True Believer: The Unsolved Murder of Elizabeth Mackintosh

On March 26, 2025, the 35th anniversary of Elizabeth's murder, Covenant Seminary held a "Service of Lament" and dedicated a new "Garden of Lament and Hope" on the campus grounds. TJ and Ruth discuss the service (which TJ attended) and how Covenant chose to memorialize Elizabeth.

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The main True Believer project is finished, at least until there are any updates on the Elizabeth Mackintosh murder investigation. But we do want to return with a postscript that addresses a different question: What happened to other people who were students at Covenant Seminary in 1990?

Many students and professors went on to respected careers in the ministry. One of them was a man named Ian, who in 2023 was deemed unfit to lead his church after a sexual misconduct allegation was made public by The Tennessean newspaper, as reported by friend of the podcast Liam Adams. Ian has denied allegations against him.

But there’s a lot more to the story. The case against him helped us understand how a denomination with so many good, kind people can apparently fumble complaints against their peers.

Many cases are, essentially, secret. And there’s a cascading effect to that secrecy: If complaints are never heard, and witnesses are never asked, and questions are never answered, abuse remains covered up.

Until someone decides to go public.

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The family of David Winecoff recently reached out to “True Believer” with concerns about recent episodes. After reviewing their concerns, we have made several updates to Episodes 13 and 14. Ultimately, however, we stand by our work and our decision to include an examination of David Winecoff’s death in “True Believer.”

Click here to read the statement released by the family of David Winecoff.

In this final episode of the series, Ruth and TJ sit down with PCA pastors Doug Serven and Kyle Hackmann to discuss what they all learned from working on this series, and to answer some of the comments and critiques that listeners (and those that haven't listened) have made.

We do have some bonus content in the works, so stay tuned for that. And if there are any updates in the unsolved murder of Elizabeth Mackintosh, we'll publish additional content when appropriate.

Visit www.truebelieverpodcast.com to see additional materials related to each episode or to get in touch with us.

In the last episode we heard about David Winecoff's connection to Elizabeth Mackintosh, and his apparent belief that Michael, the prime suspect, had nothing to do with her murder.

When we left Norm Reed, he and David were planning a climbing trip to the Sangre de Christo mountains of Colorado. Today we’ll hear what happened on that trip, the fallout that followed, and how, just like with Elizabeth’s murder, administrators at Covenant Seminary wanted everything to go away as quickly as possible.

David Winecoff’s death raises questions not only about what he may have known about, but also how the Covenant community at large dealt with the tragedy of Elizabeth’s unsolved murder.

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Click here to read the statement released by the family of David Winecoff.

A couple quick announcements.

First, Ruth and TJ will be in Richmond, Virginia the week of June 9th, for the PCA General Assembly. If you’re going to be there and you’d like to meet up with us, or if you have any information that you’d like to share, if you know someone who’ll be there that you think we should meet, visit  www.truebelieverpodcast.com to get in touch with us.

And second, we'll be publishing our next episode this coming Tuesday, June 4th. So you won’t have to wait another week.

In this episode we begin to talk about David Winecoff, the pastor of Providence Reformed Presbyterian Church, which Elizabeth Mackintosh attended.

David was something of a lightning rod in St. Louis Presbyterian circles, and his death in 1993 enshrined him as a sort of a mythic figure, especially for those who attended his church.

But despite his elevated status and the high regard that so many have continued to have for him, many questions remain about his knowledge of and possible connection to Elizabeth's murder.

Visit www.truebelieverpodcast.com to see additional materials related to each episode or to get in touch with us.

Click here to read the statement released by the family of David Winecoff.

We’ve talked about some of the interesting characters around Covenant Seminary in 1990. But as we enter the final phase of this series, we’ll explore the most interesting, and potentially most important, characters yet.

In this episode, Detective Worth will start to lay out his own theory of the case, which differs pretty dramatically from everything the Creve Coeur police had believed before him and, as far as we know, what they still believe today.

In December 1989 a married man approached Elizabeth about having an affair. Although she never revealed the man's identity, several people knew the story. Their accounts of who it might've been raise further questions about an alternative motive for Elizabeth's murder.

As the saying goes… the plot thickens.

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We’ve spent this series mostly focusing on Michael, Elizabeth Mackintosh’s supervisor on the Covenant Seminary house cleaning staff. In the eyes of the police, Michael was the prime suspect in Elizabeth’s death, literally from Day One. But he wasn’t the only person they looked at.

In any large group of people, even at a seminary, there are going to be some people with checkered backgrounds. But as the police started looking into possible suspects, and Covenant began its own internal investigation, some startling things came to light. Not only about people’s pasts, but things that were happening on campus around the time of the murder.

We also hear from another retired Creve Coeur detective who begins to talk about his own theories of the case.

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Sandra was one of the few unmarried, female students at Covenant in 1990. And she had a class *with* Elizabeth, which turned out to be incredibly influential on the rest of her life.

She also went to Grace and Peace Church with Egon Middleman, whom we’ve briefly mentioned before in this series. Sandra’s story provides a fascinating look into what it was like to be a female student at Covenant Seminary in 1990, and the effect that Elizabeth’s murder had on the people that were there.

Visit www.truebelieverpodcast.com to see additional materials related to each episode or to get in touch with us.