10. Here We Go Again

Previously on Ice Cold Case 

This man died for no reason at all. 

I heard that he was a snitch. 

Solving this will not bring J.C. back and it could possibly impact other family members.

But a lot of theories isn’t a good thing.

There’s a pa per trail on all that stuff… or there should be.

In my career, this case right here is one I wanna solve.

They was looking for Bae which is Richard. That’s what they called him. They was looking for his safe with money..

Rico probably had more to do with this than Omar.

Omar knows something. There’s no doubt about it 

He used to tell me it all the time that he was gonna get killed.

Part 0: What If I’m Wrong

Throughout the past few months, I’ve been stuck in a haze. With a new wave of information rushing in about my dad’s murder, it’s been difficult to see the clearing. I went from making significant progress at a steady rate, to spinning my wheels, to a sudden halt. Now that I’m starting to collect my thoughts, I can’t help but notice my theories are starting to shift.

My mind is racing with questions that I was asking myself at the beginning of this journey…

Can a theory ever fully remain objective? Or does every objective theory begin with a subjective thought? You have to follow an inkling to find the truth – intuition is not objective, even if it’s eventually proven right. So I had to follow my gut. 

I left off with my current theory. But now, it’s time to put that theory to the test and see if it will hold up. For the last six months I haven’t stopped wondering – What if I’m wrong?

Part 1: Everything Has Changed

I have spent the last twelve years trying to answer one question: What happened to my dad on July 11, 2002? 

On May seventeenth twenty twenty-three, I released the first episode of Ice Cold Case. I was desperate to solve my dad’s murder, to figure out who killed J.C. McGhee. It felt like a last resort. I had tried everything else. I had called the sheriff’s department and prosecutor’s office in Belmont County, Ohio. I had talked to my dad’s family and friends to see if they had any leads. But it was dead end, after dead end, after dead end. No one I was talking to had any ground-breaking information. Somebody knew something and I needed to draw it out.

So I gathered as much information as I could. I played investigator. I acted as a detective. And when I had enough, I pretended to be a journalist. I gave you everything I had, every possible idea, to see what would happen. I wondered if you would listen. I questioned if you would care. I hoped that you might have information that could help put some of the pieces together. 

And then, the most beautiful thing happened. You started writing in tips and sending me leads. Some of those tips aligned with my own theory of what happened – confirming people’s connection to each other and to my dad. Some information tied together potential motives and multiple theories. But other tips introduced new concepts and ideas.

But then I hit another wall. Everything I had was out in the world, and the case… still wasn’t solved.

Part 2: Something Old, Something New

A lot of the information I began my investigation with was from the police files of the Belmont County Sheriff’s Department. The file was not as robust as one might expect for a murder investigation, and that raised some red flags early on. But I always assumed negligence, whether intentional or due to laziness. Government agencies are created to protect their citizens, not themselves. But small towns across America are known to have less funding, less access, and also less accountability. 

I grew frustrated by the lack of evidence collected and what seemed to be big oversights in the investigation, and in some ways it felt like bias was a catalyst for these consequences. But it got me questioning the protocol for investigating a murder – what is standard procedure when the police arrive at the scene of the crime? 

There isn’t really a set of federally regulated protocols for a murder investigation. Everything a police department does, feels more like a suggestion than a set of standardized procedures.

I spoke with a police officer whose identity I will keep confidential and they explained to me what they do when they arrive at the scene of a homicide.

So when we first arrive at the scene of a crime or a homicide specifically – if the suspects are no longer on scene then normally all we’re really doing is containing the scene. Setting up a perimeter largely around the scene. What we’re taught is to make the scene a lot bigger than it seems to be. So for example if the homicide occurred within a residence inside of a room, we would create a perimeter set up around the entire house or possibly an entire street or an entire subdivision. Our main job at a homicide scene is to preserve the evidence. If anything pertaining to the crime is found we usually put up pylons, we seize the objects, put them in evidence bags. If bullet casings are left, we are supposed to set up pylons or police tape around it as opposed to seizing it. Same for if we were to found a murder weapon like a knife or any other objects. We are usually leaving it where they are found. A forensics unit would attend for fingerprinting, foot, and shoe imprints, photographs, etc.

And this raised some red flags, because that’s not exactly what was done by the Belmont County Sheriff’s Department and the Bridgeport Police Department when they arrived at my dad’s house that morning.

We got there and once there was enough of us to make entry in the house – we didn’t know if the shooter was still inside – Myself and three other units went in, we found your dad. He was there at the door. Cleared the rest of the house. No one else there. We went back over to your Aunt Pearl’s, checked in, found the house was pretty much ransacked.

My sister remembers the police arriving and removing her from the house.

Police were coming up the steps and they were like… just… you have to leave. I had to run out of there.  

But she also mentioned that the family was walking in and out of the house when she got back home after the police questioned her.

He was protecting a truck load of stuff that was coming out of our house when dad was murdered the day he was murdered. And I came back from the police station after being questioned by the police to the whole house full of our family our whole family was in the house.

My family noted to me that the house was never taped off and the Sheriff’s Department told me that they never swiped for fingerprints.

The office has come a long way. And I can absolutely, one hundred percent agree mistakes were made by the original investigating officers. And I don’t think… It definitely wasn’t purposeful.

For an institution that is established to uphold law and order and protect citizens, they have an eerie amount of power. And it’s a double edged sword. This power could be used in the most noble way, but it also can aid and abet corruption. 

I spoke with another former police officer who talked to me about the level of accountability that currently exists for officers to do their job well. Essentially, there is none.

There's no incentive to be a good cop. But reputation is motivating. Could be tough to add incentive if cops solve cases because it could have the adverse effect of cops framing people to close cases. So, yeah, you just have to trust that they are motivated enough by having a reputation of being a cop that solves cases.

So for now, this is their reputation. My dad’s killer was never caught… and Belmont County has several cold cases that have been brought to my attention recently. 

So I think it is true: people can get away with a lot in a small town. I would go as far to say, people can even get away with murder.

Part 3: DNA

I have received a lot of messages over the last several months with information about DNA organizations that focus on criminal justice. Their goal is to help victims and other professionals working with victims by providing guidance when cases involve DNA. Some organizations are DNA databases that are able to help test evidence against their catalog. This would be very helpful, if I had any proof that DNA was collected at the scene of my dad’s murder. Not only do I not have any DNA evidence, I have not been given a list of any evidence collected… at all.

And Detective Allar. We have all the files and everything it’s in a box like this.

If I am going to be objective about this, I should look at both sides of the coin. In 2002, and even still today, the Belmont County Sheriff’s Department is not equipped with the same resources as a larger metropolitan area’s police force. Life in these rural, midwest meets Appalachian towns, is behind the times and trends by almost ten years sometimes. But let’s look at the other side of that argument…

According to the National Institute of Justice, DNA evidence was first introduced into the criminal court system in 1986. And in just over a decade, forensic DNA became a very popular and powerful investigative tool to identify suspects – so long as any biological evidence was left at the scene. That can include skin, blood, hair, spit, even a single fingerprint.

There have been some landmark cases where DNA has been used to close cold cases. In one major instance, the crimes were committed before DNA evidence was even introduced. But still, the case was closed forty years later because of genetic genealogy. Yes, I am talking about the Golden State Killer from Northern California. One of the most famous, and captivating cases. But the only reason this case ended in a conviction was because the investigators at the time collected DNA evidence. It’s even more interesting because for the first few decades they didn’t know who he was, they were only able to create a genetic profile for him based on the DNA they collected.

In 2018, relative connections were made to his profile, and after investigators identify some potential suspects based on the missing identities in this family tree, then it comes down to hard facts – who matches the descriptions of eye witnesses, who was in the area at the time, and eventually in this case, they found a match in Joseph James DeAngelo.

Let’s bring it closer. In 2020, the Columbus Police Department used genealogy and DNA to identify the murderer and kidnapper of 8-year-old Kelly Ann Prosser in 1982 – almost forty years later.

The police linked the murder to Harold Warren Jarrell who had died before this information surfaced. Columbus, Ohio is two hours away from Belmont County.

My dad’s case was fourteen years after this introduction of DNA, enough time for a major city to build up their knowledge but maybe not this small county in Ohio. This made me think – maybe if my dad was murdered today, or even a few years later, it would probably be solved. Right? If Belmont County Sheriff’s Department and Bridgeport Police Department didn’t collect forensic evidence, it’s probably because they weren’t well-versed in it. Even though in the previously mentioned cases, that took place decades prior, those police departments collected forensic evidence at the scene. 

Pearl and Omar’s house was allegedly ransacked. Omar even describes one of the men as having long hair. But Belmont County wants to tell me that they didn’t even consider collecting DNA with no solid reason why not.

*Madison did you have anything with DNA or – *DeVaul That was all done, you know at the scene, but… being that the house was ransacked over at Pearl’s. It was not the nicest of houses, ok? And they said they had gloves on, too. So fingerprints and that kind of stuff… At that time DNA was all new. And at the time we didn’t have a large DNA database back then either. But over at your dad’s house… It was that door come down and they never went in the house because your dad was laying right there.

The police officer that told me Omar couldn’t be trusted, and that’s the same police officer that used Omar’s claim that the men were wearing gloves as a reason to not test for any DNA.

I’ll tell you the person who needs convincing to tell the truth is Omar.

But there’s a darker question to consider, did the Belmont County Sheriff’s Department not properly investigate my dad’s murder because of lack of resources or because they had something to do with it?

Part 4: The Missing Witness

In October of 2023, about a month after the release of episode nine where I lay out my theory of what happened to my dad, I got a call from a source whose identity I feel the need to protect. This person had information about my dad’s case that I had never heard before – information that, in my opinion, was integral to the investigation. Proximity matters when it comes to witnesses. The further out you go from the scene of the crime, the more blurry the vision. This person was close to the scene that morning, and from their vantage point… things were pretty clear. Their name was never listed on any police files and they had never been brought in for questioning. The call started out like most from locals in the area… a bit strange.

What I need to do is I need to do a little bit of authentic – authenticity to be sure this is Madison McGhee. So if you don’t mind I gotta ask you a couple of questions.

Everyone is paranoid. No one feels safe.

I don’t need to have any trouble with those cops down there.

But once they started talking, it was clear that they knew what was going on that morning and their memory was quite sharp.

Apparently you don’t have a lot of history so I’ll give you a small history lesson.

The first big detail that has stumped me is the getaway car. Omar gave multiple descriptions of this car and there’s no way to know for certain, based on his testimony, which one is true. But this person saw a car they didn’t recognize that morning on Berkeley Avenue.

Because the day shift opens at 7. So the boys start coming down 6:15/10 after six.

Whoever was staking it out didn’t do a very good job because there’s too much traffic coming in and out of there especially during the weekday.

If it was a 7 to 3 shift, I’d have been coming down there about 4:30 in the morning. That car was already parked on the side of the road right in between Omar’s and J.C.’s house.

It was a black sedan – a Lincoln Continental. Facing me.

They noticed something strange about the black four door sedan, it was facing the Brake shop at the end of the road. Berkeley Avenue was a dead end street with a local business, Wheeling Brake and Block, situated at the end of the street with a circle driveway in the front where this getaway car had to turn around to exit the neighborhood after someone in that car shot and killed my dad.

If you’re gonna do this kind of devious act, you sure as hell aren’t gonna be facing Brake Block after you shoot somebody in the head.

The car came and left there and came down and turned around in my parking lot. Now what a bunch of fucking stu pid ass people that is. They came down. They came through the gate. They came through my dirt road. The come and made a big wide swing in my parking lot and started back out.

Something that stood out to me about this… why wouldn’t the car be faced towards the direction the car would need to go for a speedy escape. The people who organized this hit were either really stupid, or really comfortable.

If they felt, you know, there’s gonna be no problems. It doesn’t matter which way the car is facing. They got everything cleared. It’s cause they… they felt comfortable.

I stopped believing in coincidences a long time ago. If you remember, my dad was murdered in the middle of a shift change for the Belmont County Sheriff’s Department.

Because I come on shift at 7:00, I left my house at it was about 20 after 6. Met the other sergeant that I relieved and then we got the call.

Well it was also a shift change for the other two closest police departments. It’s almost as if… whoever killed my dad, knew they were going to get away with it before it even happened.

These guys knew when the shift change was and when the patrol was not there for Brideport and as far as the state cops are concerned. They knew.

Sometimes people’s theories get a little carried away, but even as a skeptic… this was raising flags. How would these people know about this shift change? Why would an assumed career criminal be so careless with the getaway details? 

But this source didn’t stop there. They had been hearing rumors for years about something that had never been brought up to me before – something that would completely throw a wrench in my own theory.

We thought about it. We talked about it. A lot of people talked about it years after that.

Seven years after J.C. got shot, there’s still rumors and talk on the street that McCort orchestrated it.

They had heard, and were pretty convinced, that Sheriff McCort (who was the Belmont County Sheriff at the time of my dad’s murder) was involved. This is a serious accusation that requires further investigation and context. So I started looking into Belmont County on a deeper level. I was told a lot about this little Sheriff’s Department in this fairly small county. If you remember, Belmont County was previously described as quaint.

Some of these towns used to be, I guess, I hear stories like Belair – Apparently she was like a just a wonderful town 30, 40 years ago. It’s not now.

To the west is more rural. And it’s kind of uh, you know, some might say country type people.

There were some drugs running through it due to its proximity to major cities, but overall it was just a low income county full of people who kept to themselves. But that isn’t entirely true.

Maybe explore Belmont County more because I will tell you… Belmont County – there’s a reason why, you know, it was so easy to run drugs there back in the day along the river.

The corruption spans decades, includes people inside the government, and it didn’t end when Sheriff McCort was elected.

That area is pretty corrupt.

The most corrupt goddamn police department you ever seen in your time.

I have been hearing that Belmont County was corrupt from the beginning of my investigation. I couldn’t ignore the claims but I had to push beyond some of it because I needed their help to obtain information about my dad’s case. But now, I can’t look past it. But I had to look and see if there were more examples of this beyo  nd my dad’s murder.

A few months later, I heard from someone who was investigating a different murder in Belmont County. In this case, a woman was missing for (several weeks) and was eventually found dead. There is speculation around the way this case was handled, accusing the police of ignoring important information and leading them to come to their own conclusion – a conclusion that the victim’s family wasn’t totally convinced was correct. And in this case, evidence went missing, police files were withheld, and in a similar fashion to my dad’s – this woman’s murder was just put away on a shelf.

My aunt’s evidence went missing two different times. And then Belmont – I don’t know if Belmont County is – if you’ve had any issues with this. But uh, I’ve, I had like three different letters all telling me that my aunt’s records were all accidentally destroyed in different ways. Once was a fire. Once was a flood. Once was we lost them because we don’t need to keep them.

It seems within Belmont County, there was a behavioral pattern starting to form. And a sentiment began echoing through the Ohio Valley – if you’re going to commit a crime, do it in Belmont County.

There’s a saying in Belmont County… If you wanna rob a bank, do it in Belmont County. If you wanna mug somebody, do it in Belmont County. If you’re gonna kill someone – do it in Belmont County. Loosest county in town. In the whole state.

But if there is corruption – where does it start? And will it ever end?

In order to understand the police’s role in my dad’s murder – whether they were negligent in their investigation or active participants –  I had to understand more about who was on the police force at the time of my dad’s murder.

Part 5: Who Is Sheriff McCort?

When I first started talking to officials about my dad’s murder, specifically at the Belmont County Sheriff’s Department and Prosecutor’s Office – the sheriff at the time was never brought up. I heard about Detective Nippert and Sergeant DeVaul, but no one – ever – mentioned the Sheriff.

In Ohio, a sheriff is the only elected official on the police force, and the highest ranked in the office. They serve a four year term. There is a level of accountability that should come with holding a public office, because that’s what this is, a public office. Even though they work in a police department, a Sheriff is a politician. 

The Sheriff in July 2002 was Thomas C. McCort. When I started getting information through tips that surfaced as a result of this podcast, McCort's name was brought up on more than one occasion.

All roads will lead to Mr. McCort. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

I wanted to know more about Sheriff McCort. So I started asking questions.

I learned that McCort is one of the longest serving sheriffs in Ohio. He served for twenty years – from 1985 to 2005. He passed away in 2020 after a long battle with cancer. He was from Malaga, Ohio, an unincorporated township where he served as Union Township constable before he was elected Sheriff. Constables are pretty much the same thing as a police officer with a few minor differences, but McCort is basically a career police officer. He won Ohio’s first Distinguished Law Enforcement Service Award. 

He has a mixed reputation in Belmont County. When people start bringing up how corrupt the area is, McCort’s name is almost always mentioned. But online, in the comment section and in the media, people sing his praises. So I wanted to look more into his career. What did Thomas C. McCort do while he was the Sheriff in Belmont County? And what was his relationship with my dad?

According to a local, Sheriff McCort was hardly ever honest.

His deputies would always say… You know Tom is lying when his lips are moving.

That doesn’t seem like a quality you’d want in your Sheriff.

McCort was responsible for the investigation of several other murders and disappearances in Belmont County during his time as Sheriff. And most of those cases still remain unsolved to this day.

For someone who was respected among his peers and known for having an “open door” policy amongst the people under him at the Sheriff’s Department, it is even stranger to me that he was never brought up by anyone working for the county when I was initially asking questions about my dad. His name, from their own perspective, was completely kept out of it.

It’s pretty clear that there wasn’t enough done on behalf of Belmont County when investigating my dad’s murder. That’s not speculation. That's a fact. If they had collected evidence, questioned more people, or not isolated this case as a home invasion gone wrong or any combination of these… there’s room to believe that my dad’s case would not be cold, at least not this cold. 

But was it negligence that kept the police from conducting a proper investigation… or was this all intentional? The answer to that question could significantly impact and potentially alter my own theory of what happened. Was it really Daryl Smith and Duncan Waitts? This could entirely shift the list of suspects and the possible motive. So now I’m back at that moral line… is it wrong to be wrong?

Part 6: Back to Belmont County

My theory is starting to shift and evolve. Uncovering new information could provide context, motive, and solidify my current theory about what happened to my dad… but it could also completely contradict everything and send me back to the beginning. But disproving a theory is just as important as finding supporting evidence. Beyond a shadow of a doubt means there can’t be any other possibilities. And too many theories can hurt my case. So what if I am wrong? Then I welcome it. As long as it comes with a new avenue to explore, one that leads me closer to finding my dad’s killer.

My new source’s suspicions have raised some of my own. I’m redirecting the spotlight onto Belmont County’s Sheriff’s Department. Sheriff McCort was in charge of the county’s criminal justice matters from a police perspective. The Sheriff is a public service office, not a self-serving one. Maybe I didn’t look as closely at what was happening within the four walls of the Belmont County Sheriff’s Department during the beginning stages of their investigation into my dad’s murder. Maybe I played it a little too safe and went a little too easy on them. I can hear my dad’s voice – almost as if I’m five-years-old again when he would sneak off to a closed-door room to handle business – “trust no one.” Even these police files could be sprinkled with doctored facts. It wasn’t enough to call and email with these officials. I need to take a more aggressive approach.

With all of this new information, there’s a lot to dive into now. So much that I can’t hide in Los Angeles and investigate from a distance. It’s time to go back to the scene of the crime… quite literally. Belmont County holds the answers I am looking for – in the house where my dad was murdered, in the sheriff’s department where his case files sit idly, in the rumors that float around this small town – they all hold slivers of the truth, pieces that I need to find the answers I am looking for. But I need to see it all up close.

There are people I haven’t talked to yet that I want to – particularly my main suspects. How would the police’s potential involvement change my theory around Daryl Smith and Duncan Waitts? The only people who can tell me where they were that morning are Daryl and Duncan themselves.

Daryl Smith was being held at an Ohio correctional facility with a seven year sentence. He had six years to go. The only way to meet with him in person, was to get him to add me to his visitor list. The only way to do that? Write him a letter. So I wrote a letter, and the day that I was supposed to drop it off at the post office… There was another new development.

Daryl Smith had been released. He was no longer in prison. And before I got a chance to reach out to him. He reached out to me.

Daryl Smith – my main suspect in my dad’s murder – had listened to my podcast and he wanted to talk to me. I wanted to get close to solving this case, and I couldn’t get closer than this. 

So with more motivation than ever before and more questions than I had at the beginning of this journey, I’m getting on a plane, and I’m going back to Belmont County.

Next Time on Ice Cold Case

Omar doesn’t really have the – the killer eyes. Daryl Smith got the killer eyes.

*Madison You’ve closed on Daryl? It’s not him? *Detective DeVaul No, no, no. I still think it was Daryl there.

I am just so glad that you are not scared.

Credits:

Ice Cold Case is brought to you by Yes!
It is written, hosted, and produced by Madison McGhee
Also produced by Jeremy Benbow
Mixed by Cody Campbell 
Original music by Matt Bettinson
Creative direction by AJ Christianson
Creative consulting by Hoff
A video version of this episode is available on our YouTube Channel and a transcript is available at icecoldcase.com
To submit any tips or information please email us at icecoldcasepodcast@gmail.com