Advertise on podcast: Gone South

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:  ⁠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/

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. 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/

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. 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/

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. 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/

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

Patterson Hood grew up in Florence, Alabama — a deeply conservative, Bible Belt town where his father was quietly making history. David Hood was a session bassist for the Muscle Shoals rhythm section, recording with Aretha Franklin, the Rolling Stones, and Wilson Pickett at a time when it wasn't always safe to go to dinner with the artists you were recording with. Patterson learned early not to mention his dad's job at school. When people asked what church his father attended, he changed the subject.Decades later, Patterson co-founded Drive-By Truckers — a band that has spent 25 years wrestling with Southern identity, racism, abuse of power, and what it means to be American. In this conversation, he talks about growing up progressive in the Deep South, why he thinks a Black and white soul band should replace the Confederate flag as the symbol of the South, and what he hopes listeners will make of his songs 20 years from now. 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/

Before the Civil Rights Movement's major victories of the 1960s, a pro wrestler named Sputnik Monroe was already integrating Memphis, Tennessee one arena at a time. Born Roscoe Brumbaugh in Dodge City, Kansas, Monroe became one of the most beloved figures in Memphis wrestling history, counting Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash among his friends and fans. This episode of Gone South tells the story of how Monroe — a white heel wrestler with a bleached streak in his hair and a gift for provocation — used his fame to desegregate the Ellis Auditorium, challenge Jim Crow on Beale Street, and form one of the first interracial tag teams in the South. He was arrested repeatedly for socializing in Black nightclubs. He didn't stop. Featuring interviews with music historian Robert Gordon, wrestling journalist Steve Johnson, and Jerry Phillips (son of Sun Studio founder Sam Phillips) plus archival audio of Monroe himself. A story about race, rebellion, and one of the most unlikely civil rights figures the South ever produced. Check out Robert Gordon's book It Came From Memphis https://tinyurl.com/yys8pxdhSteve Johnson has written many fine books about wrestling history, includingThe Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame: The Heelshttps://tinyurl.com/28h6nacm​Follow Jerry Phillips on Facebookhttps://www.facebook.com/p/Jerry-Phillips-61559154401992/ 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/

After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was a city of wreckage, rumors, and strange things washing up where they didn’t belong. When transplant Skip Henderson buys a battered table lamp at a post-storm rummage sale, along with a set of drums and an Allen Iverson jersey, the seller casually drops a chilling line: “That’s a Nazi lampshade.” At first, it feels like just another piece of post-Katrina chaos. But when Skip takes a closer look at the lampshade’s translucent, veined material, the object starts to haunt him. He ships it from friend to friend, trying to get it out of his life until it lands with veteran journalist Mark Jacobson, who can’t let the mystery go. In this episode of Gone South, host Jed Lipinski follows the lampshade’s bizarre journey from the Lower Ninth Ward to DNA labs, Holocaust institutions, and a decades-old urban legend where the truth may be even harder to pin down than the myth. 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/ Follow Marc Jacobson on Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/markjacobson48/Marc's book: The Lampshade: A Holocaust Detective Story from Buchenwald to New Orleanshttps://www.amazon.com/Lampshade-Holocaust-Detective-Buchenwald-Orleans/dp/1416566287/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

In 1903, South Carolina’s most powerful journalist is gunned down in broad daylight, and the shooter is the lieutenant governor. Narciso Gonzalez, editor of The State newspaper in Columbia, spent years attacking the Tillman machine: “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman, the architect of South Carolina’s post-Reconstruction political order, and Ben’s volatile nephew James Tillman, a rising politician with a reputation for drinking, gambling, and vendettas. On January 19, 1903, that feud turns into a street-corner assassination outside the State House. From Red Shirts intimidation and the Hamburg massacre, to Ben Tillman’s state-run liquor “dispensary” system and the riots it sparked, to a murder trial engineered to let the shooter walk, we trace the bloodline politics and raw violence behind the killing with writer Jack Hitt (This American Life, Uncivil). It’s a story about press power, political revenge, and how a state’s myths, and its laws, get written when the loudest voice in the room can be silenced with a gun. 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/ Listen to Jack Hitt on This American Life https://www.thisamericanlife.org/archive?contributor=8770Read some of Jack Hitt's best magazine stories on Longform.orghttps://longform.org/archive/writers/jack-hitt

New Orleans is no stranger to political scandal, but the federal case against Mayor LaToya Cantrell isn’t a classic bribes-and-kickbacks story. It’s a story about a relationship, power, and the alleged misuse of public resources. Times-Picayune columnist Stephanie Grace traces Cantrell’s rise from post-Katrina neighborhood leader to the first woman elected mayor, and what went wrong in her second term. Prosecutors say Cantrell and NOPD officer Jeffrey Vappie, her security guard, used city funds and access to a city-owned apartment overlooking Jackson Square and official travel to spend time together, then tried to cover it up. Cantrell has denied wrongdoing. 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/

Most people know the phrase “Remember the Alamo.” Fewer know what actually happened there or why Texans still fight over it. Jed Lipinski talks with journalist and historian Bryan Burrough, co-author of Forget the Alamo, about the real story behind the 1836 battle and how the Alamo became a political myth. They trace the Texas Revolution back to Mexican Texas, American immigration, and the central conflict over slavery, then unpack how figures like Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, and William Travis were turned into legend, and why revisionist history has sparked backlash ever since. 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/ ​Bryan Burrough is the co-author of Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Mythhttps://www.amazon.com/Forget-Alamo-Rise-Fall-American/dp/1984880098

In 2012, historian Karen Cox is digging through the Mississippi State Archives when an archivist tells her, “If you want to know about Natchez, you need to look at Goat Castle.” Cox expects a ghost story. What she finds is stranger and darker: a 1932 murder that turned into a national Southern Gothic spectacle. The victim was a reclusive former Southern belle. The suspects were her eccentric neighbors, a failed concert pianist and an aging socialite, living in a decaying mansion overrun with goats. Newspapers dubbed them the Wild Man and the Goat Woman, and tourists flocked to Natchez to gawk. But beneath the spectacle was the real tragedy: Emily Burns, a young Black woman forced into the story and ultimately blamed, while the white suspects became local celebrities. Sent to Mississippi’s brutal Parchman prison, Emily was erased from the public record. Cox set out to write her back in and to expose what Goat Castle reveals about justice in the Jim Crow South. 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/Karen Cox is the author of Goat Castle: A True Story of Murder, Race, and the Gothic South:https://www.amazon.com/Goat-Castle-Story-Murder-Gothic/dp/1469661438

At a 2024 House Judiciary oversight hearing, an exchange about racially motivated violence goes viral after FBI chief Kash Patel appears to stumble over a question about the 2015 Charleston church massacre. The moment sparks a grim question: how does a tragedy this defining slip out of view? Jed Lipinski revisits what happened at Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church when 21-year-old Dylann Roof sat in on Bible study, then opened fire and killed nine Black parishioners. With New Yorker writer Jelani Cobb and Charleston native Jack Hitt, we trace the deeper history Roof targeted: Denmark Vesey, the long shadow of Confederate “heritage,” and the symbols that still shape South Carolina’s public life. From the Confederate flag’s removal to today’s backlash, this is a story about memory, denial, and what the country chooses to learn, or forget. 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/

On September 9, 2023, a road-rage encounter in South Carolina turns into a nine-mile chase and ends with 33-year-old Scott Spivey dead on a rural back road. Police quickly call it self-defense under Stand Your Ground. But Scott’s sister, Jennifer Foley, doesn’t buy it. As the case is closed and sealed off, she starts building her own timeline, until a civil lawsuit forces the release of the evidence file: thousands of documents, photos, body-cam and dash-cam footage, and recorded phone calls that suggest the official story was shaped from the start. Wall Street Journal reporter Valerie Bauerlein and attorney Mark Tinsley follow the trail into a world of conflicts of interest, missing (or buried) evidence, and a system that treats the shooter as the victim. 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/

Wall Street Journal reporter Valerie Bauerlein, who covered the Alex Murdaugh murder trial gavel to gavel, explains why the most revealing part of the Murdaugh saga isn’t Alex at all. It’s the 100-year legal dynasty that made him possible. We go back to Hampton County, South Carolina, a post–Civil War “burned county” built to enforce White Rule, and follow three generations of Murdaugh power: Randolph Murdaugh Sr., the solicitor who learned how to bend the system; “Buster” Murdaugh, a charismatic, ruthless prosecutor tied to bootlegging and alleged jury tampering; and Randolph Murdaugh III, the smoother operator who kept the machine humming, until cameras and modern technology started capturing what used to happen in the shadows. From the family’s early courtroom tactics and railroad lawsuits to the 2019 boat crash that killed Mallory Beach and the frantic hospital damage-control captured on security footage, this is the story of how a dynasty built its power and how it finally collapsed from the inside. 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/