#541 Guest Host Maggie Freleng with Quincy Cross

Wrongful Conviction

Lava for Good Podcasts

True Crime

4.6 • 5.7K Ratings

🗓️ 4 September 2025

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

18-year-old Jessica Currin’s burned and decomposing body was discovered on August 1, 2000 behind Mayfield Middle School in Mayfield, KY. Jessica had lacerations on the back of her head, nose and chin, and stab wounds. The medical examiner also believed she had been strangled but there was no evidence to support this theory. The case went cold for a few years, until a couple of supposed eyewitnesses came forward, motivated by promises of reward money, and told inconsistent stories that they and multiple others had kidnapped, killed, and raped Jessica. They said Quincy Cross was one of the people involved, and that he was the person who hit and strangled Jessica. Based on this unreliable testimony, as well as a jailhouse snitch, and despite a lack of physical evidence connecting him to this crime, Quincy was convicted of the kidnapping, rape and murder of Jessica Currin and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Maggie Freleng talks to Quincy Cross and Miranda Hellman, Quincy's attorney.

To learn more and get involved, please visit:

https://www.change.org/p/free-quincy-cross

www.kentuckyinnocenceproject.org

Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	On the morning of August 1st, 2000, a woman's partially burned and decomposing body was found behind a middle school in Mayfield, Kentucky.
0:11.4	18-year-old Jessica Curran had last been seen playing cards with friends on the previous Saturday night, leaving a nearly three-day gap where no one claimed to have seen her.
0:23.0	The crime was investigated by local and state police, but after a couple of years, the trail
0:28.5	went cold. Then, prompted by a citizen's investigation conducted by a local housewife,
0:34.6	one of Jessica's friends came forward with a bizarre tale. In it, she and a group of
0:40.4	friends had partied with Jessica that night, then kidnapped, beaten, and raped her, and finally
0:46.2	killed her. The ringleader, she told police, was Quincy Cross. Quincy had been at a party in
0:53.9	Mayfield that night, but he claimed never
0:56.1	to have met Jessica or any of the others involved. Still at trial, when others testified to the
1:03.1	events of that night, they too pointed to Quincy as the murderer. But this is wrongful
1:10.0	conviction. So welcome back to wrongful conviction. So welcome back to wrongful conviction. I'm Maggie Freeling, host of wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling.
1:30.9	And I'm so excited to be sitting in for Jason Flom today and to share this story with you.
1:37.0	Today I have Quincy Cross with me. And I also have Miranda Hellman, his attorney from the Kentucky Innocence Project.
1:43.7	Miranda, thank you for being here. Thanks for having us. Welcome to the show, Quincy. Hey, how you doing? I am well. How do you feel about telling everyone your story today? I know you haven't done that much. It's a lot of things that I've been old-neying for a long time. Well, let's get to it. I want to hear your story in detail. And usually
2:02.4	I just like to start with your life growing up. What was that like? I grew up with sisters and brothers
2:08.7	on both sides. My mom's side, you know, my dad's side, my stepmom's side, you know what I'm saying.
2:15.7	Very old protected by my sisters, all of them. Provider, protector, somebody they can come talk to, have the conversations that they can't have with other people. And they know that. And we have real good times. You know, as kids, we did all the things together. We used to catch turtles and snakes and all that.
2:34.6	We used to go for all gig and we used to have, you know, just do what young kids do. I grew up in Union City and I grew up in Willemills, Tennessee. So, you know, I'm a country guy. All right. You got to explain that to me though, Quincy. I grew up in New York City. What is growing up in the country like? Okay, Country is a whole lot of love in the country.
2:53.1	You know, it's like we did small things like play tag and play baseball.
2:57.7	You know, we just did it in the small community.
2:59.8	But then you got to tighten their family because there's a lot of older people that have raised you.
3:05.1	They cook for you.
	...

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