“—James Marshall Frankfurt was captured on December 23rd in 1983 by the FBI after an excruciating seven years of investigation. In that time Frankfurt took the lives of twelve women by strangulation, after the women were dead, he proceeded to rape them all except one. The one who he was caught with as the door to his low-income apartment was broken down. To this day Frankfurt refers to Jennifer Gaines as the one that got away. 

This has been “An Hour of Murder” with your host Margret Shaw. Remember stay vigilant and stay safe. Sleep Tight.”

Maggie Pulled her head phones off her head as she leaned back in her leather desk chair. She rubbed her eyes and downed the last bit of red wine in her glass with a grimace. She really needed to cancel the wine club subscription one of her listeners recommended as an affiliation opportunity. The company sent her fourteen bottles, every wine they carried at the time, and of the four bottles she has tried they were all disgustingly dry and tasteless. 

She had been holed up in her master closet turned office, the clothes she owned fit nicely in her six-drawer dresser, with her bottle of wine. Editing wasn’t her favorite part of the podcast process and usually she would send it off to her trusty editor in some far-off land called Chicago. Unfortunately, her trusty editor has taken two-week vacation. She most certainly did not forget she had to edit on her own and that is defiantly not the reason she is finishing the final touches at two thirty in the morning. 

Setting the recording to publish at its scheduled time of nine am she switched her monitor off and made her way to bed. Light shown through the slight cracks of the doorway. After three years of dedicated research of the most vial people to ever live, sleeping with the lights on has become a habit. Paranoia being one hazard of the job.

Yet as she flops down onto the bed, she can’t help but to flip the television on to the true crime channel. Anyone who knew her past may wonder why of all life paths would she choose one that focuses on such violent crimes. Fortunately for her there isn’t anyone to question it. 

If anyone were to look up the name Margret Shaw all that would come up is her podcast, her social media accounts, and some random pictures of a Fox Terrier posing at a dog show. Whom she may or may not have stolen her stage name from. 

This was a choice made not only for her privacy but for her safety as well. She loved her job dearly and when the podcast started bringing in enough income to pay her bills along with a good amount of pocket cash it was a dream come true. She was doing what she loves and what she was passionate about with the added bonus of being her own boss. The most important aspect of the living off the podcast was that she couldn’t be recognized and pitied, she loved that more than anyone could ever know. 

Maggie has tried very hard to hide that girl from so many years ago. Moving far away from her home town to a small secluded town in the mountains, dying her hair, and creating a new life full of new relationships where no one needed to know her past.

No one needed to know her real name and the story that went along with it, ever.   

Completely enthralled in the unfortunate story of a man who snapped and killed his wife and three children, Maggie reached for her handy notebook to jot his name down to do more research for a potential deep dive episode. As she dug around her comforter for the pen she knew was floating around in cotton and down somewhere she contemplated if she would be able to write her cable subscription off for tax purposes. Just as she found the damn thing a pounding at her front door made her fling it across the room.

Confused at first, then her good old friend paranoia was right back at her side as her mind raced through every scenario like this exact one, she had ever discussed on her podcast. Spoiler alert the woman always ended up dead.

It was just before three in the morning and someone was pounding on her front door. Who the hell was pounding on her door? 

The last and only time that anyone had come to her door at this time of night was almost three months ago to this day.

Maggie had been jolted from her sleep by a constant rapid knocking on her door. Disoriented she had forgotten that she had never made it to her bed but rather passed out on the brown suede sectional placed just five feet away from the entry way. 

On the television a man with a mustache that could rival Tom Selleck was presenting the audience with a towel that soaks up a bowls entire contents of only colored blue water. Maggie remembered she thought the ad was a tad inappropriate for the true crime channel. 

Now as Maggie stared at her front door, she pressed her eye to the peephole holding her breath for what she might see. 

She had a lot of expectations for who or what could be on her front porch. Shelby, a man in a trench coat holding a dripping bloody knife, a person dressed up like a scary clown, hell even black eye children crossed her mind. What she didn’t expect to see in a million years was three men all holding up badges.

“C—can I help you officers?” She called through the door. 

The man standing closest to the door, the one who was knocking Maggie assumed, wore a black suit, white button up, and thin black tie. She had seen men dressed like this before and not just in pictures from her research, or from the true crime shows she watches every day, but from her own experience. 

Breathing became erratic and her head started to spin, she didn’t think it was from the bottle of wine she drank tonight.

Clearing his throat, the man spoke, “Maggie Williams?”

A suit, sheriff, and police officer walk into a kitchen but with the way each of them raises an eyebrow at the ten bottles of wine sitting on the counter they would have called it a bar. Maggie, seeing the way the three men were looking at her wine collection, opted for the coffee maker over the corkscrew, even though she really could use a drink right about now.

The sheriff and FBI agent found a chair at the breakfast bar while the officer stood by the door. Maggie's hands shook as she took out four coffee mugs and placed them on her faux granite countertop.

After hearing her full birth given name for the first time in years Maggie was impressed with herself for staying conscious. She let the three men into her home not saying a word only leading them to her kitchen.

She knew only one of her three early morning visitors. Living in such a small town the locals chose to purchase their coffee from Shelby's coffee instead of the Starbucks strategically placed off the one interstate exit and on-ramp. Maggie's love of coffee and her best friend brought her to the quiet coffee shop often. In fact, she had written a great deal of her podcast scripts while sitting at the back-corner table as she sipped on her regular americano. It was at that very table that she was introduced to the town's sheriff. Sheriff Newport was not a tall man but not a short man either. He had what someone might refer to as a beer belly which had the bottoms on his tan uniform shirt straining to cover. His mustache was all western lawman, the hat and boots were just the icing on the cake.

Newport was a friendly man always smiling. He didn't have much reason to not smile in a town like Baldwin there wasn't much crime or much else to do than talk and boy did he like to talk. Once he started asking Maggie where she moved from, where her family was, and other questions about her past she started getting her coffees to go.

He wasn't smiling at Maggie now. She saw concern and pity in his eyes as he watched her pour coffee for him. The look she ran from for the past four years now sat in her kitchen and instead of making herself conscious as it used to, it just pissed her off.

There was no way he could have found out on his own. She had her name changed after the incident. She was a minor still so every paper she signed as an adult was under Maggie Frasier. Now he knows and soon so will the rest of the town. In her head, she started going through her finances forming a plan to move yet again. The thought of leaving the little one-bedroom house she has made into a homemade the heat in her chest grow hotter.

Her gazed moved to the FBI agent looking rather uncomfortable seated on the cheap wooden bar stool she had picked up from the thrift store. Now that she was looking at him in person and not through a tiny hole in her door, she noticed that the suit he wore was wrinkled, his tie was loose, and there were dark circles framing his eyes. He looked exhausted. Maggie didn't care, there is only one person in this room who could have found out who she was, and it was this man in front of her. She may have slammed his mug down a little too hard. The small sad smile he gave her in return told Maggie he wasn't oblivious to her irritation. Good.

It was the officer by the door that really threw Maggie through a loop. Baldwin didn't have a police department they have sheriffs, deputies, old men and women sitting on their porches with notebooks cataloging every time a dog took a dump. The nearest town with a full-fledge police department was Fairdale situated a good hundred miles away. He was young, a rookie Maggie thought. A thought that was confirmed with the genuine small he gave her when she gifted him with his mug. Obviously, he doesn't know the whole story. This gave her solace and calmed her nerves a bit. Maybe the monster she was hiding from was finally gone and this visit came with good news. Either way, she knew her life was changing.

Finally taking a sip from her own mug she sighed and asked, "So, what's the punch line?"

"Excuse me?" The agent asked in confusion. Maggie was positive he had told her his name when she let him inside. For the life of she couldn't remember, it may have had something to do with trying to stay upright and awake. Agent Skinner maybe or Shepherd, she just couldn't remember.

Holding back a laugh as to not look completely insane she refrained her question, "Is there a reason for this visit, Agent?"

"Agent Grant." Sheriff Newport said.

"You're a hard woman to track down Ms. Shaw." Agent Grant smoothed his tie against his chest at the same time checking for any coffee stains.

"Williams." Sheriff Newport corrected.

Grant nodded as he met eyes with Maggie. "Right, your pen name is Margret Shaw. I'm not surprised that you would use an alias for your own privacy, in fact, it's a smart move on your part."

The way the agent was staring into Maggie's eyes was unnerving. She tried to hide that fact by taking an abnormally long sip of coffee which only made her stomach roll more.

"What I don't understand is why it was so difficult for even the FBI to track down your legal name. It wasn't until I told the sheriff here that I was looking for your address that he informed me that Margaret Shaw was the same person as, what was it again," He glanced down to a small black notebook in front of him, "ah, Maggie Williams."

Did he really forget her name that quickly or is this some sort of game? Maggie was at her wit's end with this little charade.

"Well if even the FBI couldn't track me down so easily then I must be doing something right." Maggie said with a smile she hoped looked playful and light rather than strained from holding back a mixture of stomach bile and red wine.

Apparently, none of the men in her Hubble little home thought she was very funny. Actually, the way that the officer's hand moved slightly to the right just above his firearm made her think her little joke may have been just a teensy inappropriate. Setting her coffee down she leaned back against the counter trying to rub the minute throb building behind her eyes.

"Look guys not that I don't enjoy the attention but is there a reason for this visit?" Her patience was losing the fight to her nerves. She needed to know why an FBI agent was in her home. He obviously had no idea who she really was, but she had a feeling that her little secret was about to come out.

"Maggie maybe you want to have a seat first." Sheriff Newport said gesturing to the empty chair across from the two men.

Shaking her head, she turned to stare down Agent grant. After all, she would be tucked into her bed sleeping happily right now if it weren't for him.

"Right, well Ms. Williams it seems as though someone has taking a real liking to your podcast, particularly your segments on," he glanced to his notes once more, "insane was people were murdered." His brows bunched together as if to say, who the hell finds this entertaining.

"I have a lot of fans, Mr. Grant. That segment also happens to be one of my most downloaded. I don't see what any of this has to do with you sitting in my kitchen at three in the morning." Her stomach could compete in the Olympics at this point.

"The point is Ms. Williams that four people are dead in the exact ways you have described in the last four installments of your podcast. So, tell me is there a reason someone would be trying to get your attention in such a terrible and horrific manner?"

She couldn't hold it back anymore. A burning started to climb up her esophagus and ticked her tonsils. A cold sweat accumulated on the back of her neck and her vision blurred for only a moment as she spun around in her sock-clad feet and released a fountain of red into the sink.