After a young Mayfield mother was found beaten and burned near a local middle school in 2000, it took years for the community to get answers.
Three different agencies took charge of the investigation into the murder of Jessica Currin, a case that went cold and regained momentum more than five years after her death. The investigation gained fresh legs when Susan Galbreath, an amateur sleuth and Mayfield housewife, and BBC reporter Tom Mangold got involved.
The pair’s efforts contributed to the 2008 conviction of Quincy Omar Cross on charges of capital kidnapping, murder, first-degree rape and sodomy, tampering with physical evidence and abuse of a corpse. Cross has maintained his innocence in the decades since the murder, and the Kentucky Innocence Project has since taken up his case.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and producer Maggie Freleng has reported for years on the criminal legal system. Her award-winning show "Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freleng” has seen her out injustices and helped people’s cases be heard.
More than 25 years after Currin’s murder, Freleng has opened her own investigation on the latest season of Lava For Good’s “Bone Valley: Graves County,” alleging that Galbreath and Mangold’s involvement may have led authorities to the wrong conclusion.
Freleng recently spoke with WKMS News Director Derek Operle about the case and the podcast. The first two episodes of Freleng’s six-part series dropped last week. New episodes will be released weekly moving forward.
The following interview has been edited for time and clarity.
Derek Operle: First off, let's set up some context for people who might be unfamiliar with the case. Jessica Currin, a young mom [was] just 18 years old when she was found brutally beaten and burned near Mayfield Middle School in August 2000. This case has a bunch of twists and turns, and I'm sure that's part of what drew you to the case in the first place. I've heard you describe it as ‘almost feeling made for TV.’ Talk to me about what happens next, which spans years, and where your podcast takes off from.
Maggie Freleng: So you know from the beginning, this actually really was going to be a case made for TV, because two of the main players in it [were] a BBC journalist and a local housewife from Mayfield, and the two of them were really this tag team duo helping to, quote, ‘solve the case,’ because the podcast kind of goes into how that's not actually what they did. I've been on this project for two and a half years. And the thing with this case is, not only were these two citizen sleuths involved, but then three different law enforcement agencies over a course of eight … years investigating this case.
So it was a massive undertaking to tackle this, to try and go through, you know, every agency's documents and really gather what happened. Because every time a new agency picked up this case, we had a new investigation. And then, of course, like I mentioned, the citizen sleuths come in and really muddy everything up. Susan and Tom are getting TV offers … and it's a great story, but what happens when that story isn't the truth? And that's what we dive into.
DO: Susan Galbreath, a housewife, you said. She's originally from Chicago, but had lived in Mayfield for years at the point where this murder happens, but she never met Jessica Currin. Her involvement kind of presages a lot of things that have become more commonplace, especially as true crime has become more of a cottage industry in entertainment with Reddit sleuths. Talk to me about why she's such a unique character in this story.
MF: It's huge these days. In this case, specifically, we'll go back to 2004 when the journalist Tom Mangold and Susan Galbreath enter … the police don't just listen to what they're saying and kind of follow up. They actually really legitimize them. I mean, Susan wired herself up to do this really sketchy under false pretenses, quote, ‘interview’ with Quincy [Cross]. So the way that Susan and Tom were treated in this investigation goes beyond just helping. They really were keyed in, brought in, and really their theory of what happens became the ultimate prosecution's theory.
DO: And then you mentioned Quincy. That's Quincy Cross, a man who is still in jail for this crime. I believe I've read that in testimony, Quincy has said that the first time he ever heard Jessica's name, he was already in jail for an unrelated offense, right?
MF: Yes, yes. And that's what's so interesting, is watching how much this story has changed. One of the first stories the key witness told was that Quincy helped burn this body. You know, when Quincy is arrested, some of the key evidence against him is that he smelt like gas, but Quincy was in jail. He is arrested that night on a petty drug charge.
So this prosecution theory had to then change because their whole theory of moving and burning the body [but] their main guy's in jail. So, like I said, three investigations, multiple witnesses, eight years. This story of what happened to Jessica Currin shifted and changed. Multiple players were brought in. We focus on the five main people who were, I believe, wrongfully convicted, but there were [four] other people dragged into this … with charges pressed against them. There's so many versions of this story. Nine people are implicated. Like, it's just so crazy to me how someone could look at this and every story and every person that somehow gets thrown in down the line to make this version fit, and could think that these people got a fair trial. It makes me feel like we're living in an alternate universe.
DO: How do you go about trying to, you know, untangle that knot? How do you go about trying to report this story two decades after it's all said and done?
MF: Yeah. Jessica was killed in 2000 so it's been almost 26 years at this point. We are so lucky … we have Tom Mangold and Susan Galbreath’s emails, personal emails, back and forth to one another. And, in those emails, we can very clearly see how and when the story changed; whose names get brought up when; why, how, when the police were keyed in on certain people and locations. It's all in the emails, which is absolutely incredible. It's all public record. The [Kentucky] Innocence Project, who has Quincy’s case, has filed it in the state. So their emails are public record, and we were able to go through hundreds of emails. And it's really shocking. It brings into question the role of journalism, which is something I explore.
One of the things in the podcast we also mention is – before another one of his pieces went out – [Mangold] found out one of the key witnesses recanted because Susan Galbreath had a friend that was messaging Tom going ‘she's lying about so much of this.’ She's saying, ‘I'm feeling not good about Susan, Tom.’ And Tom is aware of this. You could see him questioning and being like, ‘Okay, something is up.’ But he chooses to go ahead and publish his article with no information that the key witness has actually now stated she doesn't stand by her story. It is absolutely malpractice, in my belief, the things that were not reported and the things that were reported.
And those emails were released because people did see what was going on and saying, ‘Hey, something really fishy is happening.’ ‘This doesn't look like journalism.’ ‘This doesn't look like just a citizen sleuth doing the good thing. It seems more nefarious than that.’
DO: You’ve spent a fair amount of time here on the ground in western Kentucky as you've been working on this case. Talk to me about your perception of the area and how people feel about this case, now that so much time has passed.
MF: This case, the story, when you listen, you'll notice it's not just about one person, right? Yes, it's about Jessica and Quincy and Tamara and Victoria and Venetia and all these people that were wrapped up. But it's also about this town and what happened to Mayfield in the fallout of this murder and what it means to get justice.
It almost becomes like “The Crucible.” Like, everyone was throwing someone's name out there. Everyone was trying to get answers. This was a horrific thing, and I can't blame anybody for wanting to get those answers, but it really became like a witch hunt, and this town really just went into a frenzy afterwards, thinking anyone around them could have been the killer. So that's how you get nine people's names. I mean, there were many, many more put out there, but ultimately, nine people who were charged with one murder because it was mass chaos.
I think the people today … they remember it. You couldn't be in Graves County and not really have heard about this. And today, I think people just want it to go away.
DO: Obviously you've worked on this case for years, but it's not done. Quincy Cross's case is still in progress, though many files were lost in the wake of the 2021 tornado outbreak, which caused massive damage to the Mayfield courthouse. There's still many documents missing. And obviously, like you said, the Kentucky Innocence Project has gotten involved with Quincy’s case. Where does he stand right now?
MF: So right now, Quincy has a hearing Oct. 23. If you listen to the podcast and want to go, it is at the courthouse in Hickman County, and you can find all the information online. But Oct. 23 he has an evidentiary hearing, and basically all of the evidence you hear us in the podcast present … there's some really shocking evidence that was allegedly fabricated that the Innocence Project has had tested and that they're presenting all of this. So … they are asking the judge to be able to say, ‘Hey, look, we want to bring this all to court, present all of the evidence that nobody heard in this first trial,’ every recantation, every allegation. And so we're hoping the judge says, ‘Yeah, I'll let you present this evidence.’ We're really hopeful the judge will see how much evidence there is to request a new trial, and will let them present it.
DO: And then the season is going to continue to air. People can find it on podcast apps, of I'm guessing, all stripes?
MF: Everywhere. I'm just excited for people to hear everyone's story. While the podcast focuses on Quincy and Jessica, I got to know Tamara Caldwell and Jeff Burton, and not so much Victoria, but she was the key witness. All of these people, I just want to say, are victims. This is a story about power and how power corrupts, and I just want everyone to be mindful of that, even though some of these kids might come off as villains, they're all victims.
Something I do want to say is, while this is a story about Mayfield and it being messed up from the beginning. It's really a story about Kentucky and the halls of power in Kentucky. The prosecutor who prosecuted this case and is now fighting the appeal, Barbara Maines Whaley, has been in office since 1982. We believe we've identified five wrongful convictions that she is still fighting. So that begs the question: Who else has the state of Kentucky also wrongfully convicted?
DO: Maggie, thank you so much for taking the time and for chatting with us today.
MF: I super appreciate it. Thank you for having me on. I'm honored.
