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Things I Want To Know

Don’t Boil the Water | Charleston, West Virginia

A sweet smell coming out of the tap should never turn into a guessing game.

In this episode, we dig into the 2014 Charleston, West Virginia chemical spill that sent crude MCHM from a neglected storage tank straight toward a municipal water intake, forcing 300,000 people to stop using their water overnight. Not limit it. Not boil it. Stop.

We talk about how a century-old piece of infrastructure ended up sitting upstream from a city’s drinking water, why oversight failed, and how “safe enough” became the most dangerous phrase in the room. Residents reported rashes, nausea, burning eyes, and headaches, while officials tried to reassure the public with toxicology data that barely existed.

Accountability did come, eventually. Guilty pleas. Home confinement. Bankruptcy. But trust is harder to flush out of a system than a chemical you can smell.

We also zoom out, because Charleston isn’t an anomaly. From storage tanks to rail lines to aging intakes, this is what happens when convenience and complacency quietly stack risk in places no one is watching.

This isn’t panic radio. It’s a conversation about vigilance. What smells matter. Why boiling water can make some chemical exposures worse. What actually helps at the household level, and what fixes need to happen upstream where the real control lives.

Because the most unsettling part isn’t that something went wrong.
It’s how normal the day felt before anyone knew.

“Thank you for listening to Things I Want to Know.
You want these stories, and we want to bring them to you — so hit the support link and keep this circus, and the mics, alive.
Then do us a favor and rate and subscribe; it helps the show find more people like you — the ones who like their mysteries real and their storytellers unfiltered.
And if you want to wear a little of this madness, grab some Andrea-approved gear at paulgnewton.com.
We make t

Support the show

Things I Want To Know
Where two stubborn humans poke the darkness with a stick and hope it blinks first. If you know something about a case, report it to the actual police before you come knocking on our door. After that, sure, tell us. We’re already in too deep anyway.

If you enjoy the show, or you just like supporting people who refuse to shut up, grab some merch at PaulGNewton.com. It keeps the lights on and the caffeine flowing.

And when your curiosity needs a breather from all the murder, jump over to my other show, Paul G’s Corner, where history proves that saying it can’t happen here usually means it already did.

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Two women vanish in Arkansas, sixteen years apart, and the details still don’t sit right.

In this episode, we examine the disappearance of 18-year-old Cleashindra Hall in Pine Bluff in 1994 and art teacher Mary “Jimmie” Bobo Shinn in Magnolia in 1978. Two very different lives. Two very different towns. The same outcome: unanswered questions and investigations that lost traction early.

We walk through what went wrong and why it mattered. What happens when the last known location is someone else’s home? When the only narrative comes from the people who controlled the space, and that space gets cleaned, rearranged, or repainted before police ever look? How does a routine house showing end with a dumped purse, cash untouched, and tennis shoes jammed beneath the pedals of an abandoned car?

We talk plainly about investigative blind spots: delayed entry to critical scenes, chain-of-custody failures that destroy potential forensic evidence, witness canvasses that never quite lock in, and the damaging assumption that adults simply “left.” We also place both cases in their time. Pine Bluff in the 1990s. Magnolia in the late 1970s. How race, social standing, and small-town dynamics shaped urgency, attention, and follow-through.

We also cut through the noise. Psychics. Private investigator versus police friction. Sketches so generic they could be half the state. Theories that don’t match the evidence don’t help anyone.

This episode is about what can still be done. Retesting with modern DNA methods. Re-entering prints and materials into national databases. Re-canvassing with the benefit of time and honesty. And talking openly about common-sense safety practices that didn’t exist when these women disappeared.

Cold cases don’t close themselves. People close them.

If these stories matter to you, help keep them alive.
Share the episode. Leave a review. And if you have information or resources, reach out.

To support the show and keep this work going, visit PaulGNewton.com for official Things I Want to Know merch and other projects.

And if you want more long-form storytelling beyond true crime, listen to Paul G’s Corner, where history, near-miss disasters, and forgotten moments get the same straight-talk treatment.

“Thank you for listening to Things I Want to Know.
You want these stories, and we want to bring them to you — so hit the support link and keep this circus, and the mics, alive.
Then do us a favor and rate and subscribe; it helps the show find more people like you — the ones who like their mysteries real and their storytellers unfiltered.
And if you want to wear a little of this madness, grab some Andrea-approved gear at paulgnewton.com.
We make t

Support the show

Things I Want To Know
Where two stubborn humans poke the darkness with a stick and hope it blinks first. If you know something about a case, report it to the actual police before you come knocking on our door. After that, sure, tell us. We’re already in too deep anyway.

If you enjoy the show, or you just like supporting people who refuse to shut up, grab some merch at PaulGNewton.com. It keeps the lights on and the caffeine flowing.

And when your curiosity needs a breather from all the murder, jump over to my other show, Paul G’s Corner, where history proves that saying it can’t happen here usually means it already did.

Get Bad Ass Merch!

Send us a text

Paul G and Andrea trace the violent trail of James “Red” Hall across wartime Arkansas, where a hellfire upbringing and a childhood head injury twisted a drifter into a man who turned small moments into real-life dead ends. A .38 revolver ties the bodies together. The chaos of World War II gives him cover. And Arkansas rushes him from confession to Old Sparky before most people even know who he is.

They follow the disappearance of Faye after a night out in Little Rock, the motorists who picked up the wrong hitchhiker, and the ballistics that stitched Hall’s spree together. From Stuttgart’s glider base to the thin police records of the 1940s, Paul and Andrea break down how a man like this drifted through the state unseen until his execution and the eerie death mask that lingered for decades.

It’s the kind of story Arkansas forgets — until someone finally tells it.

Grab a shirt at PaulGNewton.com.
And if you’re the mystery super-listener in Iowa… drop us a line. We might ship you the Walmart shirt.

“Thank you for listening to Things I Want to Know.
You want these stories, and we want to bring them to you — so hit the support link and keep this circus, and the mics, alive.
Then do us a favor and rate and subscribe; it helps the show find more people like you — the ones who like their mysteries real and their storytellers unfiltered.
And if you want to wear a little of this madness, grab some Andrea-approved gear at paulgnewton.com.
We make t

Support the show

Things I Want To Know
Where two stubborn humans poke the darkness with a stick and hope it blinks first. If you know something about a case, report it to the actual police before you come knocking on our door. After that, sure, tell us. We’re already in too deep anyway.

If you enjoy the show, or you just like supporting people who refuse to shut up, grab some merch at PaulGNewton.com. It keeps the lights on and the caffeine flowing.

And when your curiosity needs a breather from all the murder, jump over to my other show, Paul G’s Corner, where history proves that saying it can’t happen here usually means it already did.

Get Bad Ass Merch!