Hello listeners, I'm your host Amara, and this is Black Girl Gone, a true crime podcast.

On this episode of Black Girl Gone, I tell the story of Jessica Kern,

who was 18 years old when she was found brutally murdered on August 1st, 2000,

and Mayfield, Kentucky. Two days before, Jessica told her parents she was having friends

over to her new apartment and asked if they could watch her seven month old son.

But the next day when they arrived at her apartment to pick her up for church,

Jessica was not there. Two days later, her body was found behind the local middle school.

She had been murdered and set on fire. It would take years before police were able to figure out

what happened to Jessica that night and find out who was responsible. This is Jessica's story.

This week's story is a very complicated story. There's so much information, so much speculation,

and for some, still a lot of unanswered questions. The brutal murder of an 18-year-old girl

in a small town in Kentucky was shocking, but the years that followed exposed how scandal,

corruption, and murder are not just big city problems. I will warn you that some of the details of

this case are disturbing. Mayfield, Kentucky is a small town located in Greaves County,

about three hours from Louisville, not far from the Tennessee border. It's where Jessica had grown

up. She was born November 29, 1981, to her parents Joe and Jean Kern. She had two brothers and

sister. For the most part, it appears that Jessica grew up in a pretty normal household and had a

typical small town childhood. When she was nine, the family moved to a ranch-style home on some

farmland about eight miles outside of Mayfield. That's not clear what Jean did for living, but Joe

was a firefighter in Mayfield. Described as friendly and outgoing by her father, he said that Jessica

would help organize family dinners, and she enjoyed taking pictures and filming her brother's

sporting events. After middle school, where she ran Cherrick and was a cheerleader, Jessica

...