Missouri & North Carolina: Love Songs and Death
Foul Play: A Historical True Crime Podcast
Shane L. Waters, Wendy Cee, Gemma Hoskins
4.5 • 992 Ratings
🗓️ 28 April 2026
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
July 1877. A dirt road in rural Missouri. A fifty-eight-year-old woman named Martha Parrish is shot dead by her own son-in-law while trying to rescue her daughter from an abusive marriage. Fifteen years later and five hundred miles east, an eighteen-year-old maid named Ellen Smith is shot behind a luxury hotel in Winston, North Carolina — and someone writes a song about it. Two historical murders. Two women killed by men who claimed to love someone close to them. One ended in a double coffin. The other became a folk song you may have heard without knowing it was real.
Season 40: Twin Portraits — double-feature true crime episodes exploring two historical murders from different American states, connected by a single theme. In Episode 3, the theme is love that kills — and the songs that outlive the dead.
This episode contains discussions of domestic violence, murder, suicide, and public execution. If you need to skip this content, support resources are listed at the end of these notes.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A dirt road between Randolph and Monroe counties, Missouri, July 23, 1877. |
| 0:10.0 | A spring wagon moving through open farmland. |
| 0:15.0 | No shade, no trees close to the road, just flat summer heat pressing down on everything. |
| 0:23.4 | The woman sitting beside the driver is 58 years old. |
| 0:27.8 | Her name is Martha Parrish. |
| 0:30.4 | She has been married to the man holding the reins for 24 years. |
| 0:35.3 | He is Dr. Jeptha Callaway Parish, a country physician, a Confederate veteran, and a man |
| 0:42.2 | who, until this morning, had refused to do what his wife and daughter begged him to do. |
| 0:49.8 | Their daughter Susan is 20 years old. She has come home with an infant son and bruises |
| 0:55.3 | she can no longer hide, begging to be taken away from her husband. The doctor has finally agreed. |
| 1:04.2 | They are driving out to collect her and bring her to her brother's house in Howard County. A younger daughter rides in the back of the wagon. |
| 1:14.5 | It should be a simple trip, 30 miles of dirt road and done. |
| 1:20.4 | The sound of a horse coming fast. |
| 1:24.2 | A rider from a side road, armed, a double-barreled shotgun across the saddle. |
| 1:32.3 | James Hayden Brown, they called him Hayd, is 21 years old. |
| 1:38.3 | He is Susan's husband. |
| 1:41.3 | He has found out where they are going. The confrontation is immediate. Haid |
| 1:49.0 | fires at Dr. Parrish first, wounding him badly. The doctor slumps. The wagon stops. Then |
| 1:59.0 | Hayd orders Martha out. |
| 2:02.3 | A 58-year-old woman standing in the dust of a Missouri road. |
| 2:07.2 | July heat. |
| 2:08.8 | The barrel of a shotgun. |
... |
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