The Skeleton Key Chronicles

13 hours ago

Right now, investigators are searching about 15 acres of property in rural Louisiana, looking for answers in the disappearances of two women who went missing more than a year apart. And the reason they’re searching that particular property starts with a third woman who made it out.

Madison Re’nea Allen disappeared in late November 2023. Her last contact with her family indicated she was living in Zachary, Louisiana. Then in 2025, Stephanie Hevia disappeared. Her family last had contact with her in March, and investigators believe her last known location was a property on Morris Road in West Feliciana Parish. Both women knew 43-year-old Thomas Morris.

West Feliciana Parish investigators had actually heard Morris’s name in connection with Madison as far back as the summer of 2024, but at that point they didn’t have evidence tying her disappearance to their parish. Then came July.

According to Sheriff Brian Spillman, Morris befriended another woman in Montana and brought her back to the Morris Road property in Louisiana. She later told investigators she had been brought there against her will, wasn’t allowed to leave and didn’t have access to her cellphone.

On July 19th, she managed to call 911 from the bathroom of a local dollar store while hiding from Morris. Deputies got her to safety, and Morris was taken into custody.

After that, investigators began taking a much closer look at the disappearances of Madison and Stephanie. Over the following weeks, they say enough information came in to obtain a warrant to search the Morris Road property.

That search is happening now.
More than 10 federal, state and local agencies are involved in the slow search of roughly 15 acres surrounding the home. Investigators are using specially trained dogs, ground-penetrating equipment, LiDAR and other technology as they look for evidence that could help determine what happened to Madison and Stephanie.

Sheriff Spillman has been careful not to say either woman has been found. But he has said there is a “highly likely possibility” that Madison and Stephanie could be somewhere on that property.
And this is where Woody Overton comes into the story.

If you follow Louisiana cases, you may already know the name. Woody is a former Louisiana State Police employee and the host of Real Life Real Crime, and he has been digging into Morris for years. He devoted an investigative series to Madison’s disappearance and has continued gathering information from listeners and others familiar with Morris.

Woody believes there could be additional women connected to Morris. That has not been established by law enforcement, but authorities are asking anyone who may have information about other women connected to him to come forward.

For now, Madison and Stephanie are still missing, and Morris has not been charged in connection with either woman’s disappearance. Investigators say searching all 15 acres could take at least a week, so there may be a lot more to come out of this property.

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The Skeleton Key Chronicles

1 day ago

September 12th marks 34 years since Anthony Perkins passed away. You probably know him best as Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, but there’s another Perkins family story associated with 9/11 that isn’t nearly as well known.

So Anthony was married to actress and photographer Berinthia “Berry” Berenson for nearly 20 years, and the couple had two sons together. One of them is filmmaker Osgood “Oz” Perkins, the writer and director behind Longlegs and The Monkey and musician Elvis Perkins. After Anthony’s passing in 1992, Berry continued her own career as both a photographer and actress.

Nearly nine years to the day after losing Anthony, Berry hopped on a flight home to California after visiting family in Cape Cod. On the morning of September 11th, 2001, she boarded American Airlines Flight 11 at Boston’s Logan Airport for a flight to Los Angeles.

And if that flight number sounds familiar, there’s a reason. Flight 11 was the first plane involved in the events that morning at the World Trade Center when it hit the North Tower at 8:46 a.m. Berry was 53 years old.

It’s a connection that isn’t mentioned nearly as often as you might expect, especially when you see Anthony and Berry’s dates side by side.

Anthony Perkins
April 4, 1932 ~ September 12, 1992

Berinthia “Berry” Berenson
April 14, 1948 ~ September 11, 2001

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The Skeleton Key Chronicles

1 day ago

When I last wrote about Christa Pike, there was still considerable uncertainty over whether Tennessee would ever actually carry out the sentence she received back in 1996. Now there is a date on the calendar, and its not far away—September 30th, 2026.

To understand how Christa got here, you have to go back more than three decades to a Job Corps center in Knoxville, Tennessee, where she and 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer were both students. Christa was just 18 at the time and was dating another student, Tadaryl Shipp. She believed Colleen was interested in him, and that would become an important part of what happened next.

On January 12, 1995, Christa, Colleen, Tadaryl and another student named Shadolla Peterson left the Job Corps center together. The four made their way to a secluded area of the University of Tennessee agricultural campus. Only three of them came back.

I won’t go into the details of what happened to Colleen, but the case was serious enough that prosecutors sought the harshest sentence allowed under Tennessee law. Investigators soon took Christa into custody, and she gave them a detailed account of what had happened.

The case went to court the following year, and Christa received the sentence that has kept her in state custody ever since. Tadaryl Shipp received a life sentence. Shadolla Peterson, meanwhile, received six years of probation.

Christa is 50 years old now. There could still be changes between now and September 30, but for now, the date remains in place. If it holds, Tennessee will be doing something it hasn’t done in more than two centuries. The last time Tennessee carried out this sentence against a woman was in 1819.

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