Paper Ghosts: The Texas Teen Murders

Hi, Paper Ghosts listeners! We're excited to share with you a sneak peek at iHeartPodcasts' latest release, What Happened to Her!

What Happened to Her: For four seasons, investigative reporter Melissa Jeltsen has told the stories of women whose lives — and deaths — were shaped by the failures of the systems meant to protect them. Now she's widening her lens, with new episodes every week. In What Happened to Her, Melissa takes on the stories that won't let her go. Women whose deaths were too quickly ruled suicides. Women no one believed. Cases everyone else called closed. Some weeks, a mystery unfolds across multiple episodes. In others, Melissa sits down with fellow investigative journalists and podcast hosts to go behind the scenes on the cases — and the women — they just couldn't shake.

Listen to What Happened to Her on the iHeartRadio App or wherever you get your podcasts!

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In this final episode of the season, Phelps tracks down someone who claims to know what happened to Shelly and Vincent: where and how they were murdered, who killed them, and why. And this source ain’t no stranger … he’s kin to Shelly Colliflower.

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As Phelps keeps digging, new sources come forward.  Has all of this been some sort of witch hunt to pin the murders on two innocent men, so the real killers walk free?

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Small-town rumor and speculation seem to dominate discourse in Weatherford. Phelps has to ask: is Wendy Robinson’s murder connected to Vincent and Shelly’s? When Wendy’s case is finally solved, serial killers are in the mix, Phelps realizes the cases need to head into a new direction if answers are the goal. Until a bombshell out of nowhere is dropped into his lap. 

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As Phelps seems to be getting somewhere with Shelly and Vincent’s case, another teenager is found murdered and sexually assaulted, changing the dynamic and path of his investigation considerably. 

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Phelps dives deeper, trying to separate fact from rumor, while new suspects come into play—and a third teen murder rocks the town of Weatherford.  But could a noted serial killer be responsible for Vincent and Shelly’s murders?

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As Phelps interviews sources connected to the Weatherford teen murders, including law enforcement working the case at the time, two new theories emerge—sending him deep into a dark, dangerous underworld straight out of Breaking Bad. Meanwhile, a victim’s family member accuses his uncle of involvement with the murders.

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Phelps teams up with a local private investigator discovering that things are not what they seem in Weatherford, Texas… and learns peculiar new information about the case.

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 As family members panic without word from teens Vincent and Shelly, Vincent’s father heads out to search for the kids. Meanwhile, a local private investigator gets involved in the case 40-plus years later and starts stirring up the hornet’s nest, creating a groundswell of new information. Phelps steps into the fray to sort fact from fiction—before discovering things aren’t always what they seem. 

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In Texas: teens are dying. Two teens go missing on a March night in 1983—and that’s only the beginning. A body count of kids and teens, missing and murdered, in a county that many say is run by corrupt cops - with those at the top covering for them.  In the first episode of season five, Phelps heads to Weatherford, Texas, to begin one of the most sprawling investigations of his career.  

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