompetence for malice.
  6. There will never be a theory that answers all the questions or addresses all the evidence.
  7. We never know all the facts.
  8. The most obvious suspect is usually the one who did it.
  9. People lie, but that doesn’t make them liars.
  10. BUT in extraordinary cases, expect the extraordinary. Cause what’s the point of rules if you can’t break them?

365. The Mackenzie Shirilla Case — Crash Into Me

When Mackenzie Shirilla crashed her car into the side of a building, killing two other teens, it appeared to be a horrific accident. But as the evidence came in, that accident began to look much more like murder.

Sources:

The Crash (Netflix)

Killer Cases: Murder on Wheels (Season 4, Episode 12) Hulu

Mean Girl Murders: Under the Influence (Season 2, Episode 7) Hulu

https://law.justia.com/cases/ohio/eighth-district-court-of-appeals/2024/113167.html

Maps and Texts

364. The Murder of Pauline Mullins Pusser — The Boys from Alabama

We’re gonna take you up to McNairy County, Tennessee

Back in the days when Sheriff Buford Pusser ran things around there

Sheriff Buford Pusser was tryin’ to clean up McNairy County, Tennessee

From all them bootleggers that was bringin’ crime and corruption

And illegal liquor into his little dry county

And for his troubles he got ambushed and his wife was murdered

And his house got blown up, and they made a movie about it called Walking Tall

This is the other side of that story.

–Drive-By Truckers

Sources:

Buford Pusser Died Here, Adamsville, Tennessee

Buford Pusser, The Tragedies – Sheriff Buford Pusser Museum

Buford Pusser, The Man – Sheriff Buford Pusser Museum

Pauline Mullins (1932–1967)

Crime-busting sheriff Buford Pusser killed his wife in 1967, cold case investigators say | AP News

Buford Pusser Biography – Facts, Childhood, Family Life of Former Sheriff of McNairy County

The wife of a famed Tennessee sheriff died in a 1967 unsolved shooting. Agents just exhumed her body | AP News

Buford Pusser, Sheriff Depicted In ‘Walking Tall’ Film, Is Dead – The New York Times

Walking Tall (1973) – IMDb

Why were Pauline Pusser’s remains exhumed?

Tennessee authorities: Sheriff who inspired ‘Walking Tall’ film killed his wife in 1967 | FOX 5 DC

2011 DNA Testing Results in the West Memphis 3 Case

We have received what we believe to be the entire 2011 DNA testing file from the West Memphis 3 case, pursuant to our ongoing FOIA requests. I have linked the file below. It is nearly 1,000 pages long. The testing appears to have been extensive. I am interested to see what people who know more about DNA and this case than I do think of the results. A few things that stick out.

  1. Bode Labs did a lot of testing of a lot of things. It appears that almost all of that testing excluded the three convicted, as well as Terry Hobbs. One exception to that appears to be Terry’s DNA on a knife, but I do not know the significance of the knife.
  2. The defense team provided what they described as covert DNA samples from a number of people, including the other Jason Baldwin and Terry Hobbs’ sister, Cindy. They also obtained samples from a number of these people I’ve never heard of–Chuck King, Lynn Vaughn, and James Vaughn.
  3. Although none of these samples matched anything tested, Bode did find unknown male DNA on two different spots on the shoelace remaining in one of the discarded shoes. Hard to say if this is significant, but it certainly should be a focus of future investigation.
  4. Chuck King could not be excluded as the owner of a hair found on a tree stump at the scene.
  5. A number of hairs were tested. One described as “from perineum of C. Byers ligature” was consistent with John Mark Byers. A number of the hairs were consistent with Todd Moore. Given that Todd Moore had a solid alibi, these results are likely an example of cross contamination from living with the boys. (In fact, Todd Moore could not be excluded from the so called “Negroid hair from white sheet.”). A cautionary note when considering the hair that supposedly matched Terry Hobbs at the crime scene.
  6. Bode appears to have been exceptionally thorough. The file contains detailed ligature-processing notes. Bode was cutting knots, exposing the inside of knots, swabbing areas around knots, and separating/packaging the remaining ligature pieces.
  7. Much of the DNA was untestable, so maybe the results aren’t all that significant. It is at least interesting that none of the convicted or other accused had DNA found on the boys. There’s more DNA evidence for other, seemingly random people than the West Memphis 3.

363. The Missing Scientists — The History of Everything

Over the last few years, more than a dozen government scientists and other employees of secret government labs have either gone missing or disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Some believe these unusual occurrences are tied to UFOs, nuclear research, or some other deep state project. Is there a grand conspiracy underway? Or is the explanation something less extraordinary?

Sources: