In 2002, Madison McGhee’s father, John Cornelius ‘J.C.’ McGhee was murdered in cold blood in the doorway of his home. Madison was just six years old at the time, but, decades later, she started asking questions about his mysterious murder – and turning the spotlight on her own family and the police to untangle a shady web of ‘coincidences’ and conspiracies. Now returning for a second series of her gripping podcast, Ice Cold Case, Madison, 29, shares her story with GLAMOUR – and reveals why she’s trusting intuition to find her father’s killer.
I vividly remember the moment I found out my father had been murdered. I’d always been told that he died of a heart attack. But aged 16, when I went to visit my family on my dad’s side, the truth came out.
I hadn’t seen my grandmother in 10 years, around the same time my father, her son, had died. The visit had gone well and, after leaving the house, I turned to wave goodbye to my cousin, Omar, who was stood outside on the front porch. I’d only ever met my father’s nephew once before – at my dad’s funeral – but, in that split second, seeing him again felt like taking a punch to the stomach; it physically knocked the wind out of me. I was struggling to breathe and although I couldn’t – and still can’t – explain it, I knew in my gut that something was wrong.
All I could think about was my dad. I couldn’t shake this sinister feeling that had washed over me and I was desperately trying to piece it all together. It was here, on the driveway of my grandmother’s house, that my mum had to finally tell me the truth: my dad had been murdered, shot at point-blank range in his own doorway – and his killer had never been found.
In the years that followed, a natural curiosity gripped me and I began exploring the circumstances of his death. I requested the official report from the police investigation – a bungled case that has never been closed, nor brought a single suspect to trial – fanning the paperwork out ceremoniously on the floor in front of me, trying to fit pieces of an impossible jigsaw together.
As the story unfolded, I started to learn some uncomfortable truths about my dad – a man who was a known drug dealer, user, and police informant – yet I still felt fiercely that he deserved better. The more I read, the more I needed to find out for myself what had really happened to him, and why. Was the case botched because he was Black? The Belmont County police force was comprised predominantly of white officers 22 years ago, and a lack of diversity would have created bias, intentional or not. Did my dad’s custody battle with his ex, Deneen, play a role in the murder? Or could the fact that he’d informed on his own family members to protect himself from prison hold the key? I went back through the family tree, contacting cousins and aunts I had no relationship with to unearth new information. But the more people I spoke to, the more shocked I was to discover a plethora of theories surrounding my father’s murder. Sadly, none seemed noble or upstanding.
According to the files, the day my father died went something like this: Omar, who lived next door to my dad, reported a break-in at around 6am that morning. Three or four guys broke in, tied up my dad’s sister and Omar’s girlfriend, then spent 30 minutes ransacking the house for money. They were specifically looking for a safe, and somehow wound up at my dad’s house with Omar in tow – a detail that immediately stood out as odd to me while I was ploughing through the pages. Why was he still there? Why was he the only one not tied up?
