Between Light and Dark

It was a hot summer Saturday in Henderson County, Kentucky on August 26th, 1995. 23 year old Heather Teague went to an isolated area on Newburgh Beach to sunbathe and perhaps have some time alone. Her peaceful tranquility was shattered when a bearded man stole from the woods and grabbed Heather by her hair. He dragged the 23 year old away from the beach where the forest seemed to swallow her whole. Heather Teague was never seen again.

Show notes: https://bitterendingspod.com/podcast/heatherteague

Sponsor: Dark River Inn

In July of 1989, Fawn Cox was just sixteen years old, working at as a cashier at Worlds of Fun Amusement Park in Kansas City Missouri, and enjoying an ordinary life as teenage girl in the Midwest. Sadly, Fawn's life would come to a bitter end on July 26th, 1989 when someone crept into a second story window in the home Fawn shared with her parents and two sisters. As her family slept, Fawn was brutally attacked, raped and murdered. Her murder would go unsolved for 31 years.

Updates added on 2/7/21: Jump to 26:30 for newly added information.

For complete show notes: https://bitterendingspod.com/podcast/episode-17-the-murder-of-fawn-cox

Show Sponsor: http://jrericksonauthor.com/

It was a chilly February day in 1981 when Deanie Peters, just 14 years old, stepped away from her brother's wrestling practice to use the bathroom at Forest Hills Central Middle School in Ada, Michigan. She's never been seen again. Today, nearly forty years later, what happened to Deanie Peters remains a mystery.

For complete show notes visit: https://bitterendingspod.com/podcast/deaniepeters

It's December 9th, 2012, and 23 year old Julia Niswender is excited for Christmas. Santa and penguin decals cling to the windows of her first floor Ypsilanti apartment and candy canes hang from the door. She works her shift at Walmart and heads home for a relaxing evening in the apartment she shares with her two roommates. However, her quiet evening will have a violent end and for two days no one will be the wiser that tragedy has befallen the outgoing young woman. On December 11th, police will enter Julia's apartment and make a horrifying discovery. The young woman has been murdered and left in her bathtub. Julia's death is a mystery that persist to this day, nearly eight years later.

For Complete Show Notes: https://bitterendingspod.com/podcast/julianiswender

Episode sponsored by the Northern Michigan Asylum Novel - Ashes Beneath Her: See the Audiobook Here

Imagine it. It's October 26th, 2014, just five days short of Halloween in southeast Michigan. The air is cool, the golden and red leaves of autumn have begun to fall from the trees. 22 year old Chelsea Bruck is excited for a Halloween bash at a large rural farm in Monroe County. The party is being thrown by the lead singer of a local metal band, it's bound to be an exhilarating night. Chelsea has spent weeks perfecting her poison ivy costume. It's a time of year when we celebrate the darker side of life. However, for Chelsea a night of spooky fun will become a night of horror. The party lasts well into the early morning hours of October 27th. It's 3 am when Chelsea is seen walking to the parking area with an unidentified man. She will never been seen alive again. Chelsea has walked away form the party with the man who will rape and murder her, who will steal her future and forever alter the lives of those who knew and loved her.

For complete show notes: https://bitterendingspod.com/podcast/chelseabruck

Sponsor: The Northern Michigan Asylum Series

A century has passed since the roaring 20s, nearly a century since the Great Depression that shook the foundation of most American lives. It was a time of unrest in our country, a time of changing values and for Mamie Thurman the peak of her life as well as its tragic end would arrive.

On a rainy summer night in West Virginian, 31 year old Mamie Thurman walked out the door of the apartment she hared with her husband for the last time. Sometime in the late night or early hours of June 21st into June 22nd, 1932 a man drove Mamie to a remote mountain area. He slashed her throat and then shot her twice in the head before tossing her down the weedy embankment on the roadside.

Her death would spawn a year long media outrage, but the mystery of Mamie Thurman's death persists to this day. It's not merely her mysterious murder, something ore haunts the people near Logan Wes Virginia. The ghostly apparition of a woman wanders the isolated mountain road 22 Mine Road, the place where Mamie's corpse was discarded nearly a century ago.

For complete show notes: https://bitterendingspod.com/podcast/mamiethurman

Northern Michigan Asylum Series: http://jrericksonauthor.com/home/northern-michigan-asylum-series-2/

There are certain places in this world we almost always feel safe. Our homes generally come in at number one, our workplaces are second. In the tragic and troubling death of Lorraine Kirkley, called Lori by friends and family, both of those two spaces would become places of danger. On July 21st, 1999, Lori, a cardiac nurse at the Northwest Indiana Heart Center, had a typical day working her shift before heading home to the house she shared with her husband, Rob, in Valparaiso, Indiana. Less than an hour after she arrived home, Lori would be forced from her house and led to her horrific rape and murder. Her killer would turn out to be someone Lori knew all too well…

For complete show notes, visit the Bitter Endings Website: https://bitterendingspod.com/podcast/lorikirkley

It's a warm September evening in 2014 in the wooded hills of Butte County in northern California. Flames and smoke fill the sky as a car burns. Inside the car is the body of 25 year old California State University Chico student Marc Thompson. Marc is a brilliant young man, a psychology and sociology student, a human rights activist and a man friends will describe as an old soul, poetry in motion, and a person who made everyone feel welcome.

Someone murdered Marc at the beginning of his future, a future in which he wanted to be a professor, he wanted to be the change in the world. So how does does such a life end in such tragedy? It's one of those mysteries, one of those painful realities that too many people will face int his world. Adding depth to this mystery is the question about whether or not Marc's murder was racially motivated. Marc was an African American man living in a predominantly white area in northern California.

His murder remains unsolved.

For complete show notes visit: https://bitterendingspod.com/podcast/marcthompson

Robert and Vicki Graves thought they were purchasing their dream house when they discovered Fox Hollow Farm in Indianapolis, Indiana. Soon, they would realize they were not alone in the house. Are the spirits of Herb Baumeister's victims haunting the property where they were brutally murdered? Or perhaps, it is Herb himself who is behind the paranormal experiences people have had there.

For show resources visit: https://bitterendingspod.com/podcast/foxhollowhauntings

Something was happening to gay men in Indianapolis in the early to mid 1990s. Over the course of two years, beginning in May 1994, 10 men would vanish, mostly from clubs and bars that catered to gay men. This was, in a way, just the tip of the iceberg, other men and boys had been murdered in the previous decade. They were found strangled in streams and ditches along the 1-70 and 1-35 corridors in Ohio and Indiana.

Herb Baumeister would murder more than a dozen men beginning in 1980. From the outside, Herb looked like a man who had it all. A happy marriage, healthy children, a successful business and a beautiful home located on more than 18 acres and known as the Fox Hollow Farm. Appearances, as many of us know, can be deceiving and rarely is there a more disturbing example than in the case of Herbert Baumeister.

For complete show notes visit www.bitterendingspod.com.