The Pine Barrens Body: Who Killed Cody MacPherson?
10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories
Joe
4.9 • 638 Ratings
🗓️ 7 April 2026
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In September 2017, 20-year-old Cody MacPherson disappeared from Pemberton Township, New Jersey, launching a six-month investigation that eventually drew in New Jersey State Police homicide detectives, Ocean County prosecutors, and a forensic team working largely skeletal remains discovered near the Colliers Mills Wildlife Management Area. Alan McGinnis, a 26-year-old Burlington County man with deep roots in the Pemberton community, was arrested, charged, and convicted of first-degree murder, ultimately sentenced to 30 years without parole.
Cody played bass guitar, sang in choir, and had a daughter back in Indiana he was trying to get back to. He moved to New Jersey for a fresh start and walked straight into someone else's unresolved situation. What makes this case genuinely hard to put down is the silence: multiple people in a tight-knit community knew what happened and said nothing for six months. The only reason we know where Cody was found is because a forest warden was about to set the woods on fire.
#TrueCrime #NewJerseyMurder #CodyMacPherson #PineBarrens #ColdCase #TrueCrimePodcast #MurderMystery
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | A 20-year-old from Indiana moves to New Jersey for a fresh start. |
| 0:05.0 | He plays the bass guitar. |
| 0:07.0 | He's got a little girl back home, falls asleep at a party, |
| 0:10.0 | and six months later, a forest warden finds his remains in the Pine Barrens. |
| 0:15.0 | The thing is, there were people around who knew exactly where he was the whole time. Cody McPherson had a bass guitar, a voice that could fill a church choir, and a daughter in Indiana named |
| 0:50.1 | Aliana, who was waiting for him to get his footing. That was the plan in 2017. He was 20 years |
| 0:56.7 | old, a Christian who took his faith seriously, someone who did theater and sang because he loved |
| 1:02.1 | it, not because he thought it made him look cool. He'd grown up in Portage, Indiana, and he made |
| 1:07.7 | the decision to move back to New Jersey where he was born to try to get his |
| 1:11.2 | life into some kind of shape. He ended up in Browns Mills, a community sitting right at the edge of |
| 1:18.1 | the New Jersey Pine Barrens. And if you've ever been to the Pine Barons, which I have, I lived there |
| 1:24.1 | for a few years as a kid, it's 1.1 million acres of flat, sandy, dense forest |
| 1:30.1 | where your GPS quietly gives up on you about 20 minutes in, and you're suddenly very alone |
| 1:35.5 | with your thoughts. Cell service is more of a suggestion than a service. The locals have their |
| 1:41.6 | own longstanding understanding of what happens inside those tree |
| 1:44.9 | lines and what stays there. And generations of people have made use of that understanding in |
| 1:49.9 | various ways. When I was a kid, I remember hearing about the legend of the Jersey Devil. |
| 1:55.3 | Scared the crap out of me. The barons have always had their way of holding on to things. |
| 2:00.5 | Cody didn't have a map for any of that. |
| 2:02.4 | He was a newcomer, and he was just trying to figure it all out. |
| 2:06.1 | Alan McGinnis had no such uncertainty about where he stood. |
| 2:10.1 | He was 26 years old. |
... |
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