Madison McGhee
speaker
121 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard 25 Feb
Madison McGhee’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Feb 2026 with 1.
Appearances
When your parents are alive and you have more of a traditional relationship with them, you probably will never hear about your dad's most wild night in college. Now, because of what I'm doing, I'm hearing about that sort of side of my dad. And so I'm almost getting to know him in a way that I may never have if he was alive, because I don't think he would want me to know any of this stuff.
It is really interesting to hear about my dad through the lens of not being a dad and being a person and doing what it takes to survive in the time that he was alive in and also the climate and the location as well. I also feel like once I got started, I was really getting to know my dad and someone who I would never have the opportunity to really have in my life.
I get to honor the memory of him that I have, but also the person that now I'm getting to know. I'm in this weird boat of I'm almost making a podcast about a stranger because I didn't really know him that well. But at the same time, it is my dad. So I am making it about one of the closest connections I will have to anyone because I'm half him.
I've gotten to know this person that now I feel this really strong connection to. And I see a lot of myself in him. He struggled with a lot of the same things I struggled with. We had similar interests. Sounds like we had similar mannerisms. That's who I'm doing all of this for. But it's weird because I don't actually know that person. I hadn't seen my sister in person since my dad's funeral.
So we went 20 years without seeing each other. We met up when I interviewed her for the show. That definitely brought us closer together. And we talk on a semi-frequent basis. She'll listen to episodes and reach out if she remembers something from the time or this sparked this or have you thought about this?
So that's been really great to have that connection reignited because of not necessarily the podcast, but just the investigation and me diving into this. I do believe wholeheartedly that she wants answers just as badly as I do. We just are dealing with it, obviously, in very different ways. I did line up these interviews and then started to put it all together. It took years.
It took a really long time. I think I could have probably logistically done this in six months, but it took me almost four years to really put it all together because I'd go through phases where there'd be months where I'm like, I just can't look at it. I don't want to look at it. I don't want to deal with it.
And then there'd be months where I'd get really hyper fixated on it and I'd work really hard on things. I think that the emotional weight of it also was a lot at certain points in my life. Ice Cold Case, you can listen to that anywhere you get your podcasts. We call it part one, episodes one through nine. And the second installment is what's coming out now, which will be episodes 10 through 18.
If you go and listen through the whole thing, episode 11 and 12. are really crazy. 11 and 12 are where I sit down face to face with the police's main suspect in the murder. That was a crazy experience from start to finish. He reached out to me after listening to the podcast. I had no idea that he was aware of it or listening to it or that he knew how to get ahold of me.
We met up, I flew out to meet with him. I went by myself. That conversation completely changed my life probably, but definitely this investigation and this case. He was calm and kind. That conversation, we had to break it up into two episodes. I remember when we were going through, what are we going to do with this? What does this even mean? How do we chop this up? And how do we cut out this?
We need to put this in. And that's how we decided to just do two separate episodes. Those were really difficult. Just the actual start to finish of meeting with him, talking to him, and then also cutting up that episode and writing it, recording it.
Calling him to let him know that it's coming out and being as transparent as possible with him about what was going to go into it because he did take the time to sit with me and talk with me. When I first started hearing his name five years ago, I never imagined that I would be sitting face to face with this person. To this day, the police still tell me that that's their number one suspect.
But that seems so strange to just let this person run around in your town and in your county if you think they murdered someone. A lot of episodes have been difficult to write. There's versions 9, 10, 11 of the script, or one in particular is episode 10. two, we had to rerecord the weekend before it was supposed to come out because I got it back to note it.
And I remember listening going, this is so not right. And so going back through the and redoing that. I actually think we did that with episode two and three for different reasons. Two is about my backstory, my life situation with my mom that sort of started this theme in my life of you live a very different life than other kids. Your life is not normal. Your family dynamic is not normal.
It's when I first had an experience with my mom regarding her addiction. It's a very personal episode. Things that people who have known me my whole life did not know. Writing that with respect to my mom, but also being honest was very difficult to do. There's different versions of that episode on a Google Drive somewhere where I'm a little harsher on my mom.
There's ones where I'm not as honest as I should have been. And then we finally got to that middle ground where it was equal parts honest and empathetic, but also real and raw. That one was really difficult. I would say my relationship with my mom hasn't changed at all. I don't know how many episodes she's listened to. I know she's heard the one about her.
When starting this, the whole point of it was no one is talking about my dad. We're happy to talk about other mainstream cases of quote-unquote perfect victims, but my dad never made any list of top cases you should know about. That was sort of the goal. So the healing part of that is that it's slowly but surely getting to that point where now people are talking about it.
And that is really exciting for me because the thing I set out to do, I'm starting to see the results of. I remember Googling the case just to see, was there anything online I could look at or look up? And there was absolutely nothing.
And so it's actually been an interesting exercise for me now to Google the show, myself, my dad, and to see all of the articles that come up when before there was nothing, I think really speaks to the power of media as well, but also what has really been accomplished since launching the show almost immediately. exactly a year ago. I think that for me has been really healing.
And that's been incredible. Knowing that's what's eventually going to be the catalyst for solving the case, I think is very exciting. I think that's why I haven't had as long of breaks as I used to when I wasn't putting out the show. Now there is this motivator of people care and people are invested and people are sending in tips.
Showing 61–80 of 121 · page 4 of 7
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