Episode 291: James "Jimmy" Michael

The First Degree

Alexis Linkletter and Jac Vanek

True Crime, Society & Culture, News

4.5 • 10K Ratings

🗓️ 20 March 2024

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On the morning of November 29, 2005, a fire breaks out at a Morgantown, West Virginia home, engulfing the quiet neighborhood in chaos. Amidst the smoke and flames, responders discover the badly burned body of a 33-year-old man, lying in his bed. As investigators sift through the evidence, they quickly realize this is no ordinary house fire - it's arson, and the man had been dead before the blaze began. As the investigation continues, the evidence keeps leading investigators back to one person in particular. Someone very close to the victim who had multiple motives to want him gone. In episode 291, Jac and Alexis unravel the harrowing tale of James “Jimmy” Michael's murder, and his family’s journey to justice, and for some, forgiveness.

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's a degree.
0:02.0	First degree.
0:04.0	First degree.
0:05.0	First degree.
0:06.0	First degree.
0:07.0	The first degree.
0:08.0	The first degree.
0:09.0	You see it on the news.
0:10.0	See it on the table and you see it on Facebook.
0:12.0	These things are supposed to happen in movies. See it on a paper, on Facebook.
0:13.0	These things are supposed to happen in movies, not in real life.
0:16.0	That was the first time I think cognitively I've ever realized that there's really bad things that happen to people that are good and people that are undeserving of that. It's not something that's always on TV.
0:36.2	This is real life. This is their family and just the reality of the world is really, really
0:41.6	broken.
0:54.2	Welcome to the first degree of the True Crime Podcast that you might end up on. My name is Jack Vanick. I'm sitting here with Alexis Link letter. How are we feeling on this fine Wednesday oh we're feeling good hump day hump day yeah that's you know what I'm glad that we ended up releasing our
0:59.7	podcast on Wednesdays it's like something to really get you through the week when you're
1:03.2	dragging. Well and once you've hit Wednesday the week's basically over. It's
1:07.4	basically Friday. Yeah it's basically Sunday you're having brunch right now.
1:11.7	Perfect.
1:13.0	Sunday's too scary.
1:14.0	It's basically Saturday night.
1:15.0	Perfect.
	...

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