A charred body, shifting stories and a convicted man's assertion of innocence

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Crooked cops. Drug dealers. Secret agendas.

The rumor mill churned after the body of 18-year-old Jessica Currin was found burned and decomposing behind Mayfield Middle School in 2000. People in the small Kentucky town still talk about the case - or don't want to talk at all, if an outsider is asking the questions.

A jury deliberated for 3 hours and 45 minutes before convicting Quincy Omar Cross of murder, rape, sodomy, kidnapping, evidence tampering and abuse of a corpse in 2008 and sentenced him to life in prison. But Cross has always expressed his innocence, and Currin's father, Joe Currin, has come to believe Cross was wrongfully convicted. For over a decade, he has advocated for finding the person who, he says, really killed his daughter.

"We've just always (been) hoping that the truth would bring itself out," Joe Currin said. "But when you've got more people hiding the truth than you do trying to get to the truth, it's kind of hard to do."

Cross and his attorneys have tried to get his conviction overturned for years. In 2020, Miranda Hellman joined the Kentucky Innocence Project (KIP) and reignited the efforts. But the already convoluted case became more complicated when a tornado destroyed the Graves County courthouse in Mayfield, including documents and evidence being housed there.

KIP recently filed several motions in its effort to get Cross' conviction vacated, arguing it has new witnesses and evidence showing police and prosecutorial misconduct.