He Had A Key To Her House: The Murder of Mary Lynn Witherspoon
REDRUM true crime
redrumpodcast
4.6 • 532 Ratings
🗓️ 23 March 2026
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In November of 2003, a school teacher in Charleston, South Carolina failed to show up for work. For most people, that might not raise immediate alarm... but this was Mary Lynn Witherspoon. Reliable. Dedicated. The kind of woman who wasn't someone to leave or disappear without some kind of explanation. Within hours, concern turned into something far more serious.
What began as a welfare check quickly unravelled into a scene investigators would later describe as deeply disturbing... signs of a struggle, a home in disarray, and a discovery that would leave an entire community in shock. But what makes this case even more chilling, is that the person responsible wasn’t a stranger lurking in the shadows. He had been in Mary Lynn’s life for years.
In fact, his connection to her stretched back 23 years, beginning when he was just a child. What started as unsettling behaviour slowly escalated over the years into something far darker.
There were warning signs. Repeated ones. Incidents that, in hindsight, paint a terrifying picture of obsession, fixation, and a complete disregard for boundaries.
This is a case that forces us to confront uncomfortable questions: How does a situation escalate from troubling behaviour to unimaginable violence?
As the investigation unfolds, what police uncover is not just a brutal crime, but a pattern. One that had been building for years, hidden in plain sight. And in the aftermath, Mary Lynn’s death would go on to change the law, highlighting critical failures in the system designed to protect victims, and ensuring her name would never be forgotten. This is the story of Mary Lynn Witherspoon.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Imagine opening your front door and coming face to face with the man you put in prison, |
| 0:12.0 | a man you thought was still behind bars. |
| 0:15.0 | This is Red Rum, stories about the true victims of crime. |
| 0:18.0 | I upload episodes on Mondays and Thursdays. Make sure you're |
| 0:21.4 | subscribed so you never miss an episode. Is the 14th of November 2003 and Jane Welchall |
| 0:29.3 | gets a call from her mum's best friend. She's concerned because she hasn't heard from Jane's |
| 0:35.3 | mum, Mary Lynn, all day. In fact, she hasn't turned up at work. |
| 0:39.3 | And this is very unlike her. It's very unlike her not to call, not to let someone know. |
| 0:45.7 | And to be honest, there's not a whole lot that Jane can do because she doesn't live just down the road. |
| 0:51.0 | She lives a few hours away. But the point of the call to Jane is just to kind of |
| 0:56.2 | check in and see if she's heard from her mum at all, but she hasn't. Mary Lynn was working at the |
| 1:03.6 | time as a French teacher at a school in Charleston, South Carolina. And she really, really |
| 1:10.3 | loved her job. She knew the kids depended on her. |
| 1:14.3 | So she wasn't there, there was going to have to be a substitute. Obviously, this happens. |
| 1:19.4 | Sometimes it can't be helped, but she would at least give us some notice if this was something |
| 1:25.0 | that could be helped or if she was ill or something. |
| 1:28.6 | Now, in fact, this was so out of character that by the time Jane gets this phone call in the morning, |
| 1:34.6 | she's told that the school's principal and another member of staff have gone to Marylyn's house earlier |
| 1:40.9 | to try and check on her and they arrive but everything looks pretty |
| 1:46.1 | normal. There's nothing out of place, there's no sign of any disturbance, there's no broken glass |
| 1:52.8 | or anything turned over. Of course, they're not thinking that anything bad has happened at this |
| 1:58.0 | point. Why would they? But with this news of that checkup turning up nothing |
... |
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