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Audacy Podcasts

For years, Gone South has been a podcast about crime in the American South. But in Season 5, we’re widening the lens.Through deeply reported, narrative-driven stories—and conversations with journalists, historians, musicians, and people who’ve lived these stories firsthand—we’re digging into the myths, scandals, and power structures that still shape the South… and, in many ways, the country itself.From re-examining the cultural meaning of the Alamo to tracing the family history of Alex Murdaugh to investigating the federal indictment of New Orleans’s former mayor, each episode stands alone. Together, they paint a picture of what this region really is and how it came to be.Gone South is a show for people who want to understand how history lingers and why it still matters now.Written and hosted by award-winning journalist Jed Lipinski, Gone South is the recipient of the Edward R. Murrow Award for Outstanding Achievement in Journalism.Previous serialized seasons include:Season 1: Who Killed Margaret Coon?Season 2: The Dixie MafiaSeason 3: The Sign CutterFollow Gone South to get new episodes every week.

Gone South

n 1985, Charles McCrory was convicted of murdering his wife in their small Alabama hometown — a brutal crime scene with no blood on him, no witnesses, and no physical evidence tying him to the house. What sent him to prison for life was a celebrity forensic dentist who testified that two small marks on Julie's arm were a bite mark made by Charles's teeth.

Forty years later, that same dentist has recanted. The science behind bite-mark evidence has been thoroughly discredited. And there are reasons to believe another man — one the police knew about from the beginning — should have been the prime suspect all along. Speaking with Charles himself from inside an Alabama prison, and with his attorney Mark Loudon-Brown, this episode asks how a wrongful conviction can outlast the evidence that built it.

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Junk Science Sent Charles McCrory to Prison — Alabama Won't Let Him Out

When the federal case against Jim Sullivan was dismissed in 1992, Lita McClinton's family thought they'd lost their last chance at justice. They were wrong — but it would take another fourteen years, a tip from a receptionist in a Texas refinery town, an international manhunt, and a four-year fugitive run through Costa Rica and Thailand before Lita's killer finally stood trial.

In the second of a two-part series, writer Deb Miller Landau picks up the story where Part 1 left off: with a wealthy man getting away with murder. She walks us through the trucker who admitted to pulling the trigger, the prosecutor whose phone call may have tipped off the killer, the resort in Cha-Am where the FBI finally caught up with Jim Sullivan, and the verdict that came nearly twenty years after Lita McClinton answered her doorbell.

Deb Landau's book is "A Devil Went Down to Georgia: Race, Power, Privilege, and the Murder of Lita McClinton​":
https://www.amazon.com/Devil-Went-Down-Georgia-Privilege/dp/1639366830

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Connect with Jed Lipinski:

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⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/⁠

"The Murder of Lita McClinton, Part 2: The Hitman

In January 1987, Lita McClinton answered her doorbell in one of Atlanta's wealthiest neighborhoods and was shot dead by a man holding a white flower box with a pink rose. She was 35, the daughter of one of Atlanta's most prominent Black families, and on her way to court that morning for a pivotal hearing in her divorce from her white millionaire ex-husband, Jim Sullivan. Police were sure Jim had ordered the hit. They just couldn't prove it.

Writer Deb Miller Landau first reported on the case for Atlanta Magazine in 2004 — and never let it go. In this episode of Gone South, she walks us through her years-long investigation: an interracial marriage that began in 1970s Macon, a $2 million mansion on Palm Beach, a sloppy hit, a payphone call traced to a Georgia rest stop, and the long, twisting road to justice for Lita McClinton.

Deb Landau's book is "A Devil Went Down to Georgia: Race, Power, Privilege, and the Murder of Lita McClinton​":
https://www.amazon.com/Devil-Went-Down-Georgia-Privilege/dp/1639366830

Subscribe to our newsletter: 

⁠https://jedlipinski.substack.com/⁠ 

Connect with Jed Lipinski:

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https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/

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⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/⁠

The Murder of Lita McClinton, Part 1: The Marriage

In 1954, Dallas executed a 19-year-old Black man named Tommy Lee Walker for the rape and murder of a young white woman near Love Field. Walker had no criminal record, eight alibi witnesses placing him across town at the time, and he recanted his confession the moment he was returned to his cell. None of it mattered. Three months after his arrest, a jury sentenced him to die in the electric chair.

Seventy years later, Innocence Project attorney Chris Fabricant set out to do something that had never been done before: exonerate a man who'd already been put to death. Jed talks with Fabricant about the coerced confession, the junk-science polygraph, the racial panic that swept Dallas in 1953, and what it took to finally clear Tommy Lee Walker's name.

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⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/

Tommy Lee Walker: Executed in 1954, Exonerated in 2026

In 2016, nine men tied to the College of Charleston's Kappa Alpha fraternity were arrested in what police initially described as a 40,000-pill Xanax bust. The real number was closer to three and a half million, along with cocaine, LSD, weed, luxury watches, a fleet of cars, and a grenade launcher. The crew had spent years pressing counterfeit pills in rented beach houses and shipping them across the country in Skittles bags, fueling an unregulated drug economy that ran straight through one of the most beautiful college campuses in America.

Jed talks with journalist Max Marshall, author of the book "Among the Bros," about how he embedded himself in this world, his hundreds of hours of late-night phone calls with an imprisoned ringleader, and what the case reveals about American fraternities and the lives of the men inside them. 

Max Marshall's book is "Among the Bros: A Fraternity Crime Story" 

https://shorturl.at/ynPGO

Subscribe to our newsletter: 

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Connect with Jed Lipinski:

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https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/⁠

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⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/

Inside a Charleston Frat's Multimillion-Dollar Xanax Ring

When Australian comedian John Safran flew to Rankin County, Mississippi to confront a white nationalist named Richard Barrett with a surprise DNA test, he had no idea the man would be killed eleven months later — by a 22-year-old Black neighbor he'd hired to do yard work. Safran returned to Mississippi to write his first true-crime book, expecting a clear-cut story about racism and a perfect victim. What he found instead was something stranger: a town built on things left unspoken, a killer who scammed him for gift cards from jail, and a relationship between victim and killer that defied the assumptions he'd brought with him.

Jed talks with Safran about his book "Murder in Mississippi," the ethics of crime reporting, and what an outsider notices about the South that the rest of us miss.

John Safran's book is "Murder in Mississippi"

 https://www.amazon.com/Murder-Mississippi-John-Safran/dp/034913426X

Subscribe to our newsletter: 

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Connect with Jed Lipinski:⁠

https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/⁠

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⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/

Murder in Mississippi

In 2003, Dennis Perry was convicted of the 1985 murders of Harold and Thelma Swain at Rising Daughter Baptist Church in Spring Bluff, Georgia. He was innocent. He would spend the next 20 years, six months, and ten days behind bars.
This episode of Gone South tells the Georgia Church Murders story through Dennis's eyes — from his arrest and interrogation by detective Dale Bundy, to his trial, his two life sentences, and the years he spent inside Jimmy Autry State Prison waiting for someone to believe him.
It's also the story of Brenda Perry, the woman who knew Dennis his whole life, married him in a prison chapel, and never stopped fighting for his freedom. After reporter Josh Sharpe of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution exposed the truth and the Georgia Innocence Project secured his release, Dennis was fully exonerated. This is what survival looks like.

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https://jedlipinski.substack.com/

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The Georgia Church Murders Part 2: Dennis Perry's Story of Wrongful Conviction and Redemption

In 1985, Harold and Thelma Swain were shot and killed during Bible study at Rising Daughter Baptist Church in Spring Bluff, Georgia. The double murder went unsolved for years — until a man named Dennis Perry was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to two life terms for a crime he almost certainly didn't commit.

In 2019, Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Josh Sharpe began investigating the case for the Georgia Innocence Project. What he found was damning: a botched investigation, unreliable witnesses, and a key suspect — Eric Sparre — whose alibi turned out to be completely fabricated.

This episode of Gone South follows Sharpe's six-month investigation into the Georgia Church Murders, the wrongful conviction of Dennis Perry, and the evidence pointing to the man many believe actually pulled the trigger. Based in part on Sharpe's book, The Man No One Believed.

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Connect with Jed Lipinski: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/

The Georgia Church Murders Part 1: A Wrongful Conviction, a Fake Alibi, and the Reporter Who Cracked the Case

New Orleans. 1918. A killer the papers call “The Axeman” breaks into homes at night, mostly targeting Italian grocers, and attacks with an axe taken from inside the house. No robbery. No clear motive. Just terror. The case is never officially solved.
In this episode of Gone South, former Times-Picayune editor James Karst walks Jed Lipinski through what the archives actually show: the earliest attacks, the infamous Axeman letter demanding jazz music, and the overlooked suspect Joseph Mumfre, a Black Hand linked extortionist whose name keeps resurfacing.

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Connect with Jed Lipinski: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/

The Axeman of New Orleans

A unaccredited private school in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana became a national sensation when its students began landing acceptances at Harvard, Stanford, and other Ivy League universities. The viral videos were inspiring. The story seemed almost too good to be true. It was.
New York Times reporters Katie Benner and Erica Green investigated T.M. Landry and uncovered a years-long college admissions fraud: fabricated transcripts, invented extracurriculars, and personal essays built on trauma the students never experienced. Behind it all was the school's charasmatic and manipulative founder, Mike Landry.
This episode explores the rise and fall of T.M. Landry, the college admissions scandal it exposed, and who really pays the price when a system built to exclude finally gets gamed.

Subscribe to our newsletter:⁠https://jedlipinski.substack.com/⁠

Connect with Jed Lipinski: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/

Katie Benner and Erica L. Green's book is "Miracle Children: Race, Education and a True Story of False Promises": https://www.amazon.com/Miracle-Children-Education-Story-Promises/dp/1250759102

The T.M. Landry Scandal: How a Louisiana School Faked Its Way Into the Ivy League

Many who knew Ortiz were shocked to hear about his crimes. Had this seemingly kind family man always had a dark side, or did something turn him into a killer? As those involved in the case would discover, the answer isn’t so simple.

Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski.

S3|E6: The Motive

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