In the 1970s, Holiday Inn was booming, especially in Tennessee, the company's birthplace.

Good lighting, free parking, a continental breakfast, the same look and feel inside and out everywhere you went.

For travelers from beyond the foothills of the great Smoky Mountains, for visitors or locals returning to the town of Maryville, the motel was a reliable roadside choice.

In July 1974, the weather is hot and sticky. It is four years after Verne's Stordox murder.

A guy in his mid-40s checks into the Holiday Inn in Alcoa, a stone's throw from the Knoxville airport.

This man has traveled from New York City.

Well, it was rather strange.

He enters his motel room and closes the door, days pass and nights.

Maybe this is what happened next. A motel employee, maybe the maid, goes into that room with a pass key.

And finds something that no motel employee ever wants to see inside.

He died in a motel in Alcoa, Tennessee. It was his favorite motel, the Holiday Inn.

The man who died is John Briggs. He was Suzanne Stordox's second husband.

No one knew he was there.

And he'd been dead for some time before it was discovered that he died in the room.

The words that you are hearing are from John's brother.

We're going to call him Joseph to protect his privacy and the voice you're hearing is an act.

That was an autopsy, which I read to think several times.

And it was sort of inconclusive, but apparently he died with some kind of heart failure.

There was no sign of foul play or self-destruction or anything like that.

And he hadn't had any known problems or anything.

So it was sort of strange.

No one knew he was there.

...