Sword & Scale

Group of women befriended by truck driver at local bar. Two women, Wanda and Talana, invited him for breakfast. Talana rode with him. Wanda couldn't find them after restaurant closed. Talana's whereabouts unknown, raising concern.

At the age of 30, Jennifer Daugherty had already been through her fair share of life's struggles. As a mentally disabled woman, she never had it easy. But by the winter of 2010, she had struck out on her own. She was living in a homeless shelter in Greensburg, Pennsylvania to qualify for state funding that would eventually help her get her own apartment. She worked and took the bus by herself. She was beginning to establish her independence. Jennifer was making lemonade out of lemons and seemed to be happy. She had even made a few new friends and developed what she thought was a romantic relationship with a boy named Ricky Smyrnes. Needless to say, her disability prevented her from seeing the bad in people, and her new friends were bad. In early February of 2010, Angela Marinucci, invited Jennifer to a sleepover at a home she shared with 5 others. As it turns out, Angela and Ricky were an item and she was pregnant with Ricky's child, and she was beyond angry that Jennifer and Ricky shared a love connection. So, as a blizzard ripped through the western Pennsylvania suburb of Pittsburgh, Angela Marinucci recruited her 5 friends; Ricky Smyrnes, Melvin Knight, Amber Meidinger, Robert Masters and Peggy Miller, to seek revenge on Jennifer Daugherty. Over the course of 3 days, these individuals, eventually dubbed the Greensburg 6, tortured and eventually murdered Jennifer Daugherty and left her naked body in a garbage can in the middle school parking lot. Join the Sword and Scale team as we interview the team of detectives, district and defense attorneys and the forensic pathologist tasked with uncovering the events that led to Jennifer's murder and eventually bringing justice to Jennifer and closure to her family.

Primm, Nevada. May 25th, 1997. LeRoy Iverson, a perpetual gambler, stopped at the Primadonna Resort and Casino on the Nevada and California state line with his 14 year old son, Harold and 7 year old daughter, Sherrice. While LeRoy drank and gambled the night away, his kids were sent down to the arcade in the casino's basement to keep busy. Harold, a teenager in the making, wanted little to do with his younger sister, so several times during the night Sherrice was returned to LeRoy by casino security. She wasn't allowed to sit with her father at the poker table though, so she was repeatedly returned to the arcade to run amok unmonitored. Also that night, 18 year old Jeremy Strohmeyer and his 17 year old friend David Cash were on a road trip with Jeremy's father. While on their way to Las Vegas from Long Beach, CA, they decide to stop at the Primadonna and kickstart their weekend of debauchery. They drank, did drugs, and suffered from typical teenage melancholy. Their boredom would eventually lead the teens to explore the casino and the arcade in the Primadonna's basement. Around 4am that morning, Jeremy Strohmeyer took special notice of little Sherrice Iverson and enticed her to play a game of hide and seek. He suggested that she hide in a bathroom stall in the women's restroom. She did, and Jeremy followed her. Security footage would find that David Cash also entered the women's restroom, and eventually both men left. Sherrice did not. The next morning, Sherrice Iverson's dead body was found carelessly stuffed into a toilet in one of the women's restroom stalls.

In October of 2018 James Ray III fled his affluent suburban home in Montclair, New Jersey. He briefly met up with his brother, Robert, and left his young daughter in her uncle's care before hitchhiking across the United States, crossing the border into Mexico, and eventually hopping a flight to Cuba. Along the way he wrote in his journal, or manifesto, weaving a tale of cruel, heartbreaking infidelity and setting the scene for a murder in self defense. In the meantime, James' brother, Robert finds an envelope filled with cash and a cryptic piece of correspondence mixed in with his niece's belongings. Robert infers that something terrible has happened to his sister-in-law, James' long time girlfriend, Angela Bledsoe. He calls the police and Montclair PD dispatches officers to the home immediately. Angela's body is found in a pool of blood with multiple fatal gunshot wounds. But there's something very strange about this crime scene. Join Sword and Scale as we interview the detectives and prosecutor who launched the international manhunt that dragged James Ray III back to the US as well as the forensic team members who reconstructed a crime scene that destroyed James Ray's claim of self defense.

17 year old Jordan DeMay died tragically in his bedroom in the sleepy town of Marquette, Michigan in March of 2022. On paper his death was ruled a suicide, but as details were revealed, it became obvious that something far more sinister was afoot. On that fateful evening, Jordan was engaged in a private online conversation through a popular social media platform. He was chatting with Dani Robertts, an attractive, all-American 17 year old girl. The conversation was flirtatious and eventually she asked him for an explicit photo. Jordan complied. Within moments the conversation changed drastically. Dani Robertts did not exist. Instead, two men from the other side of the world pushed and pushed Jordan for money, threatening him. They planned to share the photo with his parents, his friends, and his girlfriend. When Jordan sent them what little money he had, they wanted more. Within a few short hours, these men from Nigeria pushed Jordan to his breaking point, and he felt that his own option was death. He took his own life. Join Sword and Scale as we interview the Marquette County Sheriff who broke this case open on a national level, involving the FBI and eventually bringing justice to Jordan, the media outlets who reported on the heart of this story, and the grieving family and friends who are outspoken about Jordan's story and the cautionary tale of sextortion that his death provided for teens across the country.

It's a cold winter's night in December of 1987. 17 year old Barbara Blatnik is party hopping in her home town of Garfield Heights, Ohio. Shortly after midnight, despite the distance and the cold, she decides to walk to her boyfriend's house. Early the next morning, a custodian finds her naked body along a service road of the Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls, nearly a 30 minute drive away. She had been raped and strangled. For 32 years Barbara's case went unsolved. Then, in 2018 an investigative journalist and rocket scientist joined forces through the Porchlight Project, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to providing funding for new DNA testing through genetic genealogy to break cold cases. In only a matter of days they cracked the case wide open, bringing justice to Barbara and her family. Join Sword and Scale as we interview the detective who worked unceasingly for three decades as well as the investigative journalist and scientist behind the genetic genealogy that was instrumental in solving this cold case.

February 20th, 1987, Niles Michigan. Roxanne Wood and her husband Terry enjoy an evening together at their local bowling alley. They drove separately, as couples often do when they meet up after work for a date night. Eventually Roxanne grows tired and tells Terry she'll meet him at home. 18 minutes later, Terry enters their home to find Roxanne's bloodied and bruised body on the kitchen floor. For more than three decades Roxanne's case was shut up and put aside - a cold case with no leads until Gabriella Vargas, an unlikely forensic genealogist, steps in. Despite skeptics' naysaying, Vargas is able to process the scant amount of DNA evidence and trace the family tree, tracking Roxanne's killer down once and for all. Join Sword and Scale as we interview the educator and students who pulled Roxanne's case out of the depths of darkness, organizing, cataloging and shedding new light on an old crime, as well as the forensic genealogist who, against all odds, cracked the case.

Father Edward Hinds led his congregation at Saint Patrick's church in Chatham, New Jersey with compassion as he faithfully spread the word of God. To his friends and parishioners he was truly a pillar of the community. He stood up for those who needed help and protected all of God's children. On the morning of October 23rd, 2009 Father Hinds was absent from Mass and so a wellness check was requested. A parishioner asked the custodian to unlock and allow entry into the Church's rectory, Father Hinds' home. What they found was a massacre. Father Hinds had been brutally murdered. Join Sword and Scale as we interview the lead detective who procured a confession as well as the prosecution team that were instrumental in proving throughout the investigation and trial that miracles do exist.