Ozarks crime stories, measured by what they leave behind.
A journalist who has spent decades investigating cases across the Ozarks, Nancy Simpson builds The Toll from interviews, family writings and public records. Her attention stays on the people around each crime, from a 1975 child murder in Springfield to a daughter who suspected her own mother of poisoning family members.
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The Toll is Nancy Simpson's investigative true-crime series, rooted in cases from Springfield, Missouri, and the wider Ozarks. Simpson introduces herself as an award-winning journalist who has spent decades on stories in the region, and the credits list her as creator, investigator, host and audio producer. The title is the thesis. Each case is weighed by what it does to the people left around it: a daughter, a sister, a neighbor, a family that stops speaking. Season 1, The Path Back Home, concerns Shirley Jane Rose, a nine-year-old abducted and murdered in Springfield in 1975, whose body was found two months later in a shallow grave; Simpson notes the girl was her friend's cousin. Season 2, Poison • Control, is the sprawling one. It centers on Jeanne, a Mormon mother of four investigated by the FBI over suspected poisonings, and on her daughter Jeanette, whose attempts to warn relatives left her estranged from them. Salt shakers and Easter candy sit at the center of the story, alongside a string of husbands and relatives who fell ill. What sets the season apart is its paper trail. Simpson reads Jeanne's own writings and years of email between mother and daughter, pausing on word choices that do not quite fit, such as 'co-operate' where 'cooperate' would do. She files a records request with an Iowa police department, hires a private investigator to trace an old car, and quotes obituaries, a father's journal and Websleuths posts. She also goes back to places. In one episode she and Jeanette stand in a Holt Summit basement where Jeanette believes she saw something as a child that she has carried for decades. The numbered chapters build on one another, and 'Monsters' presents itself as the episode that pulls the pieces together. Simpson closes the season saying she has a timeline of nearly two hundred pages packaged and ready for investigators. Bonus episodes extend the story, with Jeanette speaking in her own voice, accounts from extended family, and 'Trust Issues', in which Simpson and her friend Emily Wilson compare other poisoning cases, among them Nanny Doss. Spotlight Series installments widen the map: 'Hearts for Gloria' concerns Gloria Jean Barnes, found at a Springfield truck stop in 1997, while 'Unsettled' follows the disappearance of bartender Rene Williams in Ava. 'My Mom Married A Murderer' takes up a 1970s Ozarks killing with a direct link to Simpson's own family. The show also steps onto more familiar ground with 'Main Character: A Gypsy Rose Blanchard Story', built around a neighbor's memories, in which Simpson argues the public story does not add up. Her narration is direct and personal, and she does not hide her opinions.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants true crime grounded in documents, return visits and family testimony, and who is willing to stay with one tangled case across numbered chapters and bonus episodes.
What sets it apart: Simpson builds her cases from the paper a family leaves behind, including emails, journals, obituaries and police records, and reads them down to odd word choices. The focus stays on what a crime costs the survivors, not just on the crime itself.
The Toll focuses on the effects a violent crime or traumatic event has on a family and community. Season 1 focuses on a cold case from Springfield, Missouri; the 1975 murder of 9-year-old Shirley Jane Rose. Our host, award winning journalist Nancy Simpson, interviews investigators and family members, taking the listener on a journey of what ends up being not just one, but many tragedies intertwined.
Court papers give you the evidence; Nancy Simpson keeps you with the people who must live with it.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A neighbor's memories complicate the familiar story of Gypsy Rose Blanchard and Dee Dee's murder.
Gypsy Rose Blanchard's case gets a skeptical, uneasy revisit as Nancy Simpson returns to Dee Dee Blanchard's murder, Nicholas Godejohn's role, and the questions Simpson says still linger around the story.
A poison-minded book trail opens into a disturbing Missouri murder case grounded in appeals-court detail.
The Toll's Poison Control companion starts with a macabre reading trail and follows it into the close, unsettling logic of poison cases. Lisa Perrin's The League of Lady Poisoners gives the episode its frame, moving from the book's dedication through plants, poisonous animals,…
A childhood memory of a basement gives way to deposition claims about suspected poisoning.
Episode 10 centers on Jeanette's return to the Holt's Summit house where she lived at five, a visit shaped by the unsettling force of remembered space.
A car ride, a roadside figure, and a crash email sharpen a long trail of suspicion.
Episode 11, "Deep into the Jungle," tracks Jeanette through memories where family routine turns uneasy: a car ride with Jeannie, a motionless man beside a country highway, and a mother repeating a carrot-choking story while her daughter calls highway patrol.
A troubling final chapter where family memories and a journalist's case file leave unsettling questions in the same shadow.
The Toll closes its single-episode review arc with "Monsters," a finale that gathers the season's poison-control threads, then turns its attention to Jeanette's memories of her father.
A basement memory gives way to an affidavit thick with domestic detail, unease, and unresolved questions.
The Toll's Episode 4 turns on a broken childhood memory from a basement in Holt Summit, Missouri: a girl zipped into bags, hair matted over a moving mouth, and the smell of fish in the room.
Jeanette's return to the basement turns family illness into a careful, unresolved chemical mystery.
Episode 7 sends Jeanette back to the Holtz Summit house, where nightmares, a basement darkroom, and a painful family history gather around illness and the possibility of chemical exposure.
NHPR's Jason Moon investigates the Bear Brook barrel murders and a New Hampshire wrongful-conviction case.
A former cop's DNA, a dropped case, unreliable memories.
["A Greene County Sheriff's Office letter saying there is no fraud case sits at the center of Nancy Simpson's reporting on Gypsy Rose Blanchard in The Toll's \"Main Character: A Gypsy Rose Blanchard Story.\"", "Simpson threads together FOIA requests, old emails, Facebook messages, police reports, and GPS coordinates while revisiting Gypsy's eight-year prison sentence after Nicholas Godejohn killed Dee Dee Blanchard in Springfield, Missouri.", "Neighbor Dominique Gabriela says the Blanchards lived a few houses away on West Volunteer Way, gave Christmas gifts and Fantastic Caverns passes, and seemed \"childlike\" and Disney-obsessed in public.", "The episode also points to records about the rare 1q21.1 microdeletion diagnosis, Gypsy's own statements about walking, and the question of whether the public story about Dee Dee matches the documents."]
A bonus episode for Season 2 of The Toll, where host Nancy Simpson reflects on the 30th anniversary of a father's death and includes intro lines from Jeanette Robbins about family secrets and tragedy.
The Toll bonus episode Trust Issues opens with Lisa Perrin's The League of Lady Poisoners and Nanny Doss, the Giggling Granny, whose death toll is described as likely 11 people.
A bonus episode exploring lingering questions about tainted salt shakers in a poisoning case from Season 2.
A bonus episode exploring the childhood of a woman whose father's chess obsession shaped her, as part of a series on a cold case murder.
The Toll's Episode 11, "Deep into the Jungle," follows Nancy Simpson as she rebuilds Jeanette's account of Jeannie Howard Spriggs and the poison-control case.
The Toll's 'Poison Control' ties Jeanette Robbins's family records, Dennis's journal, and Jeannie's letters to allegations of abuse, poisoning, and control.
The Toll's "Poison Control" follows Jeanette Robbins, a former sleep-disorder specialist, as she revisits the Holt Summit basement she says felt exactly like the childhood room that still lives in her body.
The Toll episode "Poison • Control | It Didn’t Hurt | 06" follows Nancy Simpson's investigation into Jeanette Robbins's family history and her father Dennis Spriggs's 1992 death.
The Toll episode “Poison • Control | Fruity Yummy Mummy” follows Nancy Simpson and Jeanette as they revisit Jeanette’s family history, including her father’s alleged abuse and a seven-hour interview.
The Toll's "The Family Picture" examines Jeannette's accounts of childhood trauma, including a remembered girl in a zipper bag at a Holt Summit house and her later return to its basement stairs.
Nancy Simpson uses FBI records released in March 2022 to examine why Dennis Spriggs’s name appears beside “serial killings” and “victim” in an unredacted document.
The Toll episode “Poison • Control | Vernon’s Pond | 04” examines Roy’s sudden neurological decline in 1998 through Mayo Clinic records, family testimony, and Jeannie’s changing explanations.
The Toll episode “Poison • Control | Friendly Journeys | 09” follows Jeanette's efforts to understand family deaths, including the 2008 exhumation of her father Dennis Spriggs in Missouri.
The Toll episode “Poison • Control | The Candy Man | 08” follows Nancy Simpson’s reporting on Jeanette’s memories of abuse and her investigation into Bruce Fulford’s illness and death.
The Toll’s “Poison • Control” follows journalist Nancy Simpson as she reconstructs Jeanette’s suspicions about illnesses and deaths surrounding her mother Jeannie.
Jeanette Robbins remembers a girl in a zipper bag in her childhood basement and later connects that memory to a decades-long search for missing girls in Missouri.
Nancy Simpson investigates how her mother married Terry Greenhaw, who was convicted of killing his 16-year-old pregnant first wife, Leanne Ayers Greenhall, in El Dorado Springs, Missouri, in 1974.
Nancy Simpson examines Gloria Barnes's 1997 disappearance from Joyner, Arkansas, after her body was found at a Springfield, Missouri, truck stop.
Nancy Simpson’s The Toll episode “Spotlight Series: Hearts for Gloria | 01” examines Gloria Jean Barnes’s 1997 murder after her body was found behind Springfield, Missouri’s Seven Gables truck stop on July 13, the day before her 36th birthday.
The Toll's "Spotlight Series: Unsettled | 02" examines the unresolved disappearance of Renee Williams and Sheriff Chris DeGays's case against Chris Revack.
The Toll episode "Spotlight Series: Unsettled | 01" examines Renee Williams's 2007 disappearance from the Eagle's Lodge in Ava, Missouri.
The Toll hosts Nancy Simpson and Jay Lashley question retired Seattle homicide detective Cloyd Steiger about Shirley Jane Rose's body position, likely abduction, and investigative gaps.
The Toll’s “The Path Back Home” examines theories surrounding the 1985 disappearance and killing of nine-year-old Shirley Jane Rose in Springfield.
Nancy Simpson revisits the 1975 Springfield, Missouri, disappearance and murder of nine-year-old Shirley Jane Rose, focusing on why Steve and Chris Fletcher remained subjects of community suspicion without charges.
The Toll’s “The Path Back Home | The Judge’s Letter | 03” examines the 1975 disappearance and murder of nine-year-old Shirley Jane Rose in Springfield, Missouri.
The Toll follows Nancy Simpson and Cassie Mills as a road-trip conversation leads them to Shirley Jane Rose, a child whose reported haunting is connected to a former workplace on Scenic.
The Toll episode “The Path Back Home | Mrs.
Nancy Simpson investigates the unsolved 1975 murder of nine-year-old Shirley Jane Rose near Springfield, Missouri, whose remains were found by Roy Shelton and Lawrence Thompson near McDaniel Lake.
The Toll examines the 1975 disappearance and death of nine-year-old Shirley Jane Rose in Springfield, Missouri, whose body was found in a shallow grave near McDaniel Lake on December 13.
The Toll episode “The Path Back Home | Déjà Vu | 07” connects the 2014 abduction and murder of ten-year-old Haley Owens in Springfield, Missouri, with the older disappearance of Shirley Jane Rose.