The whole story read like something out of a cold war thriller.

A bunch of outsiders descend on a sleepy town in the Ozarks

to steal its prized fish, undercover federal agents

who launch a three-year-long sting to crack open

an international crime ring.

So who exactly were these poachers?

I'd heard rumors, it might be the Russian mafia.

I'm Helen Holliman.

This is the Paddlefish Caviar Heist.

Get the podcast wherever you listen.

With summer around the corner, just days after Ronda's murder in 1990,

the large-scale investigation, unlike any other Jeff Davis County had ever seen,

involved police from three different jurisdictions,

as well as the Georgia Bureau of Investigation,

who had set up a temporary command center in downtown Hazelhurst.

A question hundreds of people, Ronda's classmates,

anyone who attended the senior party the night of her disappearance,

and the immediate and obvious persons of interest

in any murder investigation like this.

The ex-boyfriends, or anyone who might have had recent altercations with her,

but in hindsight, some feel the overabundance of investigators

and officers working the case may have actually been counterproductive.

...