Moms and Mysteries: A True Crime Podcast · Moms and Mysteries Podcast

The Murder of Lauren Burk (Revisited)

·50 min·2 clips

The shocking roadside discovery that launched a murder investigation.

Mandi and Melissa open with their usual easy chatter and a gray January check-in. They're both feeling the season in their own way, with congestion, lingering crud, and a shared hope that February behaves. Then they settle into the revisited murder of Lauren Burke. The case follows a man police later identified as her killer, and the episode traces how his life had started to come apart before the murder. His PTSD had been getting worse after artillery noise near Fort Benning. He isolated himself from his family, moved out of his mom's house, and ended up living in his car while running on candy bars, soda, and not much else. The episode also notes how hard things got at home. During a visit with Nicole and his daughter, he held a gun to his head and threatened suicide. Work didn't steady him either. His job performance slipped further, especially around the time he was working near Fort Benning and being triggered by the artillery exercises. From there, the story shifts to the robberies that helped investigators build the case. After his arrest, Courtney admitted to a Walmart parking-lot carjacking. He said he had intimidated the elderly Marjorie with a gun, gotten into her car, and stolen her purse. He also told investigators that Marjorie's ID could still be in his vehicle. Courtney admitted throwing a handgun out of his car window near a Publix in Phoenix City, and police recovered the gun. More admissions followed. He described three additional armed robberies in the days before his arrest, including one at a convenience store in Smith Station, Alabama, one in the Florence Hand Nursing Home parking lot in LaGrange, Georgia, and one in Columbus, Georgia. The episode keeps circling back to how chaotic and damaged this man was by the time police connected him to Lauren Burke's murder. Mandi and Melissa keep the tone conversational, but they never lose sight of how devastating the outcome is for Lauren's family. It ends as a reminder that she had nothing to do with any of it, which is what makes the whole thing so hard to sit with.

As heard by us

A conversational true crime recap that keeps the timeline clear and Lauren Burke at the center.

This episode tracks the murder of Lauren Burke by following the violent spiral around the man police later identified as her killer. It moves through PTSD, isolation, and a run of armed robberies before landing on the arrest that finally tied the pieces together, so the story…

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Why you'd press play

A sad case revisit that ties a violent spree to Lauren Burke's murder.

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