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Charlotte and Brent Springford were well respected, successful, progressive-minded pillars of their community in Montgomery, Alabama.

Everything in their lives seemed perfect, but that was about to change on November 25, 2004.

Join me now, as we take a look at the case of Brent Springford Jr., a man whose desperate search for spiritual enlightenment crossed paths with a predator and conwoman.

You'll also hear from author Mark Pinsky, who not only wrote the book on the case, but also became personally affected by it, even becoming involved with law enforcement.

On June 24, 2015, the Weston County Sheriff's Department received a call from a ranch just outside of Newcastle, Wyoming, a small town in the northeast corner on the South Dakota border.

63-year-old Caroline Scout was calling to report a death. 60-year-old caretaker Richard Campbell Jr., or Sandy, as everyone called him, was found dead in one of the trailers on her property.

He'd apparently committed suicide. When police arrived on the scene, they found Sandy deceased with a gunshot wound to his head, lying face up on the floor, a rifle sat resting across his chest.

Although there seemed to be a few minor inconsistencies, foul play wasn't suspected, and the gunshot wound was assumed to have been self-inflicted.

However, a few days later, Deputy Sheriff Patrick Wasaba received another phone call. This one came from 2,000 miles away.

I called, and I said I'm looking for someone who's involved in the death on Caroline Scout property, and the woman said I'll connect you.

That's Mark Pinsky, an author and investigative journalist who at the time of Sandy's death was writing his second true crime book, drifting into darkness.

As it turned out, Caroline Scout, the woman who discovered Sandy's body, was a central figure in the book he was working on.

And so she connected me, and I said I understand you found a body on Caroline's property, said yeah, and looked like suicide, I said well, how much do you know about Caroline?

Although it's not uncommon for police to brush off journalists, surprisingly, the deputy seemed interested in what Mark had to say.

Yeah, you know, she's been only to sign the death certificate because there's an insurance policy that she's the beneficiary of. I said there's some more things you want to consider before you sign the death certificate.

The story Mark Pinsky told Wasaba was a whirlwind tale that went deeper than he could have ever imagined.

One of the cardinal rules of journalism for reporter is don't become part of your story. For 40 years working for newspapers and magazines, I observed that.

Later when I taught, I taught my students that. But every so often you encounter a story that just begs for your personal involvement, and this is one of those stories.

So what exactly did Mark tell deputy sheriff with Saba? Well to answer that question, we have to take you far away from the wind-swept prairies of Wyoming into the heart of the deep south.

Just south of modern downtown Montgomery, Alabama, a neighborhood known as the Garden District serves as a monument to the city's rich, and at times, to mulch you as history, Mark Pinsky takes us there.

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