The Corpsewood Manor Murders In North Georgia

The notorious true crime story of a sex party that ended in double murder in the woods of Chattanooga County, Georgia. On December 12th, 1982, Tony West and Avery Brock made a visit to Corpsewood Manor under the pretense of a celebration. Then they brutally murdered their hosts. Dr. Charles Scudder had been a professor of pharmacology at Chicago’s Loyola University before he and his boyfriend Joey Odom moved to Georgia and built their own home in the Chattahoochee National Forest. Scudder had absconded with twelve thousand doses of LSD and had a very particular vision for their “castle in the woods.” It included a “pleasure chamber,” and rumors of Satanism swirled around the two men. Scudder even claimed to have summoned a demon to protect the estate. But when Scudder and Odom welcomed West and Brock into their strange abode, they had no idea the men were armed and dangerous. When the evening of kinky fun turned to a scene of gruesome slaughter, the murders set the stage for a sensational trial that engulfed the sleepy Southern town of Trion in shocking revelations and lurid speculations.

On December 12th, 1982, a strange house in the remote mountains of North West Georgia became a bloody slaughterhouse for two men and their dogs. One of the victims-an accomplished scientist and university professor-experimented with the occult. A self-portrait found at the crime scene appeared to depict the professor gagged with gunshot wounds to his head, exactly as his body was discovered by investigators. Had he gazed into the future and witnessed his own death-or had the painting inspired the murder?The case became a media sensation with allegations of satanic cults, supernatural curses, and mind control experiments. The only thing stranger than the murders themselves was the legal odyssey that followed, resulting in four Supreme Court decisions and revelations that would stun the judicial system.After years of research involving court transcripts, audio recordings, and interviews with the participants in the case-including the murderers themselves-author Daniel Ellis peels back the layers of legend to reveal the truth behind one of the most bizarre true crime cases ever to emerge from the dark Southern woods-Corpsewood: A True Crime Like No Other.

Nestled deep in the north Georgia woodlands are the ruins of an estate appropriately and ironically named Corpsewood. The conservative residents of the small towns nearby all know of the two men who came from Chicago to live among them. When the blood drenched bodies of the men were discovered there not long before Christmas, the whole area is shocked by the heartless, vicious nature of the crime. They can't imagine who among them would commit such cold-blooded murders and they are even more shocked when a pretty teenaged girl comes forward to say that she was an eyewitness and willing to tell what she knows. The victims were two openly gay men, and rumors soon circulated that they were devil-worshippers who experimented with LSD and conducted Satanic rituals on the estate. It was said they participated in wild, sex-filled orgies and even had their own "pleasure palace" built onto their home. The buildings that once stood on the isolated grounds are now only brick remnants, covered in ivy and slowly being absorbed back into the woods, but strange tales persist and those who are brave enough to wander down the rutted dirt road and venture deep into the woods to explore the grounds tell stories of strange curses and hauntings. Even now, some thirty-three years after what happened there, nearly everyone in the area calls the place "the devil worshippers' house." What was the truth of that night? Only four people left alive really know what happened in that prophetically named house in the North Georgia hills, no matter what others might claim. The two murderers, still sitting in prison, have their self-serving stories. The other eyewitness isn't talking. Only one of the eyewitnesses, the former Teresa Lynn Hudgins, is stepping forward again to tell the truth.

On a sultry August morning in 1970, the battered body of a young woman was hoisted from a dry well just outside Hogansville, Georgia. Author and investigator Clay Bryant was there, witnessing the macabre scene. Then fifteen, Bryant was tagging along with his father, Buddy Bryant, Hogansville chief of police. The victim, Gwendolyn Moore, had been in a violent marriage. That was no secret. But her husband had connections to a political machine that held sway over the Troup County Sheriff's Office overseeing the case. To the dismay and bafflement of many, no charges were brought. That is, until Bryant followed his father's footsteps into law enforcement and a voice cried out from the well three decades later.

Mechele is young, attractive, and looking to cash in on her aesthetic assets when she moves from New Orleans to Alaska in 1994 to earn money for college tuition. Her charms ensnare the affections of three men, and the combined effects of jealously, lust, and greed take a deadly turn in this true crime story. Before a murder in the woods shatters her contented life, Mechele works as an exotic dancer at the Alaska Bush Company, where she spends her days pleasing a procession of hard-working men. John, Scott, and Kent are simultaneously smitten with Mechele, and offer affection in the form of lavish gifts and ultimately engagement rings. While the three men begin their affairs on the same path, violent murder blasts apart their parallel lives. One of the trio is shot in the back; another is accused of the murder. Dead Man's Dancer follows this murder case from 1996 throughout Mechele's tumultuous trial in 2006 that becomes a nationwide sensation. Shocking in its detailed portrayal of murder and convoluted love affairs, Dead Man's Dancer excites horror in readers that lingers far after the last page is turned.

2021 Listeners' Choice British Podcast Awards Winner What is it about killers, cult leaders, cannibals, cults, and criminals that capture our imaginations even as they terrify and disturb us? How do we responsibly consume these kinds of stories as entertainment, and more importantly, what can we learn from them? RedHanded rejects the narrative of killers as monsters and that a victim "was in the wrong place at the wrong time," and instead tells the stories we want to hear in a way that challenges perceptions and asks the hard questions about society, gender, poverty, culture, and even our politics. After meeting at a party in London where they both discovered they listened to the same murder podcasts, Hannah Maguire and Suruthi Bala drunkenly promised to one day start their own true crime podcast together and the rest is history. From the hosts of the hit true crime podcast RedHanded (dubbed by Rick & Morty creator Dan Harmon as the "best true crime podcast I've heard, ever"), Hannah Maguire and Suruthi Bala have amassed a cult following of "spooky bitches" amounting to an incredibly strong 63k downloads per episode and 728k backlist downloads every month in the US alone. With candor, humor, interviews with experts, research on real-life cases, and an unflinching dissection of what makes a killer tick, Bala and Maguire take us through the societal, behavioral, and cultural phenomena that make victims -- and their murderers -- our collective responsibility and to find out once and for all: what makes a killer tick?

Rebecca and Ronald Akins and their three daughters appeared to be a typical suburban family in 1970 Macon, Georgia, but the attractive facade hid a family in crisis. The girls suffered physical and emotional abuse at the hands of their mother. Although he sometimes worked three jobs, Ronnie was never able to provide Becky the lifestyle she wanted. After their 1974 divorce, Becky took the children to South Florida where she pursued a life of gambling and partying. Fueled by popular books and films, she wanted to live in what she believed was the exciting world of organized crime and changed her name to Machetti. In only a few months, she found two men who joined her in her murderous fantasy which culminated in two deaths. The resulting legal proceedings went on for more than a decade. This is the story of Rebecca Machetti, a cold-blooded woman whose prosecutor described as pure evil and her three daughters who lived through years of abuse before finally finding peace and normal lives.

A “compelling” deep dive into the case that rocked Houston, Texas: the horrific murder of two teenage girls—by the bestselling author of Strangler (Suzy Spencer, New York Times–bestselling author). “We gotta kill ’em. They know what we look like.” On a hot summer night in Houston, two teenage girls—bright, beautiful, success-bound friends—took a shortcut home from a friend’s apartment to make their curfew. They never reached their homes. The next morning, the families of the two girls began a frantic search, organizing friends and neighbors and posting thousands of fliers across the sprawling city. But not until an anonymous 911 call four days later were the bodies of Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena finally recovered. Their killers were soon rounded up—a brutal, unrepentant gang of teenage boys whose convictions should have put them behind bars for life. But in the halls of justice, nothing is ever a sure bet . . . INCLUDES 16 PAGES OF HAUNTING PHOTOS Praise for Corey Mitchell’s True Crime Books “No one faces evil head on like Corey Mitchell.” —Gregg Olsen, #1 New York Times–bestselling author of A Cold Dark Place “Corey Mitchell empathized with crime victims in a way unique and personal way. That empathy is evident in every true crime book he wrote.” —Suzy Spencer, New York Times–bestselling author “A must-read, cautionary tale of manipulation, control, and murder.” —Diane Fanning, national bestselling author