True Crime Brewery

Bill and Melanie McGuire were an attractive couple in their thirties. They had two young sons, two successful careers, and they had just closed on a $500,000 home when Bill disappeared. Melanie told their friends that they had fought on the night they had closed on their new home. Bill had physically attacked her and walked out, telling her that he was done with her.

Bill didn’t seem like the type of guy who would hit his wife and leave his children behind. But Melanie insisted that he had hit her and walked out on his family. She even went to court and took out a restraining order against him.

As the days passed and no one heard from Bill, Melanie appeared to be moving on with her life without him. But Bill’s family and friends worried. Bill had been a gambler. Maybe he had pissed off the wrong people.

Then a bizarre news story got everyone’s attention. First, a Kenneth Cole suitcase was found in Virginia Beach. It contained a pair of bloodless male human legs which had been severed at the knees.

One week later, Virginia Beach police recovered a second suitcase that was part of the same Kenneth Cole set. It held a five-pound weight, black trash bags, and more human remains. This time, it was a man’s head and torso. But who this man was and when he had been killed were still unknown.

The third and last suitcase was recovered within two weeks. It contained the man’s hips and thighs. Virginia Beach police launched an intensive investigation to identify the victim and identified him as Bill McGuire.

Join us at the quiet end today for a haunting case that became known as The Suitcase Murder. Well-respected fertility nurse Melanie McGuire was accused of her husband’s murder and dismemberment and she faced life in prison. Although her attorney would argue her innocence, a complex unravelling of the facts would reveal a twisted murder plot which grew from infidelity, greed, and hate.

Mitrice Richardson was released from the Lost Hills Sheriff department in Malibu, California, in the middle of the night without her phone, money, or transportation on September 17, 2009. She had been arrested hours earlier after behaving strangely at an upscale restaurant. She was unable to pay her dinner bill and the restaurant staff were concerned that she was mentally unstable or intoxicated.

Once in police custody, Mitrice’s mother was contacted and she was assured that they would be keeping Mitrice overnight. Her mother could pick her up in the morning. But, by morning, Mitrice had been released. Her whereabouts were unknown.

No one knew why Mitrice had driven about 40 miles from her home to the oceanside Malibu neighborhood. She had made some strange Facebook posts and had demonstrated some unusual behavior that day. When she was released after midnight, she was in an area she didn’t know, without any way to contact her family. Her car had been impounded and she was unable to retrieve it.

Mitrice’s family believed that she could have been having a mental health crisis, so her release was both negligent and dangerous. And, as time passed and Mitrice was not found, her family began to feel ignored and deceived by the Sheriff’s office and the LAPD.

Join us at the quiet end today for the story of a disoriented, young African-American woman who was left to fend for herself, in the dead of night, in the rugged terrain of the Santa Monica Mountains, and was never seen or heard from again.

What happened to Mitrice Richardson? The gaps and omissions in the Sheriff’s department’s handling of her case, as well as her family’s discoveries, welcome further investigation into the events of her disappearance.

Gina Renee Hall experienced more pain in her 18 years than most of us do in our lifetimes. As a young child, she suffered severe burns. As a result, she went through multiple surgeries and was left with disfiguring scars.

You might think that she would have been bitter and isolated herself from the world. But Gina was a friendly, outgoing, and pretty young woman. She accepted what life had given her—dressing to hide her scars and yet always being fashionable, playing competitive sports, and attending college.

But Gina’s decision to go out dancing, and to dance with 28-year old Stephen Epperly, would lead somewhere that she couldn’t have predicted. Others who had known Stephen Epperly for years were aware of his violent past. He had been accused of rape more than once, but he was never convicted.

Epperly was the last person to see Gina alive. And blood was found in multiple locations where he had taken her. Her car was found abandoned with the trunk open. The trunk was stained with dried blood. But Gina has never been found.

In today’s True Crime Brewery, The Search for Gina Renee Hall, we will go over the details in this nearly 40-year old case. We’ll explore Epperly’s history, his story, and the extensive circumstantial evidence used to convict him in Virginia’s first “No Body” murder conviction.

Heather Strong was a 26-year old waitress and mother, trying to make ends meet, when she disappeared in 2009. Heather had lived a difficult life which had only gotten worse when she became involved with Joshua Fulgham and Emilia Carr. Joshua was in on-again off-again relationships with both Heather and Emilia. When Heather went missing, Emilia was 8-months pregnant. She claimed that Joshua was the father.
Emilia was known to be jealous of Josh and Heather’s relationship. Just one month before Heather was vanished, Emilia attacked Heather with a knife to her throat and threatened to kill her.
In The Elimination of Heather Strong, we’re talking about a group of young people who lived dysfunctional lives burdened by drug use, sexual and physical abuse, violence, poverty, unplanned pregnancies, and infidelity. Their relationships ended in betrayal and tragedy, leaving one of them dead and two in prison.

Kelly Ann Tinyes was just two days shy of her 14^th birthday when she disappeared in her own neighborhood in 1989. In the days that followed, children stopped playing outside. Terrified neighbors began a harassment campaign of the Golubs, a family whose two sons were suspects.

The Golub home appeared like any other well-maintained suburban home on the outside, but what police found inside was shocking. This story shows us how we don’t know our neighbors as well as we think we do and how the secrets inside of a family can fester and proliferate, infecting others.

Join us at the quiet end today for What Happened on Horton Road, a troubling and morbid case of two families, one suburban neighborhood, and one unforgettable crime.