Behind the Headline

A Knoxville woman with a history of drug addiction and homelessness thought she found a haven when Sean Finnegan and his girlfriend, Rebecca Dishman, opened up their Oak Ridge home to her in late 2019. It was anything but. Eight months later, police found Jennifer Paxton's body under a bed in the apartment. Investigators would soon learn she had been tortured, strangled to death and placed in a freezer. In this episode of Behind the Headline, we'll hear how the case unfolded through the journalists who covered the crime and trial.

In March 1993, a historic blizzard hit East Tennessee. In this Behind The Headline, Robin sits down with Todd Howell and Gene Patterson to recall the event.

In 1985, a Knoxville family trusted a man they knew to watch their 7-year-old daughter for a short time. That would end in a horrifying crime that called for the death penalty. In this episode of Behind the Headline, we revisit the murder of young Paula Dyer, the decades-long legal fight that followed and the 2018 execution of Billy Ray Irick.

Just days after Thanksgiving 2016, officers doing a wellness check made a gruesome discovery inside a home in a quiet West Knox County neighborhood. A couple was found dead and dismembered. Investigators said what they found inside that "house of horrors" was unlike anything they'd ever seen.

In 1986, a series of grisly discoveries across Knoxville shook the city. Body parts, placed in bags and suitcases, were discovered in different parts of the area. At Mead's Quarry in South Knoxville, a man stumbled across what he thought was part of a mannequin in a trash pile. He soon realized it was no mannequin, but a man's torso. The days that followed led to calls from across the area of similar horrifying discoveries, eventually leading investigators to literally piece together the victim's case and arrest two people who were part of a love triangle that soured. On this episode of Behind the Headline, we look back at how the case unfolded from the eyes of two journalists who covered it, and hear from them about how this was unlike anything they had ever covered before or after.

Before she became a headline, Kassi Trimmier was a 3-year-old child whose disappearance shattered her family and stunned the Knoxville community. In 1992, she disappeared under circumstances that immediately raised alarm. It left her family desperate for answers and the community on edge. On this episode of Behind the Headline, we hear from the journalists who covered the search for the child, the arrest of a suspect and his eventual release, the discovery of Kassi's body three years later, and the guilty plea from the person who killed her.

Former medical examiner Dr. Randall Pedigo's actions made him the center of a criminal case in the mid-1990s that exposed sexual assault, led to a violent shooting at his home, the collapse of a long medical career and a courtroom reckoning. We walk through the timeline, from the first allegations by victims to the day of the gunfire at Pedigo's house, his violent arrest, removal from office and trial.

In 2007, a 911 call from a North Knoxville home set in motion a case that would grip East Tennessee and raise questions about love, betrayal and violence. What began as a complicated love triangle involving husband and wife Eric and Erin McLean ended in the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Shawn Powell, a former student of Erin. We go beyond the breaking news to hear from the journalists who covered the McLean case and how it unfolded over the years, the relationships at the center of it, and how a tangled personal life became the backdrop for a murder that still resonates years later.

The Nov. 2016 murder of 16-year-old Emma Walker stunned East Tennessee and drew national attention. In this episode of Behind the Headline, we go beyond the interviews and video to hear from the journalists who covered this story over several years.

On Dec. 4, 1989, three bank robbers holed up in a home on Inskip Drive, and gunshots started flying. Hear from photojournalists and reporters who braved real danger.

On Nov. 28, 2016, Sevier County was forever changed by devastating wildfires that claimed the lives of 14 people. We look back on how the coverage unfolded that day.

On a typical morning in 2005, a 14-year-old opened fire on his school administrators at Campbell Co. High School. We explore the tragic day and trials that followed.

Thirty years ago, Christa Gail Pike tortured and killed an acquaintance on the University of Tennessee Ag campus near Tyson Park. Pike and her 17-year-old boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, suddenly turned on Colleen Slemmer, cursing her and taunting her. Pike slashed Slemmer's neck with a box cutter. Satan worshipers both, they carved pentagrams into her. When Slemmer tried to run away, Pike and her accomplice chased the girl down and resumed the attack. Pike slammed a piece of asphalt repeatedly into Colleen's head, fatally fracturing it. As the victim lay dying, Pike reached down and plucked a bit of bone from the left side of her skull as a souvenir. Revisit the 1995 Knoxville Job Corps Murder, how it horrified a community, the trial that followed and the long shadow this case has cast over East Tennessee.

A prominent nurse, a respected Tennessee prosecutor, a disgraced judge, two deaths and three trials with different outcomes: We dig into the story of Raynella Dossett Leath from the eyes of two longtime Knoxville court reporters who witnessed the many twists and turns.

It's been one year since Hurricane Helene ripped through East TN and Western NC -- a storm that left lasting scars on the people and the places hit hardest. We revisit some of the most impactful stories from the storm, and speak with journalists who were on the ground covering both the heartbreak and hope that emerged.

Two young lives were lost in 2007 in one of the most horrifying murder cases in East Tennessee. Nearly 19 years later, their families continue to fight for Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom. WBIR anchor Robin Wilhoit sat down with two longtime Knoxville journalists, Jamie Satterfield and John North, to talk through the scars this case has left on the victims' families, East Tennessee as a whole, and even themselves.

On April 6, 1997, six young people kidnapped the Lillelid family and shot the father, mother and their two young children in rural Greene County, Tennessee. Only 2-year-old Peter survived. No one knew his identity, so doctors wrote his name down as John Doe. On our first episode of Behind the Headline, we revisit the events of that night nearly 30 years ago from the eyes of a reporter who covered the tragedy, and hear from Peter himself at different points in his life as we followed up with him over the decades.