Show Notes
In this bonus episode, I sit down with investigative reporter Jennifer Mayerle, the journalist behind the WCCO documentary Footprint to Murder. Jennifer spent years following Jeanie Childs’ case, building trust with Jeanie’s family and navigating the emotional and ethical challenges of reporting a story this complex.
We talk about what it was like to cover this case from the inside: the relationships behind the reporting, the tensions around forensic genetic genealogy, and how the footprint evidence shaped the investigation. We also get into the questions that still linger, and what it means to center a victim’s humanity in a story often flattened by headlines.
Want early access to every episode, all at once? Tenderfoot+ subscribers get the full case at the start of each month—plus ad-free listening and exclusive content from over 30 shows. Sign up at tenderfootplus.com.
Find all action items, sources, and resources in the show notes at truercrimepodcast.com.
Follow @truercrimepod on Instagram and X.
Follow me @celisiastanton on Instagram and TikTok.
Sign up for my weekly Substack newsletter, Sincerely, Celisia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
More from Truer Crime
Welcome to Season Seven of Nobody Should Believe Me. Andrea revisits the case of Maya Kowalski—the story at the center of the Netflix film Take Care of Maya–and the family’s high-profile lawsuit against Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital. What became widely framed as a story about “medical kidnapping” began when hospital staff reported suspected medical child abuse after Maya arrived with a history of extreme ketamine treatments.
In this bonus episode of Truer Crime, we return to the disappearance of eight-year-old Relisha Rudd.
True crime is usually something we consume at a distance, through headlines, documentaries, podcasts. But what happens when those stories are tied to real places you can stand in front of?
Most of us were taught a simple version of what happened to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: a lone gunman, a closed case, a tragic end.
Two years after Jennifer Kirk was found dead on former mayor Clement Richards Sr.’s property, another woman was discovered at that same address: 30-year-old Susanna “Sue Sue” Norton, who was in a relationship with one of Richard's sons. To this day, no one has been charged in connection to her murder.