Hell and Gone

On January 7, 1995, 43-year-old Connie Townsend’s home burned to the ground in Brockwell, Arkansas in front of over 20 witnesses.  Connie was moving out of her house that day. She had separated from her estranged husband, David Townsend years earlier. David had been staying with his parents, Dale and Ramona, and also with his girlfriend of three years, JoAnn Ellis.  But according to Connie’s daughters, Stacy and Amber, David was angry that day and had threatened Connie. They also said that David had threatened to burn the house down in the past.  Connie’s body was found in a utility room; she was lying face down with a pair of sewing scissors underneath her body.  Investigators said that Connie had died of smoke and soot inhalation, and according to the autopsy report there was no tissue left.  And it seemed like after investigators went through the charred remains of her trailer, they had a lot more questions. Was Connie’s death due to an accidental fire, or murder and arson?  We had heard from Connie’s daughters that Connie’s  body was found in a junk room, a bedroom that they kind of used as a utility room.  If there was a fire, why would Connie shut herself into a closet in the back of the utility room, a place where there was no escape?  Or could someone have put her in that closet? If you have a case you’d like Catherine Townsend to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On January 7, 1995, at around 12:50 pm, two women, Monica Jones and her girlfriend Cheryl Edwards were driving down Highway 56 near Brockwell, Arkansas when Cheryl saw smoke coming from a trailer at the residence of 43-year-old Connie Townsend.  The two women pulled over and ran up to the trailer to try to help. At around that same time, another woman, Billy Browning arrived. Monica and Cheryl both desperately tried to get inside the trailer, but the heat was too intense.  The trailer was already engulfed in flames.  By the time the first officer from the Izard County Sheriff's Office and the Calico Rock fire department arrived on the scene, it was chaos.  According to the police report, the officer noted that there were about 20 to 25 people standing in the yard.  Connie Townsend burned to death while it seemed like half the town stood outside, and multiple people told police about threats that she had allegedly received, some of them earlier that day. And yet, 30 years later no one has ever been arrested or charged in connection with her death.  If you have a case you’d like Catherine Townsend to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On June 1, 1987, Theresa Ann Bier was about to go on an adventure… into the woods to look for Bigfoot. Theresa was sixteen years old, and was wrapping up her freshman year at Fresno High in Fresno, California.  She was one year behind a lot of her classmates, which wasn’t surprising because she  was living in a very abusive environment with her uncle John Richmond, his two young sons, and his 17-year-old girlfriend.  Theresa’s plan was to skip school June 1 and drive into the Sierra Nevada Mountains for the day with a 43-year-old friend of her uncle’s, Russell “Skip” Welch. But Theresa never came home, and soon, the man who took her into the woods was rambling about Theresa being taken by a monster.  The case made local news, and on Friday, June 19, 1987, The Fresno Bee published a newspaper article about this case with the headline  “Man blames Bigfoot for missing girl.” But this was more than a tabloid story. This case would involve allegations of sex slavery, serial killers, drug use, Bigfoot colonies - and at the heart of this story, a system that completely failed a young woman on every single level - a system that allowed a sixteen year old to vanish without a trace.  If you have a case you’d like Catheerine Townsend to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It was Thursday night, November 1, 2007, and 18-year-old Justin Gaines was getting ready for a night out with his friends at Wild Bill’s, a club in Duluth, Georgia.   Justin was a freshman in college. He had just started at Gainesville State college, which was about an hour away from where his family was. Justin was 5 '11, 210 pounds, with blue eyes and brown hair in a buzz cut. He was a handsome, clean cut, preppy guy.  Justin didn’t take a wallet out with him that night, so he had no credit cards, just cash, a couple fake IDs, and his cell phone. He caught a ride with his friends to the club. But when they arrived, his friends didn’t want to pay the cover charge and left. Justin saw someone in line who he knew and was able to get in for free and went into the club on his own. He said that it was no problem. He would find a ride. This was something he did often. A while later, in the early morning hours of November 2, 2007, Justin walked out into that parking lot in Duluth, and no one ever saw him again.   If you have a case you’d like Catherine Townsend to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On February 15, 2024, 11-year-old Audrii Cunningham, a fifth grade student at Creekside Elementary in Livingstone, Texas, never made it to the bus stop.  And when she didn’t come home after school, her family knew that something was very wrong. Audrii lived with her dad, and on that property, there was someone else living there: a 42-year-old friend of the family’s who lived in a camper. And even though he had a very disturbing criminal record, this man was allowed to babysit for Audrii.  Once Audrii went missing, people started taking a look at what was really going on behind the closed doors of this house in rural Texas. We talk about stranger danger, but with this case, sometimes the most terrifying people can be living inside our home. If you have a case you’d like Catherine Townsend to look into, you can reach out to the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 2012, six years after 21-year-old college student Nina Ingram was strangled at her apartment in Fayetteville, there was an arrest and a man named Rico Cohn was charged with Nina’s murder. But after a key witness died suddenly, the criminal case against Rico was dismissed.  His legal team filed a CIVIL LAWSUIT against the Fayetteville Police Department, suing several officers who worked on his case as well employees as the Arkansas State Crime Lab.  They alleged that the case against Rico Cohn was weak, basically nonexistent - that there was no physical evidence against Rico Cohn and that the witness, Randee Applewhite, told them that she was NOT at all sure that Rico had committed the crime.  Eventually, the lawsuit was voluntarily dismissed. And the ENTIRE case against Rico Cohn was sealed by a judge. Now as we said last week the lawsuit is obviously only one side of the story. But there are a lot of details in the civil lawsuit about investigations that were done by Rico’s attorneys for both the civil and criminal lawsuits - and about leads that the Fayetteville Police Department allegedly failed to follow up on.   One of them was a person described as Person of Interest B - who, from reading through the events of the case file, appeared to match the description of Jarvis Allan Harper, a man who worked with Nina Ingram at the Sixth Street Walmart at the time she was murdered.  So we went back and tried to figure out how did Jarvis's name first come to the attention of the Fayetteville Police Department and if there were other leads that should have been investigated.  What else did the police miss?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sometime after ten pm on April 21, 2006, 21-year-old college student Nina Ingram was brutally murdered inside her apartment in Fayetteville, Arkansas.  The cause of death was ligature strangulation, and The Arkansas State Crime lab ruled the death a homicide. Despite  the fact that detectives interviewed dozens of Nina’s friends, coworkers and her significant other, they had no viable suspects for years.  The Fayetteville Police Department considered this a cold case, their only unsolved one at the time since the 1970s. But then in 2012 they arrested and charged  26-year-old Rico Tavarous Cohn with Nina’s murder.  But the case against Rico Cohn was not as solid as it appeared to be on the surface. He spent over three years behind bars, and then, the case against him was dismissed. Three years later in 2018, Rico filed a civil lawsuit against the Fayetteville Police Department detectives and employees at the Arkansas State Crime Lab who he alleged violated his civil rights.  This lawsuit claimed that there were several people of interest who police interviewed who were potential suspects...suspects that the lawsuit alleges were overlooked.  The person who murdered Nina has never been found. This person is still out there. Could the answers to finding Nina’s killer be there and is this person still out there?  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sometime after 10 p.m. on April 21, 2006, 21-year-old college student Nina Ingram was brutally murdered inside her apartment in Fayetteville, Arkansas. It became big news, at the time it was one of only two unsolved murder cases in Fayetteville since the 1970s.  Police interviewed Nina’s neighbors, her boyfriend, her friends and family but failed to identify a single suspect.  Her case went cold. Until six years later in 2012 when a 26-year-old man named Rico Tavarous Cohn was arrested and charged with Nina’s murder.  If you have a case you’d like the Hell and Gone team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It was April 21, 2006, and 21-year-old college student Nina Ingram was coming home after a long day.  Nina had a very busy life. She was two years into her business degree at Northwest Arkansas Community college in Bentonville, Arkansas and also worked full time at Walmart, part of the loss prevention team, basically a security officer.  That night, Nina had worked her shift, ate dinner at her boyfriend's apartment, and then drove back to her apartment complex a little after 10 pm.  Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. But the next day, no one heard from Nina.  At around 2 pm her other brother, Noah, and his partner, Chad, drove over to Nina’s apartment to check on her.  They knocked on the door, but Nina didn’t answer. So her brother climbed through an open window into the kitchen.  Chad waited outside while Noah unlocked the door and the deadbolt, which were both locked. Seconds later, he heard Noah scream.  Chad went in through the now unlocked front door and raced into Nina’s bedroom in the back of the apartment; he and Noah saw her lying face up on the bed with what Chad described as very visible red scratches and bruises around her neck. Chad told police that he knew immediately that she was dead.   Was Nina Ingram murdered by a serial killer, was this a random attack, or was it someone she knew? If you have a case you’d like the Hell and Gone team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On Sept. 1, 1995, a police officer in Fort Smith, Arkansas pulled over a vehicle. A man named Jerry Cogan was driving and his girlfriend, 24-year-old Lori Murchison, was the passenger.  Lori worked at a local nursing home. She had a four year old daughter, Britney, and adored her little girl. But Lori had been battling an addiction to drugs, according to what her friends told police, mainly to methamphetamines and also alcohol.  Because of that, Lori had been living with her mother, Nancy, in between staying at different local motels, and Nancy had been taking care of Lori’s daughter on and off. Lori and Jerry had been at a bar that night. When the officer pulled them over, he believed that both of them had been drinking. So, he placed Jerry under arrest for DUI, and Lori for suspicion of public intoxication.  Lori was taken to the Sebastian County jail. And she was released sometime after 5 AM on September 2nd. She told detectives that she planned to get money and come back to bail Jerry out.  But she never returned to jail. The last time she was seen alive was at the Continental Motel, when she was picking up a key to a room.  Her family had no way of knowing where she was - or that the hunt for this missing mother would eventually involve charges of corruption at the highest levels of government.  If you have a case you’d like the Hell and Gone team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.