The Arson

December 2, 2025·29 min·1 clip

In Prentiss Cooper State Forest, a jogger finds an abandoned car that soon reveals a burning body inside.

Delia D'Ambra opens in Prentiss Cooper State Forest in southeast Tennessee. She sets up the forest's draw for bird watching, hiking, views, and camping before the case shifts toward Sean's death and a fire scene investigators had to read more closely than the first story suggested. Things move fast after that. Once investigators believe they have probable cause, Caleb is arrested for tampering with evidence, aggravated arson, vandalism, and abuse of a corpse, while John Beth is arrested as an accessory after the fact, and both are booked into the Marion County Jail without bond. The charges do not stop there. A few days later, John Beth's charge is upgraded to accessory after the fact to criminal homicide, and Caleb's charges are upgraded as well, with a murder warrant added and the case moving into General Sessions Court of Hamilton County for the work that would eventually send it to a grand jury. Sean's life stays at the center. The episode brings back the obituary, the GoFundMe set up for his mother Martha, and the online tributes that remember him as funny, kind, and magnetic. He was only 22. He is also remembered as an Eagle Scout, a gifted glassblower, and the force behind Hennessy Glass, a business he had been building before his death. The story keeps circling back to what the people around him lost. Nine days after his body was found, his loved ones hold a celebration of life at his home church in Nashville, followed by a fundraiser at a local beer hall. The aftermath stays public. Friends and supporters leave messages online, and the episode uses those traces to show how wide his circle was and how suddenly it had been broken. Delia does not hurry the case. She moves from the park setting to evidence, from evidence to charges, and from charges to the human aftermath with a steady pace that favors clarity over drama. The result is sober. It is a careful account of how investigators, court records, and family testimony fit together around a death that began, on the surface, with a fire in the woods. Nothing is left simple. By the end, the episode has turned a scenic forest into a map of evidence, grief, and legal consequence.

As heard by us

A Tennessee state-forest case that moves from fire scene to murder charges.

Park Predators stays close to a Tennessee case in Prentiss Cooper State Forest, where Delia D'Ambra follows how a fire scene led investigators toward charges that grew beyond arson and evidence tampering.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

A Tennessee forest case that starts with a fire and narrows into a murder investigation.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Park Predators