Sirens | A Southern True Crime Podcast · The Sirens Network

Southern Noir Book Club | Tony Adame - Chase the Devil

·49 min·5 clips

Tony Adame joins the show for a conversation about Chase the Devil and the case behind it. The focus stays on Tanya Eldridge McKinley. Her story begins on New Year’s Eve in 1984, when she was out with friends in Pensacola, Florida, celebrating the start of her new life. She was just weeks from her 24th birthday, finally free from an abusive relationship, and moving toward becoming the person she had always wanted to be. That promise does not last. Her body is found dumped on the side of the road, half naked, raped, beaten, and strangled to death in the early morning hours of New Year’s Day. The episode does not soften any of that. It also does not let that violence erase who Tanya was before it. The conversation leans on family memory to show her as a protector, someone who could make people laugh, and someone whose absence changed the people around her. That choice matters. The episode keeps returning to a point the host and guest both care about: true crime is better when it shows the victim as a whole person instead of using the crime as the whole identity. That idea gives the discussion its shape. The tone stays conversational and blunt. When the talk turns to interrogation techniques and the way reporting can miss what families know, the skepticism is clear. The show does not sound polished or distant. It sounds like people talking through a hard case with enough local and human knowledge to notice when something feels off. Even so, the episode leaves room for grief, frustration, and respect for the people who have kept Tanya’s story alive. It also makes room for the practical details that matter in a case, because family memory is only part of the picture. The result is a Florida Gulf Coast true crime interview that treats the family as a source of truth, not just emotion. It keeps asking what Tanya wanted from life, what was taken from her, and why that should still matter now. By the end, the episode feels less like a neat recap and more like a careful accounting.

As heard by us

A victim-centered Southern true crime conversation that keeps Tanya McKinley in view as a person, not a case.

Tony Adame's Chase the Devil conversation treats Tanya Eldridge McKinley's 1984 New Year's Eve killing in Pensacola as a story about someone trying to get out from under abuse and start over. That framing gives the episode more force than a routine murder recap.

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Why you'd press play

Press play for a Pensacola case conversation that keeps Tanya McKinley, not the killer, in front.

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