True Crime Podcaster Trying To Solve Her Dad’s Murder Met Alone With Prime Suspect

Madison McGhee, a 28-year-old television producer who launched a podcast dedicated to finding her father’s killer, recently met alone with the prime suspect, who reached out after he listened to her show.

The second part of Madison McGhee’s “ Ice Cold Case ,” released Wednesday, features her interview with Daryl Smith, who was arrested but ultimately not charged in connection with the fatal shooting of John Cornelius “J.C.” McGhee, Madison’s father, in 2002.

When she received the message from Smith in December, McGhee’s first thought was that he was planning to sue her.

“I called my lawyer,” she told HuffPost. “I was like, ‘This is not good.’”

But Smith, who had recently been released from prison on appeal in another case, said he wanted to work with her to “put the record straight.”

“And I was like, ‘Work together? I just told the whole world essentially that I think you killed my dad!’” McGhee said.

In 2002, J.C. McGhee was shot point-blank in the head in his own doorway in Belmont County, Ohio. No one was ever charged with pulling the trigger. Authorities began grand jury proceedings against Smith, but the case fell apart after a key witness — J.C.’s own nephew Omar — kept changing his story.

McGhee, who was raised by her white mother and grandmother in West Virginia, has been fearless in her quest for answers about the murder of her Black father, who was killed when she was 6 years old. Her family told her J.C. had died of a heart attack, and she didn’t learn the truth until she was 16.

Her sleuthing stirred up a hornets’ nest among her family members — many of whom she never knew, and who she believes know more about the crime than they are willing to share — and questioned the integrity of the investigation