Hell and Gone

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.

This episode continues the investigation into the disappearance of Ieshia Jackson.

It was Halloween night 2020, and 22-year-old Ieshia was getting ready to go to a party. She lived in El Dorado, Arkansas just a short distance away from her mother, her younger brother, and the rest of her family, but because she had had a couple of break-ins at her new home, she was staying at her uncle’s.

Ieshia and her mother were very close and normally spoke a few times per day. So by November 2, 2020 when Laquita had not heard from her daughter, she was getting worried. Laquita, her boyfriend, and her son jumped in the car and headed to Ieshia’s.

When the family got there they could see immediately that something was very wrong.Laquita went in and found her daughter’s stuff there, including her wallet and cell phone. The place looked like she had just stepped out for five minutes. But Ieshia never came back 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.

It was Halloween night 2020, and 22-year-old Ieshia Jackson was getting ready to go to a party. She lived in El Dorado, Arkansas just a short distance away from her mother, her younger brother, and the rest of her family, but because she had had a couple of break-ins at her new home, she was staying at her uncle’s.

Ieshia and her mother were very close and normally spoke a few times per day. So by November 2, 2020 when Laquita had not heard from her daughter, she was getting worried. Laquita, her boyfriend, and her son jumped in the car and headed to Ieshia’s.

When the family got there they could see immediately that something was very wrong.Laquita went in and found her daughter’s stuff there, including her wallet and cell phone. The place looked like she had just stepped out for five minutes. But Ieshia never came back 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.

Catherine continues her investigation into the disappearance of Jason Lierl.

In January of 2022, Jason Lierl was visiting friends in Madison County Arkansas when he disappeared off the face of the earth.

Jason was last seen in Madison County, Arkansas. His abandoned car was found in the parking lot of a mall in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

His car keys, motorcycle and other belongings were found in different places, spread across Arkansas and Missouri - but to this day, no trace of Jason has ever been found. What happened to Jason Lierl?

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.

In January of 2022, Jason Lierl was visiting friends in Madison County Arkansas when he disappeared off the face of the earth.

Jason was last seen in Madison County, Arkansas. His abandoned car was found in the parking lot of a mall in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

His car keys, motorcycle and other belongings were found in different places, spread across Arkansas and Missouri - but to this day, no trace of Jason has ever been found. What happened to Jason Lierl?

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.

Sometime between the evening of September 2 in the early morning hours of September 3, 1994, 35-year-old Billie Jean Phillips was brutally beaten to death at her home in Alabam, Arkansas.

The case soon became the biggest story in Madison County, and there was a long list of potential suspects.

But in 2002, there was an arrest in the Billie Jean Phillips murder case. One that would shock the community.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On Saturday September 3, 1994, a federal poultry inspector named Chic Philips was taking his seven-year-old son MacKenzie back to the home of his mother and Chic’s ex-wife, 35-year-old Billie Jean Philips.

When they arrived, Billie Jean’s son ran inside the house and walked back to the bedroom he saw his mom lying on the floor a few feet from the bed with her head kind of propped up against a wall. She wasn’t moving. So the little boy ran outside to the car and told his dad, “Mommy fell painting”.

Chic put his son back in his truck and walked in to see what he was talking about and that’s when he found his former wife’s body and realized his son thought the blood spattered all over her bedroom were paint.

Of course, the house became a crime scene, and it wasn’t long before the whole town heard what happened. Billie Jean had been brutally murdered.

There was a long list of suspects including a sheriff living a double life, the prosecutor and his son who were sleeping with the victim, and a tale of conspiracy theories, arson, meth, and murder in Arkansas. So what really happened to Billie Jean Phillips?

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this season of Blindspot: The Plague in the Shadows, we travel back to a pivotal moment in the history of this country, and we trace how, decades before Covid-19, a virus tore through some of our most vulnerable communities while the wider world looked away. We go to a pediatric ward in Harlem, a women’s prison in upstate New York, a drug market in the South Bronx, and the inner sanctum of the National Institutes of Health. And we meet people who demanded that they, and their illness, be seen: mothers and children, doctors and nurses, nuns and sex workers, and a woman who literally helped change the definition of AIDS.

The first episode comes out on Jan. 18.

Blindspot is a co-production of The HISTORY® Channel and WNYC Studios, in collaboration with The Nation Magazine. Cover photo by Donna Binder.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Elderly couple David and Mina Swan lived in a quiet neighborhood in Clearwater, Florida. But on Saturday September 29, 2018, a neighbor of theirs was concerned when their newspapers started piling up outside. The neighbor called Mina’s daughter, and the pair of them went inside the house. What they found was horrific. David and Mina were at the kitchen table slumped over in pools of blood. The police have admitted that they are stumped, and over three years later the case is still unsolved. Who would have killed David and Mina Swan?

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 Arkansas, some people think that a slew of child deaths in the early 1990s are related. Those children are Christina Pipkin, who went missing in May of 1991, Steve Branch, Michael Moore, Christopher Byers, the three eight-year-old boys who were murdered in West Memphis in 1993, and also includes 16-year-old Gardenia Cross Jones and 13-year-old Geneva Smith, whose bodies were both found near Wynne, Arkansas just a few miles from Hickory Ridge shortly after they went missing.

After Catherine’s investigation into these deaths for a few months, there haven't been any obvious connections among the children in east Arkansas. But there are a lot of weird coincidences in these cases. In three of the four cases, suspects were arrested and ultimately released. All of them were found in or near bodies of water. And all of them are unsolved.

If you have a case you’d like Catherine 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.