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Paper Ghosts · iHeartPodcasts

The Preacher's Daughter

November 5, 2025·56 min·5 clips
Investigative journalist M. William Phelps was warned that asking questions about the 1983 teen murders could get him killed.
The evidence here is mostly packaging. The excerpt starts with network identification, then moves into promos for other podcasts while the promised story stays offstage. There is no crime scene, no central figure, no town, no suspect, no family member, no investigator, no document, and no witness tied to The Preacher's Daughter. A faithful summary cannot turn ad copy into a true-crime episode without making things up. Several unrelated shows take up the space where the episode's reporting should be. The Girlfriends, Playing Along, Love Trap, Mostly Human, and Rorschach appear. Nora Jones and Josh Groban show up in a music-podcast promotion, not in the investigative story named by the title. Sam Altman appears inside a Mostly Human ad about AI responsibility, guardrails, competition, and the risk of destroying the world. Love Trap gets repeated placement. That promo brings in Clayton Eckerd, an alleged pregnancy hoax, a disputed test, internet detectives, Greg Gillespie, Michael Marangini, Stephanie Young, Laura Owens, and Scottsdale Police. Those details belong to the promo, not this case. The excerpt closes by returning to ads and network branding, which confirms the problem: the episode's reporting never arrives. The title points toward a story, but this transcript only gives the frame around it.

As heard by us

A true-crime story built around a hoax, internet detectives, and the consequences that follow.

The episode follows the pregnancy hoax around Clayton Eckerd and Laura Owens, then broadens into the internet detectives who pulled apart a disturbing pattern and the other men who said they had lived through something similar.

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Why you'd press play

A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, and they decide to take matters into their own hands.

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