In 2023, journalist Larrison Campbell returned to Greenville, Miss., to reexamine her grandmother’s murder and run down the many rumors about the case, including that her first cousin might have been the murderer. Her investigation is told in the podcast – “Devil in the Ditch.”
BACKGROUND: On June 13, 2003, Martha Dyer Campbell, 85, was found dead by her sister in the garden room of her big house in the affluent Wilzin Park neighborhood of Greenville. She had been beaten brutally with a blunt object, and a towel was placed over her head. Campbell was a well-known community activist who had entertained Mississippi Gov. Ronnie Musgrove in the same room nine days before her murder. Her death rocked her family and Greenville, and it remains unsolved.
This summer, she released a follow-up podcast about the aftermath of her investigation and the impact of the podcast on her relationships with her family and her hometown. Larrison talked about investigating such a personal story.
“I think it’s tough anytime you report on somebody because what you do is you’re sort of going in and putting your own lens on a story or a life that somebody else has only seen through their own lens,” she said. “Then if you put it out there, they’re listening to something about themselves but told by somebody who’s not them. And it’s just weird. There’s some dissonance there with that.”
Larrison continued, “But it’s also, every family has a story, multiple stories, and it can even be something, especially if you’re from the Delta, stories that are always retold and they’re retold. They’re often funny, but sometimes they can be about anything, and they’re always told from that same perspective in that same way. Everybody listening to the story knows when the punchline is coming, and they know what the punchline is.”
She was concerned about sharing her family’s lives and stories with the world through the podcast.
“When you get in there, and you tell that family story in a way that maybe people aren’t used to hearing it, I think it almost can feel like a betrayal sometimes—even what you’re trying to do isn’t betray anybody, even when you’re just like I want to crack this open and look at it in a different way,” Larrison said. “Just the act of doing that, regardless of what the outcome is, can feel like you’re going against the family.”
Listen to Devil in the Ditch I The Aftermath.”
Here is our interview:
Larrison has a new podcast that you might enjoy. Dr Miracle – Dr. Miracle explores a wellness center some called “Miracle Ranch,” nestled in the scenic mountains of Southern California, promised a luxurious escape and a path to wellness through clean, alkaline living. Its leader, Dr. Robert O. Young, attracted wealthy clientele with his “groundbreaking” health protocols and friendly, family-man persona. But beneath the serene surface, Miracle Ranch harbored a dark secret. The people who stayed there didn’t get better; they got worse.
Through legal documents and candid interviews with former patients and employees, law enforcement officials, and affected family members, this series unravels the chilling true story of one man who convinced scores of people that cancer is not a cell but an “acidic, poisonous liquid”, and how his popular “alkaline diet” turned deadly.
Photo by Alphacolor on Unsplash
