26. Behind Closed Doors

Previously On Ice Cold Case

Hey, what's going on fam? 
Hi, how are you? 

I was talking to the psychic lady. She said that, you know, I'll see justice. She said, Omar, your family and you will see justice.

But, um, if you ever need help or anything, I'm here, you know, I'm truthful with my words. 

And you gave him the bullet casings? 
Yeah, yeah. Yep. And they were plastic bag. I didn't even touch 'em, you know, at that point. That's evidence. 

You know, I'm, and like I said, I'm the key witness.

So don't ever, don't ever think I gave up. I I will never give up until I see justice for Uncle jc. You know, y'all, you know what I'm saying? 

Like, just who,  Like who killed my dad?
Who was there?

Part 0: When the Phone Rings

My skepticism of Omar was shrinking as my empathy for him grew. Talking to him didn’t feel like what I expected. There were no empty threats. No posturing. Just a conversation that sounded, at least on the surface, like an attempt at explanation. And in a strange way, it humanized him again. It also forced me to confront something I’d been compartmentalizing. No matter how far out I stretch this investigation, from the most obvious angle to the most obscure, this case is a family affair. These aren’t distant names buried in a file. These are blood relatives. Faces that resemble mine. DNA that traces back to the same place. It doesn’t get closer than that… and it doesn’t get more personal than this.

Gathering someone’s point-of-view from case files doesn’t give a lot of room for interpretation. There’s a difference between reading someone’s words and hearing them say them. On paper, everything looks flat, but when you hear someone speak, you start listening for the spaces between words – the pauses and the shifts in tone tell a story. There’s moments where you can see they are searching for things to say and things to avoid. It doesn’t exactly provide certainty, but it adds texture.

People aren’t static. My dad wasn’t, and neither is Omar. In the same way that my dad was dynamic with different levels of relationships, Omar is another well-known character in Belmont County. But who someone is to the public isn’t who they are behind closed doors. The longer you know someone personally – especially in a romantic way – the more comfortable they get. Sometimes too comfortable. Sometimes things slip.

Omar’s girlfriend at the time of my dad’s murder was Kim Smith. But shortly after that day, with the weight of it all causing stress, they separated. 

There’s someone who was closely connected to Omar’s life in a romantic way between 2005 and 2020 that I have wanted to speak to for a long time. Fifteen years is a lot of time – long enough to see patterns, long enough to hear stories repeated or changed, long enough for stress to surface, for contradictions to show, for truths to either harden or crack. If Omar ever said too much, acted out of character, or revealed something he couldn’t take back, it was going to be behind closed doors around someone he felt comfortable with, not in a police interview.

After all, Omar is a victim according to the case files. Maybe he eventually told someone more details about that day –  like what he saw or who was there. The possibilities are endless, and all unknown, unless I talk to the person he became close to. But that would be a long shot.

And then, without warning, their name appeared on my phone.

Call it God. Call it the universe. Call it coincidence. In the same way I had my gut punched by thin air in 2012, I had a spin-chilling moment when their name popped up on my phone with a message. They wanted to talk. As long as I’m investigating the murder of J.C. McGhee when my phone rings, I will answer.

Part 1: Another Day, Another Twist

The call started off in the same way most of these calls do… abruptly. There’s no easing into it. There isn’t a lot of small talk. Within the first few seconds we got right into it. 

There’s a certain tone people get when they’ve been holding something in for a long time. You can hear it before they even say anything significant. It’s a kind of urgency mixed with hesitation. They’re not entirely sure how much to say, but they know they have to say something.

Right at the top of the conversations, this person claims they were being threatened by Omar in the years following my dad’s murder. They characterized their relationship with Omar as volatile and abusive, marked by fear and instability. They also mention a retraining order that, according to them, prohibits Omar from going to Martins Ferry and Wheeling, but I couldn’t verify that. The allegation wasn’t that shocking, but it was so casually delivered. This was something that was long accepted, just a part of everyday life. They were going to have to live on edge, in fear of Omar’s erratic behavior. 

Then they brought up an encounter that happened while they were at work. A man walked in — someone they didn’t know — and someone who was not cautious with their words. He started asking about their connection to Omar, and the claims this man made were significant. 

He said, oh, you don't know he killed his uncle. I said, um, no, try to, you know what I mean? To see what this guy would tell me. I was like, um, no. Who told you that? He was like, oh, everybody knows it. And I said, what do you mean by everybody knows it? He said, yeah. He said, that's why they, he keeps on implicating these other people, him and his brother.

I’m two minutes into the call and feel completely detached from my body. People have speculated about Omar's involvement for years. From the day J.C. McGhee was murdered, rumors have existed — some loud, some whispered. But hearing it stated this plainly, this bluntly, by someone recounting a moment that had nothing to do with the investigation, knocked the wind out of me. 

The man apparently continued offering more details. But the person I was speaking to shut it down. I don’t think it’s because the allegation didn’t matter, but I think more so because it was too much. Once they’re spoken out loud, there’s no pulling them back. It’s a harsh accusation, with a lot of consequential fall out. So I had to dive deeper…

I mean, you spent a lot of time with him, obviously, like do you think he did it? 
In my heart of hearts, Madison not even going on what he said to me, in my heart of hearts, I do believe that him and Richard did. And the reason that I say this is because like I've seen a lot, like when him and Richard would talk, no one was allowed to be around when. Him and Richard would like go places. They would be gone for hours and then come back and like they would both be mad. Like, why are you guys both mad? Like what hap, you know what I mean? What happened? Omar has told me that he knows that the gun that killed your dad is behind a rock under where The old bridge that went from Bridgeport to Island is 
That went from Bridgeport to where?
To Wheeling Island.
You can't get down there, hun. It's just like a complete drop off. There's like a boulder that it's like a wall and then there's a boulder down there and it, it's, it's like a drop off. If I could get down there, believe me, I would go down there because I want to solved more than not his kids, but anybody else.

For the sake of their safety and privacy, I will not go into the details of how this person is directly connected to Omar, but what matters is they were not casual acquaintances. They had a very long, deeply personal relationship. The kind where people let their guard down. 

Did he ever like confide in you about what happened that day or anything? 
Well, how like your dad all came up was, they had this thing on tv, it was called Ohio Valley Cold Cases, and Pearl made this statement of, well they need to do my brothers. So I did investigations trying to find out how to get ahold of them people. So I like, it took me a couple months, but I finally got ahold of 'em. It was two guys from California and they came to Pearls and they talked to Pearl in the living room. And they talked to Omar upstairs. Well, one guy went upstairs to Omar, the other guy was in the living room, and the guy came, was maybe after I, with Omar, like five minutes. And he came down. He told the other guy, he said, we gotta leave. We gotta leave now. And they left and never came back. What Omar said, I don't know because I was outside while they talked to them, but whatever he said when he came down them steps, the guy was ghost white and looked at the other guy and said, we gotta go. We gotta go now.

I want to be clear about something before we go any further. What you’re hearing are allegations, memories, lived experiences from one perspective. This is not courtroom evidence or tested proof. But even in the fragmented memory of someone, there are slivers of truth and vital information. 

In decades-old cold cases, those who were closest to the case but stayed quiet the longest, are the most important sources of information even though they are simultaneously the hardest bits of information to verify in any impactful way.

Part 2: Public vs. Private

I usually operate under the assumption that when I am talking to someone, this may be the only chance I get. I might not ever speak to them again because they changed their mind or disappeared or decided that the risk was just too high.  So I don’t dance about the questions that matter. There is no point in ignoring the obvious. Nine minutes into the call, I asked a question that had been on my mind since May 4, 2012. 

So you think like Omar is capable of murder? 
He, yeah.he's one Omar in front of people and he's a completely different Omar behind doors.
When you're alone with him. He's completely different. He is scary.

The distinction of who someone is publicly versus privately is important. As I have learned through uncovering details about my own dad’s past, there are parts of ourselves that not everyone gets to see. For this person, their relationship with Omar behind closed doors was marked by abuse – physical, emotional, and mental. What they described was not a story about a single incident or an isolated outburst. It was a story of a home life defined by control, fear, and repeated violence.

But Omar is a scary person. Omar is psychotic, and I've called Belmont Police, Belmont County Sheriff's, when he would choke me, and I was literally told that they are not coming there because that's Omar's house.
And do you think they were afraid of him or just didn't want to deal with him?
Why wouldn't they go there? 
I, I feel that they're afraid of Omar. I feel that Omar has something over Belmont County.

According to this person, the police are afraid of Omar. But according to Omar, he is afraid of the police. So I take into consideration all the information I’m given and try to let the lines connect and dots cross where I can. Fear feels like a currency in this case, it is given and exchanged at different points in the story. And the person in control has all the power. Who is afraid of whom? Who holds leverage? And who, historically, has been protected?

What matters here isn’t whether one statement cancels the other out. It’s that both narratives point to the same thing: a power imbalance that has never been clearly examined. In a case that has stalled for more than two decades, power — who has it, who fears it, and who answers to it – is not a side note. It’s part of the evidence.

Part 3: From the Outside

From the outside, the McGhee family can look impenetrable. There’s unspoken rules, a hierarchy, and power dynamics that are not written down but immediately understood by anyone close enough to feel them. Even when talking about my dad, one of their own, the energy shifts. I’ve experienced it – the temperature shift, the punch in the gut. The person I was talking to on the phone has felt it too.

Within the family there are certain figures that carry weight. Rico is one of them. But above everyone it's the true center of gravity for the McGhee’s. Our family would be nothing without our matriarch – my dad’s mom, my Grandma Daisy. She was the one person who could ask questions that others couldn’t.

Now as for Rico. Rico sat beside Grandma Daisy. And this kills me when I, when I talk about it because I miss her so much. But Grandma was, had this big chair that she sat in and Rico sat beside her one day and grandma asked Rico, he said, Rico, I need you to tell me the truth. And he said, what, grandma? What is it? And she said, did you have anything to do with jcs murder? And Rico said, grandma. I swear on everything I love and you know I love you more than anything in this world. I had nothing at all to do with that. I heard about it while I was in jail and she said, Rico, don't lie to me. He said, grandma, I swear I'm not. I'm telling you the truth. I would never lie to you grandma, in the look on Rico’s face. When she asked asked and the way he answered her, you knew he was telling the truth. because grandma always would talk to me and say, the only thing I want before I go out of this world is to know who killed my son. And that's why I tried so hard myself. To try to get evidence to try to solve it for her, not for me, for her.

Grandma Daisy was asking something so simple, and so devastating. “Tell me who killed my son.” A parent should never outlive their child, and to lose a son in that way is unimaginable. Grandma Daisy was respected across the board, by everyone. And while now the family agrees on almost nothing, the one thing we all have in common is admiration of Grandma Daisy. Rico swore – to the one person whose judgment mattered the most – that he had nothing to do with my dad’s murder. 

And yet, she wasn’t allowed to say J.C.’s name in front of certain family members.

But she wasn't allowed to talk about Uncle JC around Richard or Omar, or they would start flipping out. Don't fucking bring his name up. Don't bring his name up. They would even yell at grandma for talking about him. Well, you can't, you cannot say his name to them. If you do it is. It is like a trigger.

This reaction is interesting not because it proves guilt, but it does reveal fear. The more my dad is discussed, the more likely someone is to put the pieces together. It also displays rage, control, and the kind of emotional response that shuts down any conversation before it even begins. Saying my dad’s name wasn’t just uncomfortable or sad, it was clearly a trigger. 

As my conversation with this person continued, another pattern emerged. Richard, Omar’s brother, has come up again. With every few mentions of his name, is the mention of his ex-wife, Michelle.

And Michelle was scared to death of Richard
Do you think Michelle has more info?
I think Michelle knows stuff, but I think Michelle is afraid to say anything because Richard has threatened her so much. Like even after they got divorced and she has, I think it's three more kids, three or four more kids by a Mexican guy, and he still threatens that girl. Yeah, she's, she's afraid as Richard, like she does whatever Richard says. 

Fear infiltrates this story at every level – romantic, friendship, family. Eventually information disappears almost like it never existed because it is buried for so long that eventually you’ve convinced yourself it never happened, or didn’t happen that way, or you don’t trust your memory. 

Then a vehicle is mentioned that ties things back to Richard…

At the time your dad was murdered, Richard drove a black Lexus SUV, and he used to go back and forth to California to this guy's house. They called Petey. So that explains to me where Omar got the black SUV California plates and then switched the plates to Ohio plates.

None of this, on its own, is proof. But this is how investigations work in real life – you don’t get the answers neatly packaged and delivered to your door. You get fragments, observations, and patterns that start to overlap and form a picture when you piece it together. So that’s what I’ve been doing for years… slowly piecing together, through many, many accounts, what exactly happened the morning that J.C. McGhee was killed.

Part 4: July 11, 2002

When it comes to July 11, 2002, I have heard Omar’s version of the day. I have read his witness testimony. I have heard the police’s interpretation of his words. So now, the only thing left is to hear what Omar told those closest to him about what happened that morning. So I asked a simple question: when Omar talked about that day, what did he actually say? What they told me was the narrative that, according to them, Omar repeated more than once.

When, when Omar would talk about it, like what would he say? 
Well, he, he has, he told me, this is just the story Omar told me, which is nothing like what I hear. Now, Omar had told me that him and Kim was supposedly at her sister's babysitting and he got a phone call from Pearl stating that your dad was shot. So they called Kim's sister Buffy and told her she had to get home because they had to get there because something had happened when they got there. The cops was supposedly there. That's the story I got from Omar

According to that story, Omar said he and his girlfriend at the time were babysitting at her sister’s house when he received a phone call from Pearl saying my dad had been shot. That’s the version Omar shared privately. This version does not align with my own theory, the police’s theory, or Omar’s account that he told me three days before this conversation. 

And it’s important to say this clearly: this is not my reconstruction. This is not law enforcement’s timeline. This is the account as it was relayed to someone years later, who was very close to him.

According to this person, anyone who tried to dig too deeply into my dad’s murder was met with resistance – sometimes aggressively so. I have personally been on the receiving end of that resistance.

I think the whole home invasion thing is a coverup. They have even threatened Pearl Omar. Richard has even threatened a newscaster here. Her name is DK Wright, and told her that if she doesn't stay away from that property, that she won't be able to tell no more stories. She works for Channel seven News and they do not like her because she dug into the case and was trying to solve it, and they threatened her. They don't want this solved. Because anybody that tries, they threaten them.

They named a local reporter who, according to them, had been warned to stay away from the case. Again, these are allegations. They are not verified facts. But they mirror something I’ve noticed repeatedly over the years: that attempts to revisit this case have been met with hostility, not cooperation.

Another part of this case that made this person feel unsettled was Omar’s 9-1-1 call.

When I first heard the nine one one call on your podcast, I was at my friend's and my friend's husband looked at me and I looked at him, and we both at the same time said, Omar's lying. Omar does not know how to tell the truth to save his life. If it was tell the truth or die, a Omar will die before he tells the truth.

This person is pointing a lot of suspicion at Omar, and also at Richard.

And now there's this home invasion and they was there too. And yeah, there's something not right it It's not adding up.
Yeah. It's weird.
But I think the home invasion will set up, I think Richard and no Omar wrecked that house then went over to your dad's because Richard and Omar both were size 10 shoe. They were the same size shoe. And I even think that shoe print is, uh, try to cover up of the scene because your dad would've knew them. So if they knocked on that door and your dad seen 'em, it'd be in his nephew's. He would've opened the door for ‘em.

This aligns with a lot of what I believe – at least about my dad knowing the people at the door. The size 10 shoe print is another layer to this that holds a lot of weight, but also carries a lot of questions. But if this person knew this much and had accumulated all of this information over the years, maybe they would know more of the specifics I had been searching for. 

Did he ever say what kind of gun it was? 
He said that it's a black handgun and it has blue on the bottom. The clip is blue.

A black handgun is different from a shotgun and blue detailing on the bottom is vividly specific… a detail you’d have to be very close to a situation to know. Then there’s a belief that doesn't exist in isolation. In fact, a lot of people have a similar thought when it comes to who killed J.C. McGhee…

But there's a lot of people around here that believes that Omar did it. If you just listen to the talk, I mean, they, they straight up say it. Omar killed his uncle. It's not like it's, they say, oh, well don't say anything but there, there's none of that. It's Omar killed his uncle.

Part 5: Motive

Motive is one of the most misunderstood parts of any investigation. It is also the one thing in a case that doesn’t need to be proven through evidence. You just have to prove intent (mens rea) and that the actual crime was committed (actus reus). But even still, people expect a clean explanation –  jealousy, money, revenge – something you can point to and say that’s why this happened. But in real life, motive is rarely singular. Sometimes it’s pressure, accumulation, what happens when someone believes they’re about to lose something they rely on. So when I asked about motive, I wasn’t looking for a smoking gun. I was listening for stress points.

What I was told by this person centered the conflict behind that morning around money.

From what I heard myself when I lived with Pearl I, they were upstairs talking in the bedroom right off of the bathroom, which was mine and Omar's bedroom. I went up to go to the bathroom and I heard Richard talking about the box that was supposed to be coming from Mexico and Omar opening his mouth to your dad about it, and your dad had it stopped. And that took money out of their pocket and food off of Richard's table.

And loss is often where motive begins to take shape in this case. According to this account, my dad intervened so that whatever was coming never arrived, and that impacted the bottom line.

I want to be careful here. These are allegations. I have no independent verification of a “box,” where it came from, or what was inside it. If true, this story reinforces that my dad was willing to involve himself when he believed something was wrong, even when it put him at odds with family.

According to this person, and something I’ve noted before, the activities Richard and Omar were involved in weren’t exactly secret.

Because I, I know everybody in the world knows what Richard and No Omar does. It's, it's not a secret what they do. And I believe that's who turned in Rico this time. Richard and Omar. Yeah, because Omar was at Rico's every day. Literally before I left. He was there every day. From seven in the morning until 8, 9 at night but the day that Rico got busted, Omar was nowhere to be found.

This all hit me like a ton of bricks. I felt completely snapped back into this whirlwind reality that I exist in – the one where my dad is murdered and I started a podcast to try and solve it. The world where I pissed off my entire family on a crusade for the truth and tried to compartmentalize my feelings. With every day that passes, with every conversation like this, it gets harder to ignore. My mom was right – this is some really raw shit.

Even though these people are my family. I want the truth. I want to know who killed my dad.

And I like I yell at you on your podcast and like Madison quit thinking Omar could not do this. Omar, think Omar is. Omar is dangerous. Very dangerous.
But do you think he's smart? Like is he manipulative? 
Yes, very. He is very manipulative.

Part 6: The End is Near

For the last six years, I’ve worked this case from every angle I know how. I’ve combed through Belmont County and the greater Wheeling area. I’ve spoken to people with direct ties to my dad’s murder – and people who only brush up against it. Some of them were interviewed by law enforcement. Many of them weren’t. The more conversations I’ve had, the harder it’s become to ignore a single, unsettling question.

Why wasn’t this investigation pushed further? Not necessarily why it wasn’t solved, but why it wasn’t pursued.

At every turn, I’ve run into the same limits. The same unanswered questions. The same reluctance to reopen doors that were never fully explored in the first place. And it’s led me to a thought I can’t shake – one that’s echoed quietly throughout this episode and throughout this entire show.

That Belmont County officials, much like parts of the community, may already believe they know who killed my dad.

And why do you think the police aren't really trying to solve it? 
Belmont County? Because I believe they know. That Omar is a part of it and I believe Omar has something. I don't know what it is. He has something on Belmont County.

I don’t know what that “something” is. I don’t even know if it exists. But what I do know is this: fear keeps showing up in this case – fear of retaliation, fear of speaking, fear of pushing too hard. And the fear is becoming paralyzing.

I think they need to somehow, I mean, I don't know if they could do it, but I think Omar needs put under like hypnotism because that's the only way he's going to be able to tell the truth and take him back to that day. I think if they do that and take him back to that day, Omar's gonna tell it all.

I didn’t hear that comment as a suggestion. I heard it as a symptom. The belief that the truth is so deeply buried, so actively avoided, that conventional methods no longer feel sufficient. What that reflects is exhaustion. The kind that comes from watching a system stall out again and again, while the same questions remain unanswered. That exhaustion isn’t abstract for me – it’s personal.

Because when you strip away all the theories, all the speculation, all the fear – what’s left is a simple reality: my dad hasn’t gotten justice. That failure doesn’t belong to one person. It belongs to an institution that never fully followed through.

It’s hard to accept that this case may not be unsolved because it’s too complex, but because not enough of the right people were willing to fight for it – for my dad, for my family, for me. Hearing all of these things from this person definitely didn’t make it easier, even if it made it a little clearer. 

At this point, the only person I can rely on to keep pushing this case forward is myself.

I mean, I'm sorry honey. I know this is your family, but there's, there's some dangerous people in your family and I want you to stay protected.

That warning is important because it reinforces what this case has always demanded: caution and persistence

Yeah. I just want, I want you to solve this. I want this, I want, I want it to be over for you

So do I. And I think I finally have what it takes to solve the murder of John Cornelius McGhee – momentum.

In a moment of cautious optimism, I think it might be over soon…

Next Time on Ice Cold Case

I just don’t know how you end something, without an ending. I don’t know. Just like everyone keeps telling me… Everyone just keeps telling me to call them when it’s solved.

Credits:

Thanks for listening to Ice Cold Case a Yes! Podcast
Recorded in Los Angeles at Spotify Studios
This episode was written, hosted, produced, and edited by Madison McGhee
Produced, copy edited, and additional research by Opheli Garcia Lawler
Sound engineering and sound design by Sian McMullen
Graphic design by AJ Christianson

All outside sources are linked in the show notes.

A video version of this episode is available on our YouTube Channel and a transcript is available at ice cold case dot com
To submit any tips or information please email us at icecoldcasepodcast@gmail.com