EXCLUSIVE: Ohio woman launches podcast to solve her father’s mysterious murder at his home

A woman has launched a podcast to investigate her father’s unsolved murder more than 20 years after his death, hoping to find out who shot him – and why.

In 2002, Madison McGhee’s father, John Cornelius McGhee, 45, was shot to death in the doorway of his home in Bridgeport, Ohio, a small town in Belmont County on the West Virginia border.

According to an incident report from the Belmont County Sheriff’s Office, it was a home invasion gone wrong.

But McGhee says the theory is fraught with inconsistencies — ignoring that her father, aka JC, was a former drug dealer turned confidential informant for local law enforcement.

So far, McGhee has released six episodes of the podcast Ice cold thingunraveling the various theories and possible characters behind her father’s sudden death.

The fatal incident happened shortly after 6 a.m. on July 11, 2002, between two neighboring homes in Bridgeport, a town of about 2,000 people in rural Ohio, according to incident reports from the sheriff’s office, accessed by DailyMail.com.

McGhee’s father lived in one of those houses and was there that day with his oldest daughter and McGhee’s stepsister Alyssa, who was asleep at the time.

JC’s sister Pearl lived next door. Her son Omar had been there that morning with his girlfriend Kim.

After the event, Pearl, Omar, and Kim told deputies that a group of about four men dressed in black arrived at Pearl’s home in at least three cars and armed with shotguns and handguns, before storming into her home demanding drugs or money.

Amidst the chaos, the house was ransacked, Pearl and Kim were tied up with a phone cord, covered in blankets, and the men doused them in alcohol before threatening to set them on fire.

According to those reports, Omar was able to escape and fled to a nearby auto shop. It was then that at least one of the men moved in next door to JC’s house and fatally shot him in the head in the doorway.

JC’s daughter Alyssa told deputies that she was awakened at that moment by the sound of a gunshot.

Alyssa then found her father bloodied in the doorway of the house and called 911.

Minutes later, Omar used the phone at the auto shop to call 911 to report that his “neighbor” was being robbed and that “they have my mom and my girl,” presumably referring to Pearl and Kim, according to a dispatch transcript.

Details in the sheriff’s office account are limited, but according to the report, a coroner found that JC was killed with a bullet to the head from a gun

“It was a fatal shot,” McGhee told DailyMail.com. “A coordinated hit.”

McGhee, who was only six years old at the time, was living with her mother in Charleston, South Carolina, and was told by relatives that her father had died of a heart attack.

Some ten years later, when she was 16, she went to Bridgeport with her mother and met her cousin Omar.

It was after that meeting that McGhee’s mother told her that her father had actually been killed.

At the time, she was about to graduate high school and was thinking about a career in TV production.

“I went to school thinking that production was something I was passionate about, but there was a nudge in the back of my mind that I could make something about my father’s murder,” she said.

“I think that voice just got louder and louder as I got older.”

Then came Covid, and with not much else to do, she started digging and recording her conversations with the people she spoke to along the way.

During her podcast, McGhee explores various theories about why those men were present that day and why her father was shot.

Along the way, she introduces characters to her father’s often dark life, including his ex-girlfriend, Daneen Schrader, and her then-new boyfriend, Butchy.

According to the documents from the sheriff’s office, Daneen gave birth to JC’s son, but as an informant, JC was also involved in Butchy’s recent charge.

During the podcast, McGhee also suggests that her father was in the middle of a custody battle over the child.

“My father had to appear in court the day after he was killed for custody of Daneen’s son, who was also my father’s son and my half-brother,” she said.

And according to some, Butchy was an acquaintance of Omar. “I heard they were friendly,” McGhee said. “That’s just by talking to people who are nearby at the time.”

While there is no leading theory now, in the weeks following the July 2002 murder, the Belmont County Sheriff’s Department and prosecutors singled out one man — Daryl Smith, according to sheriff’s department logs.

He was thought to be present at the time based on information provided by Kim, Omar, and Pearl, who all identified him from a series of photographs.

The Belmont County Sheriff’s Department and the district attorney’s office were so sure Smith was involved that they took his case to a grand jury, which dismissed the case at the last minute, McGhee said.

In each episode of the podcast, McGhee puts more pieces of the puzzle together, piecing the various theories together in hopes of arriving at a story that ties up all the loose ends.

While the podcast was slated to run for eight episodes, McGhee has said it will have to go ahead.

“Putting all of this out is helpful because information is coming in, and the bigger this gets, the more information flows through it,” she said.

‘But I need proof. I need someone to step up and say I was there and this is what happened. That will be very difficult, but I will not give up until the time comes.’

The first episodes of Ice Cold Case are free to listen.