Who Murdered Ohio College Student Elizabeth Andes?
A crime podcast unearths a shocking cold case—and investigates whether police fingered the wrong man.
“Let’s take my best friend. If something happened to her and there was any reason in the world (her murder) should be looked at, I would want to know that they looked at me, because I want the truth to be known.”
That’s why Amber Hunt, a foul-mouthed, funny-as-hell but dead serious investigative reporter for the Cincinnati Enquirer, ended up digging into a murder older than she is—one that police “solved” in a day and never looked back upon—even after the supposed killer was acquitted and then won a civil wrongful death suit brought by the murdered woman’s parents.
Hunt and Enquirer photo journalist Amanda Rossmann’s year-long probe into how justice hit a dead-end in the 1978 strangulation and stabbing of 23-year-old Ohio college student is now a podcast, Accused. In it, Hunt, who narrates, lays out what they found that the police did not—and the apparent disinterest of Oxford, Ohio, law enforcement officials in those findings. After listening to the first two episodes, I spoke with Hunt (whom I spent a year with in Michigan as a Knight-Wallace fellow at the end of her eight-year stint as a crime reporter for the Detroit Free Press) and Rossmann about the show and the case. Here’s a condensed version of our interview, stripped of spoilers: