S2E36 - BONUS - A Community Built on Justice: Milestones, Case Updates & What's Next

This episode is all about you—the incredible community that has helped transform Tragedy: A True Crime Podcast into something far greater than we ever imagined. Every download, every share, every review, and every conversation has helped amplify the voices of victims and their families. Because of your support, we've reached another major milestone, and we wanted to take this opportunity to say thank you while sharing where this journey is taking us next.

We also provide important updates on several of the cases we've been following, including Jody Kilgore, LaTonya Thomas, Michael John Olson, Cody Haney, and Ian Rogers. From new developments to ongoing efforts behind the scenes, we discuss where each investigation stands, what we've learned, and what may be coming next.

Finally, we look ahead to the conferences and events we'll be attending in the coming months, where we'll continue building relationships with investigators, advocates, families, and experts who share the same mission: keeping unsolved cases in the public eye and helping bring answers to those who have waited far too long.

Thank you for believing in this mission. None of this happens without you, and together we're proving that a dedicated community can make a real difference. As our audience continues to grow, so does our ability to shine a light on cases that deserve renewed attention, and we couldn't do it without each and every one of you standing beside us.

Advocacy Con - https://www.advocacycon.com/

Crimestery-Fest - https://www.crimestery.com/

Subscribe to Tragedy: A True Crime Podcast+ - https://www.buzzsprout.com/2533686/subscribe

Music License - 3FT2UYS7JEUWCNC4

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

In Tragedy, a true crime podcast, we discuss missing persons cases, violent crime, and other sensitive topics that may be difficult for some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. Our show is a place where every story matters and every voice deserves to be heard. To support this podcast, you can subscribe at www.tragedy a true crime podcast.com for early access to new episodes. And join our Facebook community, Tragedy, a True Crime Podcast, for updates, discussions, and ways to support the families we feature. Welcome to Tragedy, a True Crime Podcast. I'm Elisa.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

And I'm Michael.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

This episode is going to be full of all kinds of really cool, exciting things that have been happening for us, some benchmarks that we have hit, and we'll also touch on some updates of some cases that we've been covering. So let's get started with the exciting things that are happening with the podcast. We have hit some really cool milestones. And the first one is we have over 2,000 people in our Facebook group, Tragedy, a true crime podcast. We're so excited to have everybody from all over the world and keep sharing, keep listening. This is a really important place for us. On the Facebook group, you can see all of our episodes. It's also a place for community conversation and sharing updates. So that's a really big, cool thing, I think, that we have hit.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Yes, it is. And so it's as well as some of our benchmarks within our Buzz Sprout platform. I'll just read through these real quick. Since 2026, we have 37,000 downloads. Um, we're about to publish our 75th episode that comes out next week. We've reached 66 countries, 2,528 cities, and we've collected 17 partners throughout this and throughout the United States.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

Yes. I remember when we went to Podfest in January of 2026, and people were saying, Oh my gosh, we were we kept saying, hey, we're new. Well, and they were said, How many episodes have you published? I think at that point we were at like maybe 30. And they said, Oh no, you're not new anymore. Most podcasts don't go past 10. So for us to be hitting 75 next week, um, that's really, really exciting and just speaks to um the relationships that we've built with our families and how we're getting those stories out. So I I I love this.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

Well, the other thing to think about too is I think about the word the number 75. And we have at least another 10 in the hopper right now, and we have a backlog of new cases coming in. I think last time you and I spoke about it, it's almost four months long.

SPEAKER_01 2:50

Yes. You know, at the end of our episodes, we always say if you have suggestions for cases, please reach out to us. You can either use our email or you can go straight through Facebook and message me. And that happens a lot. Our, I keep a database, a spreadsheet, basically, and I think it is 50 families deep that have reached out for us, uh reached out for our support. And we have already selected our families for most of the remainder of 2026. So I mean, it's unfortunate, but I think what we have learned is that there is a need for what we're doing. And so, you know, pretty soon we'll be doing another episode where we're at 100, which will be really exciting.

SPEAKER_00 3:32

I'm looking forward to it.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

And our listeners know that we attended CrimeCon in May in Las Vegas, and we met some really uh great people there, made some good connections. And because of what we did at CrimeCon, we also have two events that we have been accepted to attend, our first two events that we are attending as creators. So we want to make sure that our listeners are aware of those two events. One, if it's something you might be interested in attending, and two, if you live in that area, we would love to meet you. So the first event that we will be creators at, we have been accepted, is called AdvocacyCon. And this year's AdvocacyCon 2026 is going to be in Albuquerque from September 11th through September 13th. And you can learn a lot more about AdvocacyCon by going to their website, advocacycon.com. So that'll be in September. And then we are also going to an event called Crime Story Fest. This is October 9th through October 11th. This is outside of Boston in a town called Danvers. And you can learn more about Crime Story Fest by going to Crime Story at C-R-I-M-E-S-T-E-R-Y dot com. So if you live in or around the Albuquerque area, we'd love to see you in September at AdvocacyCon. But if you live in and around the Boston area, we'd love to see you at Crime Story Fest in early October. Let's get started with some case updates from our hometown and Walcala County. And let's just start with Jody. And Jody Kilgore is your uncle, right? That's right. And he was murdered in 2014. So we're coming up on 12 years. That's an unsolved case in Walcala County. There are a few things going on around Jodie's case. One thing we really want you to note if you live near Tallahassee or near Crawfordville, there's a pretty big event coming up on October 6th. And every year the family does a vigil. This is the day that Jody was killed. This happens at the old Walcala County Courthouse, which is right on the Crawfordville Highway. We will be there this year.

SPEAKER_00 5:55

Yes, we will.

SPEAKER_01 5:56

We'll be there with all of Jody's family. We'll be there with Teresa Rogers, Ian's mom. And we'll also be there with Vicky, LaTanya's cousin, and hopefully Thomasine, Latanya's mom. So big event if you live in that area, just we'll kind of keep updating on our Facebook page. We would love to have as many people there as we can get. Also, we did have a tip come in around Jodi's case. You'll know that we always will take tips on our email, tragedy, a true crime podcast at gmail.com, or frequently people send them to me through Facebook, and that's fine. I do always relay every single tip that we get to the Walcala County Sheriff's Office. So we we did get a tip and we sent that along regarding Jody's case, just like we always do. Let's move on to Ian. Unfortunately, at this point, we don't have any updates for Ian Rogers. Now, Ian Rogers has been missing from Walcala County since August of 2024. This was the second story that we covered. And remember, we had the big break when Ian's truck was located last November. But since then, there really hasn't been anything, any updates that have come from uh Detective Delbiato, who's lead on that case, has not reached out to Teresa or giving her any updates at this point. So unfortunately, um this is uh this story in this case is kind of stalled at this point until we can continue to maybe find out. Please send your tips if you have any information about what may have happened to Ian. Those tips, as we said, always um we send them to the sheriff's office. Now we have some major updates on Latanya Thomas's case. Latanya Thomas was murdered in 2016 in Sop Choppy. This is an unsolved homicide out of Walcola County that no one knew about. Um Jodie Kilgore being the only unsolved homicide in Walcola County, and that's how it was reported on the news. In fact, even law enforcement will say Jodie Kilgore is the only unsolved homicide in Walcala County until we found out about Latanya. So, some big things that have happened with La Tanya's case, um, I'll just give a little foundation for our new listeners. Her murder happened in 2016, March, in Sop Choppy, which is a small town in Walcala County. And within a little over a year of her murder happening, her case was closed by the state attorney's office and the Walcala County Sheriff's Office. But as of May of 2026, her case has been reopened. It's very exciting. We're very close with Vicky, uh, Latanya's cousin. And another big thing that happened is there's finally been some media coverage on Latanya's story.

SPEAKER_00 8:45

Yeah, that's one of the big things I know we were targeting initially, is we and we've talked about this before, where you would do a Google search or an even an AI search on Latanya Thomas, and you would really get nothing. And I I've already mentioned it before where when we first saw the note that came in from Facebook, we I actually thought it wasn't real because it was just, I mean, there was like a complete absence of anything. And that's no longer true. Now you'll see reports from the news, you're gonna see our podcast, you're gonna see a lot more coming because we're not gonna let this go. This case has been reopened. We are gonna stay on top of it, and we're gonna make sure that you guys in the community know what's going on with it.

SPEAKER_01 9:23

And because we do have a really close connection um with Vicky, we do know a little bit about what is happening with the reopening of the case. What the Wakola County Sheriff's Office is reporting to Vicky is that they are conducting interviews. She doesn't necessarily know with whom or what questions they're asking, but but we do know that they are reviewing the medical report and the findings from 2016. We find this a little bit interesting because this happened so long ago. They obviously cannot go back and repeat an autopsy. So what they are doing is reviewing the original medical findings. We don't really know why, but that is part of the reopening of the case. So it sounds like they're doing some interviews and maybe re-looking at the medical examiner report, which did result in the finding of her cause of death as homicide. Let's talk a little bit about tips again. In Latanya's case, we are getting a lot more tips than we are in our other cases. And I think this is because people who you're from this area, right? People stay. And while this was several years ago, people are still from that area. They still live there. The trailer park that she was killed in is still there. And I am starting to get, we'll say, several people who are reaching out to me who want to be anonymous with tips. As with any other tip, I always reach out to the local sheriff's office. In this case, we always have one person that we contact when we have tips regarding our stories, and we'll call a county, and then that's the public information officer. Something kind of unusual, and I'm gonna say unsettling happened in regards to some tips that came to me about Latanya. As I mentioned, I always just reach out to the public information officer, and normally that person will call me back, take my tip, and move forward with it. In this case, what happened instead is the lead detective on Latanya's case spoke about the tips that we received with Vicky. So I called it in and the lead detective asked Vicky what my tips were. Who had I talked to? What were the tips? And then Vicki asked me to share those with her. And I thought that was really strange because that means it's like a third-hand tip, right? I have an anonymous source. I'm trying to relay what that person told me. But the lead investigator in Latanya's case is asking for it to come from Vicki. And so I asked Vicky why they wanted to do that. And what Vicky told me is that detective said, when it's an open case, we prefer to take tips from the family, which also didn't make any Well, I'm just gonna interrupt there.

SPEAKER_00 12:09

That makes sense too. Yeah, that makes no sense at all. We're still members of the community. You know, we've got an open channel to the community. And frankly, there are people who are willing to talk to us that are not willing to talk to the sheriff's department. We are putting this together not to push our podcast. We are putting this together to be advocates for the community. And until you start to understand that, you will continue to fail.

SPEAKER_01 12:30

And this is in direct conflict with what we were told when we met with representatives at the sheriff's office was regarding Jody's case, is we need the community to step forward. We need, you know, to hear from the community. And now us as members of the community are coming forward with information that is shared regarding the unsolved homicide of Latanya Thomas. But instead, we're told, well, the family member should reach out to the person who has the tip and they should get the tip and they should relay it. Like these things don't make sense to me at all. These are indirect conflict with the people.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

Yeah, and we've shared this with some of our other contacts and various law enforcement agencies that actually do cooperate with us, and they found it highly irregular as well.

SPEAKER_01 13:11

So what I did instead was I submitted those tips on Latanya's case to Big Bend Crime Stoppers because I have done that before. Uh, and I do know that those have to be filtered to the correct law enforcement agent. And since you mentioned something about talking to other people, you know, we have supported families in other states who have had experiences with other law enforcement agencies. Let's talk about this medical report real quickly. Let's go back to Jodi for a second. Something that we have really been trying to get from the very beginning, a year and a half ago, either us or Jody's family, is that medical report. And they just they will not give it to us. The Walcala County Sheriff's Office will not give it to Jodi's mom. They will not give it to Jodi's sister. This is direct family. And we had a conversation with I think it was a private investigator in one of our episodes, maybe a couple of weeks ago. And we started to talk about this, and she was shocked. She said she had never supported a family who was unable to get the medical report delivered to them, even in open cases. And this was new, right? Like we don't, we're new to this whole thing. I I've never had experience as a law enforcement agent. Luckily, have I I haven't had to interact with law enforcement agents, agencies about missing people and or unsolved homicides until now. And so I just always assumed maybe that was kind of typical. Turns out it's not. It's actually atypical to withhold a medical report from a family. So found that again, I'm gonna use the same word, unsettling.

SPEAKER_00 14:49

That's correct.

SPEAKER_01 14:50

So if you have any information about the unsolved homicide of Jodie Kilgore or Latanya Thomas or the missing persons case of Ian Rogers, please call the Walcala County Sheriff's Office at 850-745-7100. The lead investigator on Jody Kilgore's case is Detective Webster. On Ian Rogers' missing person's case is Detective Delbiato. And on Latania Thomas's unsolved murder is Detective Hudson.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

Now we're going to get outside of Waucala County now and talk about West Palm Beach and the Michael John Olson case.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

Michael John Olson went missing in December of 1979 from West Palm Beach. He was 20 at the time and had just relocated from Minnesota to work at the presidential golf course. And he'd only been in West Palm Beach for two weeks when he went missing. We again have a really good connection with the family. In fact, we're about to meet this family in person in a couple of weeks, which is very exciting for us. We love getting a chance to meet the families that we're serving. And we have been connected with this family for over a year. It's just going to be really cool to be able to meet all the nieces and his brother and all of that. So Michael John Olson went missing with his vehicle. And for those of you who are not Florida residents, you might find it very interesting to know that in Florida, it's actually quite common for vehicles to go missing. Vehicles go missing because people dump them, or maybe for insurance purposes, right?

SPEAKER_00 16:31

They're trying to insurance, joyriding, all kinds of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 16:35

All right. My my Colorado brain took a long time for me to wrap around that. But because of the situation and the circumstances around Michael John Olson's disappearance, this is where we really developed a good, solid relationship with Sunshine State sonar. And something really important happened within the last month. Sunshine State Sonar does a lot of diving, mostly in South Florida, looking for missing people and their vehicles and have recovered over the years several missing people and their vehicles in the canals and waterways in South Florida. And they were outside of a West Palm Beach maybe about a month ago, searching for another person. And they located a vehicle of interest in a canal in Belle Glade, which seems to be about an hour away from West Palm Beach. Now, this vehicle vehicle of interest was a Grand Prix, right? Um, that they located. They weren't able to really look at it very closely. The canals, I think, are pretty muddy. But after they dove it and marked it, they were like, oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

Well, yeah, what they talked about was they dove it, they marked it. It wasn't the the divers that were on at the time were not the divers that were most familiar with the Michael John Olson case. So they marked it and moved on. And then Mike Sullivan later goes, Oh crap, we have to go back. And what they found basically was a Grand Prix. It was maroon, it was approximately the right dimensions, and it, you know, but it was so murky and muddy that it was really difficult. Well, I should probably say that too, it was flipped upside down, so it was really difficult to identify. So there was a lot of interest, obviously, from the family on this because we're like, this is the first Grand Prix he's ever he's ever come across, and it's even the right color and approximately the right here. Now, he contacted the West Palm Beach Police Department, and then that's when things got pretty, I would say, an interesting and frustrating at the same time. Initially, they they took really no interest in going and looking at that vehicle. And it wasn't until the family basically said, Oh, we're gonna go take care of it ourselves, we're gonna look in it, and suddenly they're like, Oh, wait a second, okay, we'll take a look at it. But then their response was even more bizarre from that point because they're like, Oh, we'll take a look at it, but we're gonna charge you $500 to go get it. And we're like, Okay, so the good news is Mike kind of interjected here because he's like, Oh, this is BS. But you know what? I want to take a much closer look at this car because I want to be the person that looks at it. I want to look at the details, and we really thought we had something here. We thought we had found Mike, and what we found is it is a grand prix, it's one year off of his model. The the tag does not match um Michael John Olson's um license plate. It's very difficult to read, but it and there was no letters or numbers that matched. And while the color approximate dimensions were the same, there are characteristics that significantly change between a 79, which is what Michael John Olson had, versus a 1980, which is actually what's in the canal. So this point, we do not believe that we found Michael John Olson's car, but it am sure to look like it.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

Yeah, and of concern really is the response from the West Palm Beach Police Department. The family has worked so closely with all of these organizations. And, you know, Sunshine State sonar finds a vehicle that they can't precisely say whether it is his or not. And the West Palm Beach Police Department tells the family that they have to pay to be able to get this car pulled out. Like, I don't get it. Uh, I think I'm just gonna go along the theme of like, this is unsettling, like I was talking about with the Cole County Sheriff's Office. The West Palm Beach Police Department continues to just make me very unsettled. Those of you who are new to our podcast, I should probably explain to you that we went to West Palm Beach about a year ago. And I walked into the West Palm Beach Police Department twice, had already notified that Detective Senior and and her supervisor that I would be there. The family told them that I would be there and that maybe we could get an update that we could share with the family. Uh, and of course they were conveniently in the field or they just dodged you.

SPEAKER_00 20:58

I mean, they they can say whatever you want, but they just dodge you.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

Right. There is this theme of just this very strange lack of communication um between the law enforcement agents that should be supporting our families and the families themselves. And personally, you know, it's even happened to us when we're talking about our families in Wakala County. But it did get a little interesting there for a few weeks, thinking that perhaps his vehicle and then perhaps Michael had been located. But at this point, it does not look like this is the vehicle that belonged to him. However, if you do have any information about the disappearance of Michael John Olson from December of 1979 in West Palm Beach, please reach out to Detective Senior. Her number is 561 822 1900.

SPEAKER_00 21:51

Now let's move on to the Cody Haney case. Now, the first thing I wanted to kind of point out on this one is our interaction with law enforcement when it comes to Communication has not been great. And so state of Florida is really knocking it out of the park. And I actually felt like maybe this was normal and this is what you should expect. However, then we met Liberty County's and the the sheriff at Liberty County, and everything regarding that opinion changed for me. You want to talk about that interaction whenever you phoned in your tip?

SPEAKER_01 22:19

Yes. So we learned about Cody Haney, who's been missing from Liberty County since June of 2024, from Ian's mom, Teresa. Teresa had uh a message from Michelle, and Michelle is Cody's mom, and that is how we met Michelle, and we were able to support her with several episodes that we did on Cody's disappearance. And Cody's been missing for just over two years, again out of Liberty County, a neighboring county to our home county. And something really interesting happened. I think it was maybe about, I don't know, six weeks ago or so. I had yet again another tip come in. A lot of people are uncomfortable speaking with law enforcement for whatever reason. We're not here to judge on that. So tips will come to us that people choose to remain anonymous. So I had a tip come in and I went ahead and called the Liberty County Sheriff's Office, relayed my tip, and my phone rang, and it was Sheriff Arnold from Liberty County. And we spoke for almost an entire hour. He was very interested in our tip. I can tell he's listened to our podcast episodes. He thanked us for the work that we are doing and encouraged us to continue to move forward and really sees us as a partner in this work as they try to figure out what happened to Cody. The lead detective is Detective Tadlock. I didn't speak with him directly, but I did speak with the sheriff. While there are elements of that conversation that do need to be off the record, I can share that just recently a person of interest was interviewed in relation to Cody's disappearance. So if you have any information regarding the disappearance of Cody Haney out of Liberty County in Florida, please reach out to Detective Tadlock at 850-643-4235. As we conclude today, we would just like to start out by thanking all of our new community members and please share, share, share. We'd also like to talk about our upcoming family that we are supporting starting next week. And this is a case out of Oak Grove, Louisiana. The West Carroll Parish Sheriff's Office holds this case. And this is a little different from what we have done before. We will be speaking with the family of Crystal McCrory. And Crystal died in January of 2023, and her death was ruled a suicide within under two hours. We have spoken to several members of her family and close friends, and we're looking forward to supporting this family starting next week. And as we wrap today, we want to give a shout out to our subscribers. We do a lot of really cool things with our subscribers. One of those is early access. So our episodes almost always are available on Monday. Our subscribers get early access the Friday before the Monday where all of the other episodes are dropped. One of the really fun things that we are doing with our subscribers are quarterly Zoom meetings. And we do some case updates. We get together all of our subscribers in a Zoom session. We have conversations that we don't have on the podcast or that aren't on the Facebook group. And most importantly, sometimes someone will come forward in one of those Zoom meetings and want to talk about one specific case. And, you know, we don't know everything. And so we love it when people ask us questions. It helps us go in maybe new directions. So we really would love to include more subscribers to our community. You can find that information out on how to subscribe on our webpage. And we will also include more information and the link in the description of this episode. The more we talk, the closer we get to solving some of these cases. So we find that work very important. You've been listening to Tragedy, a true crime podcast. Our purpose is to honor victims by sharing their stories through the voices of friends, family, and those whose lives were forever changed. If today's episode resonated with you, we encourage you to subscribe, leave a review, and share the podcast so these important stories continue to be heard. Together, we can preserve their memories and ensure their voices are never forgotten. If you have ideas for cases we should cover or questions about what you heard, you can connect with us through our Facebook group, Tragedy a True Crime Podcast, on X at Tragedy Podcast, by email at TragedyAtrue Crime Podcast at gmail.com, or by visiting our website www.tragedy a true crime podcast.com. Thank you for listening, and we hope you'll join us next time.