Author Alley
author guests on the show:
Jax Miller
Author of Hell in the Heartland
Jax Miller is an American author of several books, and writer for Oxygen True Crime. While hitchhiking across America in her twenties, she wrote her first novel, Freedom’s Child, for which she won the 2016 Grand Prix des Lectrices de Elle and earned several CWA Dagger nominations. She has received acclaim from the New York Times, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, and many more. She now works in the true-crime genre, having penned her much-anticipated book and acting as creator, host, and executive producer on the true-crime documentary series Hell in the Heartland on CNN’s HLN network. It is currently streamable on Discovery Plus. Jax is a lover of film and music, and has a passion for rock ‘n’ roll and writing screenplays.
Jax will be featured as a guest in Season 4's Ashley Freeman & Lauria Bible Saga Episodes along with Lorene Bible and Lisa Brodrick where we discuss the book, the case, and some of her thoughts in general.
The book is available in Paperback, Kindle, and Audible.
Try Discovery Plus with a 7 day free trial.
ladonna humphrey
author, journalist, documentarian
LaDonna Humphrey is an award-winning writer, documentarian, investigative journalist, private investigator and an advocate for victims of crime. Her passions include advocating for missing adults, crime victims, children in foster care, and for women in recovery.
In April of 2022, LaDonna’s debut book, The Girl I Never Knew, an Amazon Best Seller, was published by Genius Book Publishing. Her second book, Strangled, co-written with Alecia Lockhart, is slated for release on October 28, 2022.
'THE GIRL I NEVER KNEW: WHO KILLED MELISSA WITT?'
For over two decades the identity of Melissa Witt’s murderer has been hidden among the dense trees and thorny undergrowth rooted deeply in the uneven ground of a remote mountaintop in the Ozark National Forest.
Determined to find answers, LaDonna Humphrey has spent the past seven years hunting for Melissa’s killer. Her investigation, both thrilling and unpredictable, has led her on a journey like no other.
The Girl I Never Knew is an edge-of-your-seat account of LaDonna Humphrey’s passionate fight for justice in the decades-old murder case of a girl she never met in person. Her unstoppable quest for the truth has gained the attention of some incredibly dangerous people, some of whom would like to keep Melissa’s murder a mystery forever.
'STRANGLED'
A follow up book on the Melissa Witt investigation.
LaDonna Humphrey gains a new ally in her effort to find justice in the 1994 unsolved murder case of Melissa Ann Witt when Alecia Lockhart reveals a dark and troubling secret from her past. Together, Humphrey and Lockhart must delve inside a dangerous and twisted world known as the "dark web" to unlock a series of mysteries, including Alecia's haunting connection to Melissa Witt's murder.
Strangled is the shocking and suspenseful account of the war Humphrey and Lockhart wage on a warped and depraved online community set on destruction, murder and mayhem. The stakes are high. Their safety is compromised. Evil lurks with every click. Just how far are they willing to go to find the answers they need?
'UNEVEN GROUND: THE MELISSA WITT STORY'
Documentary Coming Soon
CO-HOST OF THE DEEP DARK SECRETS PODCAST
(See Podcast Row)
LaDonna is the co-founder of All the Lost Girls Organization.
whokilledmelissawitt@gmail.com
Who Killed Missy Witt? | Facebook
BONUS EP COMING SOON.
alecia lockhart
author, podcaster
Lockhart is a survivor, a writer, a researcher, a podcast host, and an advocate for women’s safety.
She co-authored “Strangled,” book two in the Who Killed Melissa Witt series. She’s also the co-host of the Deep Dark Secrets podcast. When Alecia isn’t uncovering dark secrets, she can be found providing spiritual coaching to her clients, or spending time with her two daughters, husband, and domestic creatures.
'STRANGLED'
A follow up book on the Melissa Witt investigation.
LaDonna Humphrey gains a new ally in her effort to find justice in the 1994 unsolved murder case of Melissa Ann Witt when Alecia Lockhart reveals a dark and troubling secret from her past. Together, Humphrey and Lockhart must delve inside a dangerous and twisted world known as the "dark web" to unlock a series of mysteries, including Alecia's haunting connection to Melissa Witt's murder.
Strangled is the shocking and suspenseful account of the war Humphrey and Lockhart wage on a warped and depraved online community set on destruction, murder and mayhem. The stakes are high. Their safety is compromised. Evil lurks with every click. Just how far are they willing to go to find the answers they need?
'UNEVEN GROUND: THE MELISSA WITT STORY'
Documentary Coming Soon
CO-HOST OF THE DEEP DARK SECRETS PODCAST
(See Podcast Row)
whokilledmelissawitt.com
whokilledmelissawitt@gmail.com
Who Killed Missy Witt? | Facebook
BONUS EP COMING SOON.
Kathryn Miles
Award Winning Journalist, Author
Kathryn Miles is an award-winning journalist and science writer and made her way into the true crime genre with Trailed: One Woman's Quest to Solve the Shenandoah Murders. For more info on the book, click the link above.
She received a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Saint Louis University and took both her Master of Arts and Doctorate in English from the University of Delaware. The long-time editor of Hawk & Handsaw, Miles served as professor of environmental studies and writing at Unity College from 2001-2015 and has since taught in several graduate schools and low residency-MFA programs including, most recently, at Green Mountain College, where she was also writer-in-residence.
Miles is the author of five books: Adventures with Ari, All Standing, Superstorm, Quakeland, and Trailed: One Woman’s Quest to Solve the Shenandoah Murders. Her essays and articles have appeared in publications including Audubon, Best American Essays, The Boston Globe, Down East, Ecotone, History, The New York Times, Outside, Pacific Standard, Politico, Popular Mechanics, and Time. She currently serves as a scholar-in-residence for the Maine Humanities Council, a faculty member for several MFA programs, and as a private consultant available for emerging and established writers. She lives in Portland, Maine.
Some of the organizations that she's passionate about are: Outdoor Afro & Fat Girls Hiking
Find more about her here: https://www.kathrynmiles.net/
She is a featured guest on an episode of Season 3's Raven's Reviews where we talk about her book Trailed.
Find Kathryn's Books by clicking the link below the book photo.
Available in Hardback, Paperback, Kindle, and Audible.
Kathy Reichs
Author & Forensic Anthropologist
Dr. Kathy Reichs received her bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from American University, in Washington, DC (1971). She went on to Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, where she earned a Masters in Physical Anthropology (1972) and a PhD in Physical Anthropology (1975). The American Board of Forensic Anthropology certified Dr. Reichs as a Diplomate (D.A.B.F.A) in 1986.
Dr. Reichs has served as a forensic anthropology consultant to the Medical Examiner’s Office of Mecklenburg County in Charlotte, NC and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for the State of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, NC. She is currently a consultant to the Ministere de la Securite publique at the Laboratoire de Sciences Judiciaires et de Médecine Légale, in Montreal, Québec.
Dr. Reichs has spoken at the White House, Smithsonian Institute, Montreal Science Museum, Cape Fear Crime Festival, and many more.
Her first novel "Déjà Dead" catapulted her to fame when it became a New York Times bestseller and won the 1997 Ellis Award for Best First Novel. She has 21 published books in the series. The TV show "Bones" was based off her works, and she served as a Producer on the show. In addition, Kathy co-authored the Virals young adult series with her son, Brendan Reichs.
From teaching FBI agents how to detect and recover human remains, to separating and identifying commingled body parts in her Montreal lab, as a forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs has brought her own dramatic work experience to her mesmerizing forensic thrillers.
Dr. Reichs is one of only 100 forensic anthropologists ever certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology.
She is a featured guest on an episode of Season 3's Raven's Reviews where we will discuss her career and her newest novel in the Temperance Brennan series "Cold, Cold Bones," available in stores July 5th, 2022.
Sally Denton
Award winning Journalist,
Best Selling Author
Sally Denton is an investigative reporter, author, and historian who writes about the subjects others ignore--from a drug conspiracy in Kentucky to organized crime in Las Vegas; from corruption within the Mormon Church to the hidden history of Manifest Destiny; from one of America's bitterest political campaigns to the powerful forces against Franklin D. Roosevelt. She has an extensive background in print and broadcast, as well as magazine and book writing.
Sally is the author of eight books, including bestseller The Bluegrass Conspiracy, and the coauthor of a classic account of Las Vegas, The Money and the Power. She lives in Nevada.
The Colony
An investigation into the November, 2019 killings of nine women and children in Northern Mexico—an event that drew international attention—The Colony examines the strange, little-understood world of a polygamist Mormon outpost.
In The Colony, bestselling investigative journalist Sally Denton picks up where the initial, incomplete reporting on the attacks ended, and delves into the complex story of the LeBaron clan. Their homestead—Colonia LeBaron—is a portal into the past, a place that offers a glimpse of life within a polygamous community on an arid and dangerous frontier in the mid-1800s, though with smartphones and machine guns. Rooting her narrative in written sources as well as interviews with anonymous women from LeBaron itself, Denton unfolds an epic, disturbing tale that spans the first polygamist emigrations to Mexico through the LeBarons’ internal blood feud in the 1970s—started by Ervil LeBaron, known as the “Mormon Manson”—and up to the family’s recent alliance with the NXIVM sex cult, whose now-imprisoned leader, Keith Raniere, may have based his practices on the society he witnessed in Colonia LeBaron
Find more about her here: https://www.sallydenton.com
She is a featured guest on an episode of Season 3's Raven's Reviews where we talk about her book The Colony.
The Colony is available in Hardback, Kinde, and on Audible.
Valena Beety
Founding Director of the West Virginia Innocence Project,
Former Federal Prosecutor, Author
Law professor, an innocence litigator, and a former federal prosecutor. She has exonerated wrongly convicted clients, founded the West Virginia Innocence Project, obtained presidential grants of clemency for drug offenses, and co-edited a guide
to causes of wrongful convictions, The Wrongful Convictions Reader.
Valena teaches at Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law and co-leads the Academy for Justice, a criminal justice center at ASU connecting research with policy reform. Her experiences as a federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C., and as an innocence litigator in Mississippi and West Virginia, shape her writing and advocacy on wrongful convictions, forensic evidence, prosecutors and incarceration. She has served as an elected board member of the national Innocence Network, an invited board member of the Research Center on Violence, and an appointed commissioner on the West Virginia Governor’s Indigent Defense Commission.
'Manifesting Justice: Wrongfully Convicted Women Reclaim Their Rights'
It's both a blueprint for reform and a clarion call to change popular ideas of innocence and freedom.
Drawing on interviews with both innocence advocates and wrongfully convicted women, along with Beety’s own experiences as an expert innocence litigator and a queer woman, Manifesting Justice provides a unique outsider/insider perspective.
Find more about her here: https://www.valenabeety.com
She is a featured guest on an episode of Season 3's Raven's Reviews where we discuss her work, her life, and her book.
Manifesting Justice is available in Hardback, Kindle, and on Audible.
Jerrett Adams
Author & Civil Rights Attorney
Mr. Adams was wrongfully convicted of a crime at age 17 and sentenced to 28 years in a maximum-security prison. After serving nearly ten years and filing multiple appeals with the assistance of the Wisconsin Innocence Project, the Seventh Circuit United States Court of Appeals exonerated him.
He used the injustice he endured as inspiration to become an advocate and attorney for the underserved and often uncounted. Mr. Adams earned his Juris Doctorate from Loyola University Chicago School of Law in May 2015.
During law school, Mr. Adams worked as an investigator for the Illinois Federal Defender’s Program. For his work with the clemency petition of Reynolds Wintersmith, ultimately granted by President Obama, he received the National Defender Investigator Association Investigator of the Year award.
He served as a public interest law fellow under the Hon. Ann Claire Williams, of the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. This is the same court that reversed his wrongful conviction because of his trial lawyer’s constitutional deficiencies. Mr. Adams also clerked in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York with the late Honorable Deborah Batts.
In early 2016, he started as an attorney with the Innocence Project in New York. Working in the litigation department, Mr. Adams earned one of his first victories, exonerating a man in the same Wisconsin prison where he had served time during his wrongful conviction.
Mr. Adams launched the Law Offices of Jarrett Adams, PLLC, in 2017 with offices and attorneys in New York, NY, Chicago, IL, and Milwaukee, WI. He expects to open a Los Angeles, CA office in 2022.
He is also a co-founder of Life After Justice, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to preventing wrongful convictions and developing an ecosystem of support and empowerment for exonerees’ as they rebuild their lives after exoneration.
As an author, Mr. Adams shares a cinematic story of hope and redemption in his memoir, Redeeming Justice. Redeeming Justice: From Defendant to Defender, My Fight For Equity On Both Sides Of A Broken System, published by Penguin Random House, is the poignant story of how an innocent young adult of color experienced the injustice of a legal system that purports to provide “justice for all.” His account of incarceration, exoneration, and redemption has been featured widely in the media, and he has become a sought-after motivational speaker for athletes, students, inmates, attorneys, and others.
Find more about him here:
He is a featured guest on an episode of Season 3's Raven's Reviews.
Available in Hardback, Kindle, & on Audible.
JL Hyde
author
J.L. Hyde was raised in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and is a proud graduate of Central Michigan University. She currently lives in Oklahoma City with her boyfriend and pets.
When she is not watching her beloved Green Bay Packers, you can find her listening to a true crime podcast or posting book & beer reviews on her Instagram account, @bookandbeerreview.
'UNDERGROUND'
In a new state with only her husband and dog to keep her company, a woman joins a true crime group online, meets new friends from it, and finds herself in a real life mystery.
Available in Paperback, Kindle.
'SUMMER OF '99'
The book flashes back and forth between a woman's present day and her summer camp experience of 1999 where two camp-goers where murdered during her stay.
Available in Paperback, Kindle.
'DELTA COUNTY'
With a tragic loss in her past, a woman attends her high school reunion and discovers that not all is as it seems.
Optioned for TV.
Available on Audible, Kindle, Paperback.
'MIDNIGHT IN DELTA COUNTY'
Follow up novel to Delta County AND Summer of '99. Expected Halloween 2022.
J.L. is currently featured on a Season 3 Episode of Raven's Reviews.
Vick Ferarri
Retired NYPD Detective, author
Author Vic Ferrari is a retired New York City Police Department detective with the hamstrings of a twenty-year-old. A survivor of an Irish father and Italian mother, Vic loves a cold beer and insists on you removing your shoes when entering his home. Vic writes about his time with the NYPD and gives you a behind the scenes look at crime and criminals. When he's not writing, he's picking up after his neurotic Irish Wolfhound. Always looking to save a buck, Vic splits his time between Branson, Missouri, and Papua New Guinea. He currently lives in Florida.
https://www.facebook.com/vicferrarinypd
Vic is featured on a Season 3 Episode of Raven's Reviews.
To purchase his books, click the link below the Book Photo above. Available in hardback, paperback, and ebook.
books Talked about on the show:
In the town of Ada, Oklahoma, Ron Williamson was going to be the next Mickey Mantle. But on his way to the Big Leagues, Ron stumbled, his dreams broken by drinking, drugs, and women. Then, on a winter night in 1982, not far from Ron’s home, a young cocktail waitress named Debra Sue Carter was savagely murdered. The investigation led nowhere.
Until, on the flimsiest evidence, it led to Ron Williamson. The washed-up small-town hero was charged, tried, and sentenced to death—in a trial littered with lying witnesses and tainted evidence that would shatter a man’s already broken life, and let a true killer go free.
Candy Montgomery and Betty Gore had a lot in common: They sang together in the Methodist church choir, their daughters were best friends, and their husbands had good jobs working for technology companies in the north Dallas suburbs known as Silicon Prairie. But beneath the placid surface of their seemingly perfect lives, both women simmered with unspoken frustrations and unanswered desires.
On a hot summer day in 1980, the secret passions and jealousies that linked Candy and Betty exploded into murderous rage. What happened next is usually the stuff of fiction. But the bizarre and terrible act of violence that occurred in Betty’s utility room that morning was all too real.
Based on exclusive interviews with the Gore and Montgomery families, Edgar Award finalist Evidence of Love is the “superbly written” account of a gruesome tragedy and the trial that made national headlines when the defendant entered the most unexpected of pleas: not guilty by reason of self-defense (Fort Worth Star-Telegram).
Adapted into the Emmy and Golden Globe Award–winning television movie A Killing in a Small Town—as well as the new limited series Candy on Hulu and Love and Death on HBO Max—this chilling tale of sin and savagery will “fascinate true crime aficionados” (Kirkus Reviews).
Talked about on Raven's Reviews: Candy
It was one push.
One of the most controversial murder cases of the 21st century began the moment Amber Hilberling, a pregnant teenager raised in affluence, pushed her husband Josh inside their 25th-floor apartment living room. Amber watched in horror as Josh fell into a window, which collapsed on contact, then plummeted through the Tulsa sky to his death.
Amber's claim of self-defense against a longtime abuser was quickly drowned out by the aggressive public campaign Josh's family and friends launched. The media adopted their storyline without question - portraying Amber as a mentally-ill killer, Josh a "gentle giant" and victim. Hate websites launched, calling for Amber's execution. Strangers harassed her family. The Tulsa World newspaper mocked her "fitted jackets, full makeup and a mane of blown-out blonde tresses.” The State of Oklahoma charged Amber with murder and prosecuted her with troubling tactics the state supreme court later blasted as "dubious." The pressure drove Amber, soon a new mother to a baby boy, to the edge.
In Pushed, J.R. Elias, an award-winning journalist turned attorney who worked on the case, pulls back the curtains and shares the gripping full story: prosecutorial misconduct, the explosive behind-the-scenes dramas, lies, adultery, greed, the devastating effect of irresponsible media, the disturbing twists of the murder trial, and the toll the grueling case took on many lives. Just after he finished the book, the already-tragic story reached a shocking and heartbreaking conclusion, captured in a newly-added Epilogue.
Neither the public nor the jury has ever heard the full story. Until now.
Available in Paperback & Kindle.
In the late 1800s, the city of Austin, Texas was on the cusp of emerging from an isolated western outpost into a truly cosmopolitan metropolis. But beginning in December 1884, Austin was terrorized by someone equally as vicious and, in some ways, far more diabolical than London's infamous Jack the Ripper. For almost exactly one year, the Midnight Assassin crisscrossed the entire city, striking on moonlit nights, using axes, knives, and long steel rods to rip apart women from every race and class. At the time the concept of a serial killer was unthinkable, but the murders continued, the killer became more brazen, and the citizens' panic reached a fever pitch.
Before it was all over, at least a dozen men would be arrested in connection with the murders, and the crimes would expose what a newspaper described as "the most extensive and profound scandal ever known in Austin." And yes, when Jack the Ripper began his attacks in 1888, London police investigators did wonder if the killer from Austin had crossed the ocean to terrorize their own city.
With vivid historical detail and novelistic flair, Texas Monthly journalist Skip Hollandsworth brings this terrifying saga to life.
Available in Hardback, Paperback, ebook, and Audible audiobooks.
In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.
Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. One of her relatives was shot. Another was poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more and more Osage were dying under mysterious circumstances, and many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered.
As the death toll rose, the newly created FBI took up the case, and the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including a Native American agent who infiltrated the region, and together with the Osage began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.
Available in Hardback, Paperback, ebook, and Audible audiobooks.
Other Favorites From Raven's Library:
Looking for something a little different?
Raven Rollins & Rick Rollins wrote their first book together in 2011, publishing A Dead New World, a zombie apocalypse story, in 2012. After that, they wrote and published The Human Condition, the second book in the series in 2013, following it up with two seperate short stories from the series by each of them. Find them below!
When the world falls apart, what will be important in your life? Will you give up and die, or will you fight against all odds to protect what is most valuable to you? In this series, we follow the viewpoints of two characters who could not be more violently different: Alan Hawthorne, CFO of a Fortune 500 company in Los Angeles, and Alexis Jackson, Veterinarian for a small Texas town as they both struggle through the beginning of the zombie apocalypse. As fate brings these two together, they struggle through the reality of loss, the terror of the undead, and the failing humanity of the remaining survivors. The chaos of the city outbreak and the quiet unknown of the country wilderness bring different perspectives to these unlikely heroes, and they cling to the hope that humanity can prevail over a great darkness. As the sun sets on life as they knew it, these two opposites must find common ground to push back the hordes of zombies, stave off the depravity of a lawless wasteland, gather the shattered remnants of their former lives and carve a place for themselves in this dead new world.
A Dead New World is available on Kindle for $3.99 and Paperback for $16.50. Also available on Google Books.
When the world ends and government has collapsed, who will be left in charge of the human race?
Will it be the selfish or the selfless? Can you afford to be selfless? What are humans truly capable of when they must fight to survive? In this second novella of the 11:11 series these questions are answered for Alan and Alexis, and the answers are terrifying. What would the world be like if the only people left to lead humanity were the same people who picketed the funerals of soldiers, teachers, and babies? What type of society would these people establish in a world without rules, left unchecked and in power? Alan and Alexis carry on to scrape together the remnants of their pasts across the devastated wasteland of Los Angeles, unaware of the magnitude of death's grip on the city. As they fight the unending hordes of the dead they will discover that their real enemy is very much alive, and that evil comes in many forms.
The Human Condition is available on Kindle for $4.99 and Paperback for $18.50. Also available on Google Books.
When the world ends and government has collapsed, who will be left in charge of the human race? Will it be the selfish or the selfless? Can you afford to be selfless? What are humans truly capable of when they must fight to survive? In this second novella of the 11:11 series these questions are answered for Alan and Alexis, and the answers are terrifying. What would the world be like if the only people left to lead humanity were the same people who picketed the funerals of soldiers, teachers, and babies? What type of society would these people establish in a world without rules, left unchecked and in power? Alan and Alexis carry on to scrape together the remnants of their pasts across the devastated wasteland of Los Angeles, unaware of the magnitude of death's grip on the city. As they fight the unending hordes of the dead they will discover that their real enemy is very much alive, and that evil comes in many forms.
In this short accompaniment to the 11:11 series, we follow the events of Will Singer, Alexis's fiance she left behind in her escape from Sweetwater, Texas. See a brief insight into his journey, and learn more about the man Lexi was destined to marry before the world ended. By the end of this story, you will have learned more about Will, and that the undead are not the only things you need to fear from the zombie apocalypse. The living can be just as evil, if not more so.
The Book of William Singer can only be found on Kindle or Google Books.
In this 11:11 series addendum, witness the events of the first day of the zombie apocalypse from the eyes of a CDC agent named Dan Lynch, the same agent who stopped Alan as he left the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. Briefly see how the government dealt with this outbreak, what the CDC actually knew, and how the military handled the outbreak first hand. You will learn that even for a paranoid government man like Dan, when the world ends, you may still not be prepared.
The Book of Dan Lynch is only available on Kindle & Google Books.
To Be a Guest Email Us!
If you are interested in being a guest on the show as a crime, mystery, or thriller author and would like an interview with us on your own special episode, email us at thesirenspodcast@gmail.com with your information. Please include your name, profession/expertise, a short bio and, authors, please feel free to request our address to send us a copy of the book you would like to promote.
We do not charge booking fees or to have guests on the show.
Please note: All guests are expected to either join us in the studio in Tulsa, Oklahoma for recording or be prepared for at home recording with your own gear. We only record video for featured guests at this time, but do not use it as a full episode as we do not offer video episodes right now. Audio & Video is recorded via Zencastr over the interwebs.