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Something Rotten in Mayfield

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Factual: Crime & Justice

08/05/2012

BBC Radio 4 - Something Rotten in Mayfield

Tom Mangold investigates a murder in Kentucky that local police couldn't or wouldn't solve

In 2004, a woman in Kentucky called British journalist Tom Mangold and asked him to investigate a murder which the local police could not or would not solve. This is their story.

In August 2000, in Mayfield Kentucky, 19-year-old Jessica Currin was brutally murdered. When the local police failed to find her killer, a local woman, Susan Galbreath contacted veteran BBC investigative reporter Tom Mangold and asked his help in solving the crime. 

Mangold, off work with a knee operation and bored, became intrigued by the story and flew to Mayfield, a dry town in the heart of America's bible belt, to work with Susan. Together the odd couple worked tirelessly from an ultra-modest room in a motel frequented by Hells Angels and interstate truckers, determined to crack the case. Within ten days it had become obvious not only that the local police had completely failed to mount a proper investigation, and charged an innocent man with the murder, but that the real identity of the killer was reasonably well known on the street. After two weeks, the couple handed their evidence to the Kentucky State Police, and both waited for results. But nothing happened. The police didn't act, the culprits weren't arrested, and the killers remained free. Why?

In "Something Rotten In Mayfield" Tom returns to Kentucky to tell the remarkable story of how he and Susan finally got justice for Jessica and reports on how some detectives, mired in scandal, could not or would not solve the crime on their doorstep.


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