JACKSON, Tenn. (AP) – Jackson native Brandon Barnett started podcasting about his own journey in the music industry a couple years ago and began a transition last year into a new genre of podcast.
“I started listening to true crime podcasts and got hooked on content like ‘Serial’ and ‘Up and Vanished,’ and I saw those made a difference,” Barnett said. “‘Up and Vanished’ was about a case in Georgia, and two arrests were made within months after the podcast started. That was 12 years after the case started.”
His interest in the genre and his notice of how media seemed to focus on certain cases and not others – particularly one in West Tennessee – drove him to begin his own, “Searching for Ghosts.”
The first season of the podcast focused on Cayce Lynn McDaniel, the 14-year-old girl who went missing in Milan in August of 1996 without a known trace. The case had faded from the public eye over a couple decades; at the annual vigils dwindled to the point Cayce’s family and friends declined to try to have vigils for four years until this past August when The Vineyard Church in Milan was filled with hundreds of people to remember and pray for Cayce.
“I think the podcast definitely gave Cayce’s story exposure it hadn’t had in a while,” Barnett said. “I’ve been told through various contacts that FBI, TBI, Gibson County Sheriff and Milan Police are all active on the case again, and it’s more active now with leads and stuff than it was in 1996 when she first went missing.