In 1972, Bryce, Virginia and Bobby Durham were murdered in Boone, North Carolina. An investigation produced arrests and murder indictments, but the case collapsed. Fifty years later, information from Georgia revived the investigation, leading authorities to Billy Sunday Birt, Billy Wayne Davis and an unexpected explanation for the crime.
In 1929, five men in Stone County, Arkansas, were charged with murdering Connie Franklin. Then, just days before the trial, a man appeared claiming to be Franklin, very much alive. This Southern Mysteries Classic revisits the bizarre Arkansas Ghost Trial and the questions that still remain nearly a century later.
At the bottom of West Virginia’s New River Gorge, the nearly abandoned railroad town of Thurmond hides a history of coal wealth, rival businessmen, gambling, violence and suspicious deaths. This episode traces the rise of Thurmond and the infamous Dun Glen Hotel, the crimes that earned the area a lawless reputation, and the town’s transformation from a booming C&O railroad center into a preserved part of New River Gorge National Park and Preserve.
At the bottom of West Virginia’s New River Gorge, the nearly abandoned railroad town of Thurmond hides a history of coal wealth, rival businessmen, gambling, violence and suspicious deaths. This episode traces the rise of Thurmond and the infamous Dun Glen Hotel, the crimes that earned the area a lawless reputation, and the town’s transformation from a booming C&O railroad center into a preserved part of New River Gorge National Park and Preserve.
In June 1948, 21-year-old Mary Virginia Carpenter left Texarkana for college in Denton, Texas. She was last seen after a taxi dropped her near Brackenridge Hall at Texas State College for Women. The letter she promised her mother never came, and neither did Virginia. More than 70 years later, her disappearance remains one of Denton’s quiet, enduring mysteries.
Across the South, asylums were built with the promise of healing — but inside their walls, countless lives were marked by fear, neglect, and cruelty. In this episode of Southern Mysteries, explore the haunting history of institutions like Broughton Hospital, Cherry Hospital, Central State, and Bryce.
