What Happened to Joseph Smedley? Episode Five: Does This Make Sense to Anyone in the Room?

Episode 5 rebuilds Joseph Smedley’s final hours: 11:30 p.m. last seen, 4:15  a.m. text to his sister, a note found later, and a phone path toward Old State Hwy 37.

A recovered group chat, a shifting timeline, and a discovery at Griffy Lake reframe Joseph Smedley’s final week.In Episode 4, we examine digital evidence recovered from Joseph’s laptop: a fraternity group chat from the days he was missing. The conversation’s tone and priorities raise hard questions about what people knew—and when. We then trace the search to Griffy Lake, where Joseph was found with a backpack holding over 60 pounds of rocks strapped to his body.

In this episode, we step deeper into the growing confusion surrounding Joseph’s disappearance, the conflicting stories, the strange notes, and the data that didn’t add up.Detectives traced Joseph’s last cell-phone pings to two vastly different locations: one in the center of Bloomington’s busy nightlife district at 7th and Walnut, and another miles away on Old State Road 37, near the woods surrounding Griffy Lake. The distance between them was too far to walk in the time frame the phone suggested, leaving Vivianne convinced that her brother wasn’t alone that night.As rumors spread through campus, new details emerged, including mentions of a cryptic note found weeks before Joseph disappeared and another discovered in place of a bottle of scotch he’d been saving for his wedding. Meanwhile, messages uncovered from Joseph’s Sigma Pi fraternity group chat hinted at a scramble to control the narrative, rather than to find him.This episode traces Vivianne’s search for clarity through the haze of half-truths, unanswered texts, and institutional indifference. As she pieces together what little evidence she has, the story takes a darker turn, one that will lead her to the woods outside Bloomington and a discovery that changes everything.

The morning after Joseph Smedley vanished, his sister received a text message from his phone: “Viv, I’m sorry. I have to leave the country…” Hours later, police discovered a handwritten note in his room, signed Smedley and dated a day after he disappeared.In this episode, we follow the first week of the investigation: the confusion, the missteps, and the rumors that began inside Joseph’s fraternity. What did his brothers mean when they said he was hiding things? And what did Vivianne find on Joseph’s laptop that made her question everything they told her?Ten years later, these details still raise more questions than answers, about Joseph’s last hours, and about how far institutions will go to protect themselves.

On the tenth anniversary of Joseph Smedley’s disappearance, we return to Bloomington, Indiana, to re-examine the night it all began. Under the eerie glow of a rare Blood Moon, Joseph left his off-campus house and vanished. Five days later, his body was discovered in Griffy Lake, weighed down by rocks.In this first episode, we hear a never-before-released 911 call, revisit Joseph’s last known hours, and introduce the questions that have haunted his family for a decade: Did Joseph walk to Griffy Lake that night? Could he have carried the weight that pulled him under? And if not — then who brought him there?With new evidence and reflections ten years later, this series asks not just what happened to Joseph, but what it means when stories like his are left unsolved.

On June 12, 1994, twenty-year-old Delmar Wilson was found shot in his car on Radcliff Road in Washington County, Indiana. The engine was still running. The headlights still on. His foot still pressed on the brake.Police believe Delmar knew his killer. But in the three decades since, the case has passed from detective to detective, with no arrests and no answers.

On December 27, 2004, 37-year-old Michelle Asher was last seen walking along Route 33 out of Russellville, Illinois, heading toward Vincennes, Indiana. Two weeks passed before she was reported missing. By then, police and volunteers searched the countryside, but no clues turned up.Five months later, fishermen on the Wabash River made a discovery: Michelle’s body tangled along the riverbank.The official story said no foul play was found. But Michelle’s sister never believed it.

July 2007. A Nashville truck stop. Police approach a mustard-yellow cab and arrest a long-haul trucker suspected in murders across multiple states.But this isn’t a story about him. It’s about the women.We investigate the unsolved 1997 murder of Andrea Michelle Hendrix-Steinert in Gibson County, Indiana, and ask: when predators use the highway, who is left behind?

On a cold morning in October 1997, the body of 28-year-old Andrea Michelle Hendrix-Steinert was found in a ditch along County Road 350 in Gibson County, Indiana.Andrea was a mother, a daughter, and a pharmacy clerk who was just turning her life around. Years later, a prison inmate confessed to her killing, but no charges were ever filed.This episode of A Heavy Weight tells Andrea’s story in full: her life, her death, and the silence that followed. We confront the systemic bias that leaves women like Andrea overlooked, forgotten, and buried twice.Because every victim deserves justice. And every life deserves to be remembered.

In May 1976, the body of 18-year-old Bennett Brown was found in rural Lawrence County, Indiana. He had no identification — only a set of keys, $1.05 in coins, and a name stitched into his clothes.Who was Bennett Brown? How did a college freshman from Evanston, Illinois, end up murdered and left in a wooded ravine nearly 300 miles from home?This episode of A Heavy Weight dives into Bennett’s story — his life at Northern Illinois University, the discovery of his body, the search for answers, and the enduring silence around his death. Nearly five decades later, his case remains unsolved.