The Skeleton Key Chronicles

21 hours ago

The search for Elena Katherine Moore may be over, but the effort to understand what happened to her is just beginning.The 39-year-old South Carolina personal trainer was reported missing after she was last seen leaving a gym in Lexington on June 11th. On Friday, the Lexington County Coroner's Office confirmed that remains found in a wooded area near Lexington belong to Elena.

As they work through determining what happened to her, Elena's best friend of nearly 10 years Sondra Campbell said Elena was not someone she believed was struggling with mental issues. Campbell acknowledged that Elena dealt with anxiety at times, but said she seemed fine overall. What stood out to her instead was that Elena had been acting differently in the weeks leading up to her disappearance, particularly during the last month. Campbell said those changes left her with questions she is still trying to answer. Friends have also shared that Elena had experienced difficulties within her marriage over the years and had at one point discussed leaving her husband.

Originally from Russia, Elena built a life in South Carolina, where she worked as a fitness coach and personal trainer. Her husband Brannon Slice, who she married in 2024, is a licensed private investigator and former police officer. Authorities have emphasized that Slice is not considered a person of interest at this time, and investigators have not yet publicly released a cause of death. Now, with her identity confirmed, friends and loved ones are hoping investigators can provide answers and help them understand what happened to her.

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The Skeleton Key Chronicles

1 day ago

On this day in 1893, Lizzie Borden walked out of a Massachusetts courtroom a free woman. After two weeks of testimony and nonstop newspaper coverage, the jury took just over an hour to reach a verdict: not guilty. It was one of the biggest courtroom stories of its time, and people couldn't stop talking about it and apparently, we still can't.

The verdict may have ended the trial, but it didn't end the fascination. More than a century later, people are still talking about what happened inside the Borden home, and Lizzie remains one of the few figures from the 1800s whose name almost everyone still recognizes. Not bad for someone who walked out of court a free woman 133 years ago today. … See MoreSee Less

The Skeleton Key Chronicles

2 days ago

As temperatures neared 100 degrees in Wylie, Texas during the summer of 1980, few people in the small church community could have imagined the events that were about to unfold.

It was the morning of Friday, June 13, 1980 when Candy Montgomery, a homemaker and mother of two, went to the house of her friend Betty Gore. The two women knew each other through their local church. Betty was also the mother of two young daughters who were part of the same church community. At some point during that visit, a confrontation occurred inside the home and Betty Gore was later found deceased.

What followed was a trial that kept the small North Texas community riveted for weeks. Candy admitted she was responsible but said she acted in self-defense after being confronted about an affair with Betty’s husband, Allan Gore. Her attorneys introduced psychological testimony suggesting a dissociative response during the confrontation. In October 1980, the jury returned a not guilty verdict, a decision that surprised many observers at the time.

After the trial ended and she was acquitted, Candy eventually left Texas and started a completely different chapter of her life. She went on to train and work as a licensed therapist.

In the years that followed, the case continued to appear in news coverage, interviews, documentaries, and the 1984 nonfiction book Evidence of Love by journalists Jim Atkinson and John Bloom. Decades later the story caught a new wave of attention when two television series revisited the case within months of each other.

The first to drop was Candy, released by Hulu in 2022 and starring Jessica Biel as Candy Montgomery and Melanie Lynskey as Betty Gore. Not long after that release HBO Max dropped Love & Death, with Elizabeth Olsen portraying Montgomery and Lily Rabe as Betty Gore.

Nearly half a century later, what happened inside that house on Dogwood Drive remains one of the most recognizable true crime stories to come out of Texas.

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