Accused

More than a decade after Elwood Jones was convicted of killing Rhoda Nathan, he learned that a woman had stepped forward saying she knew who the real killer was. Tracking down this mysterious figure became something of an obsession for Elwood’s current defense team. And for us.

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While investigators testified at trial that Elwood Jones was always their best and only real suspect in the 1994 slaying of Rhoda Nathan, the police files say otherwise. Three people – two with violent criminal pasts on their records – seem equally as suspicious, so much so they were given lie-detector tests in the days after the murder. Do their alibis hold? And if Elwood as such a good suspect with such good evidence to indicate his guilt, what took the police and prosecutors a year to indict him?

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Investigating any crime scene requires finesse, but in the case of Rhoda Nathan’s 1994 beating death, at least some of the detectives arriving at the Embassy Suites hotel, many who had never investigated a murder before, thought they were dealing with a heart-attack victim. As such, they say they didn’t immediately secure the scene, allowing outsiders to tromp through a room that was already teeming with all kinds of hotel-user DNA.

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The prosecutor handling the case against Elwood Jones had some choice words to describe the suspect on national television. In this episode, we explore: Who is Elwood Jones? Was he really an a-hole? Is being one now, steadfast as he is in refusing to cop to the 27-year-old crime? And does being an a-hole also mean he was a killer? 

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When Elaine Shub opened the door to the hotel room she was sharing with her best friend of 48 years, she saw such a gruesome sight that she collapsed in the suburban hotel hallway. Rhoda Nathan, a kind-hearted New Jersey grandmother who had just stepped out of the shower, lay on the floor, unrecognizable from the vicious beating she’d endured. Who could have done this? What could have been the motive? Who had access? Who had motive? And why did Rhoda have to die?

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When Rhoda Nathan's lifeless body was discovered in her hotel room, it was assumed she'd had a heart attack. The autopsy proved otherwise: Nathan, 67, had been viciously beaten to death, punched so hard by her assailant that two of her teeth had been knocked out. Days later, a hotel employee went to the hospital to be treated for an infection in his hand, which was teeming with a bacteria most often found in human mouths. That, plus a pendant an officer said was discovered in the trunk of his car, sealed the fate of Elwood Jones, who awaits execution on Ohio's death row. For nearly 30 years, Jones has maintained his innocence -- and accused police of straight-up framing him. The journalists of Accused are reexamining the case to learn if Jones truly belongs on death row, or if a botched investigation let someone else get away with murder.

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Work on Accused was sidelined by the pandemic but is getting back on track. Also, Amber introduces "Crimes of the Centuries."

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How did Jack Roland Murphy go from world-champion surfer to notorious jewel thief? How did it all go wrong and end in at least two murders in the murky waterways of southern Florida? Find out this season on The Sneak: Murders at Whiskey Creek.

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Though officials with the Fernald uranium plant lied and covered up the danger their workers faced, Fernald is actually held up as a role model for other American communities polluted by the arms race.

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Long after David Bocks’ children and grandchildren are dead, the legacy of his employer will remain, encased in concrete and buried deep beneath the earth.

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