True Believer: The Unsolved Murder of Elizabeth Mackintosh

Coming December 19th...Early on the morning of March 26, 1990, Elizabeth Mackintosh was murdered on the campus of Covenant Theological Seminary in Creve Coeur, Missouri. To date it's the only unsolved murder in the city’s history. True Believer examines the circumstances surrounding Elizabeth's murder and speaks to the people affected by it as they, and the men suspected in her death, search for answers.Visit truebelieverpodcast.com to learn more.Send us an an email to contact@truebelieverpodcast.com

Elizabeth Mackintosh was killed in the chapel basement at Covenant Theological Seminary. The right tour guide will point out the spot, but Covenant hosts no memorial for her. And it’s not like Elizabeth was a stranger passing through… she was a well-respected student at the time she was killed. It’s been 33 years since her death, so why are some people still finding out about it for the first time?  Because for all practical purposes any traces of her, and the fact that a murder even took place, have been wiped from Covenant’s institutional memory. In this first episode of our series we take a high-level look at Elizabeth’s murder, the characters in the story, and what a small but growing number of PCA pastors and members think should be done about it. Think of this as the 30,000 foot overview. Then in the episodes to come we’ll zoom in on several key aspects of the case.What really happened in the murder of Elizabeth Mackintosh? God only knows the answer.Show Notes- Covenant Seminary’s December 5th statementVisit www.truebelieverpodcast.com to see additional materials related to each episode or to get in touch with us.

About a dozen people were around Elizabeth on the morning of her death, but no one saw anything incriminating. Ruth and TJ walk through the morning of March 26, 1990, minute by minute, examining who was where and when. We hear from former Covenant students and staff who were on the campus that morning, and also from two retired Creve Coeur Police detectives, George Hodak and Dennis Spoerry, as they describe the first day of the murder investigation.Visit www.truebelieverpodcast.com to see additional materials related to each episode or to get in touch with us.

Police quickly understand that they have responded to a homicide at Covenant Theological Seminary, not a suicide (as the original 911 call said). As the investigation begins, police become interested in one man, a fellow student of Elizabeth Mackintosh. A choice made that day continues to haunt investigators.Click here to review the transcript of this episode.Visit www.truebelieverpodcast.com to see additional materials related to each episode or to get in touch with us.

The Covenant community reacts to Elizabeth’s death. Police travel around the country to investigate leads. Then they find out important information might have been saved by seminary lawyers and stored in a barn… or might be lost forever.Visit www.truebelieverpodcast.com to see additional materials related to each episode or to get in touch with us.

We’ve spent this series so far examining what happened to Elizabeth Mackintosh, but in this episode we focus on Elizabeth herself. Who was she? What was she like? What was she doing at Covenant? And what were her plans for the future?Visit www.truebelieverpodcast.com to see additional materials related to each episode or to get in touch with us.

To appease everyone dissatisfied with our every-other-week release schedule, we're going to start putting out some bonus content on the weeks in between. Today we start with the leftovers from our interview with theologian and former Covenant Seminary professor, Jerram Barrs. He talks about his backstory, his time a L'Abri in Switzerland, some additional thoughts about Elizabeth and the environment of Covenant Seminary around 1990, and the history of Grace and Peace Fellowship (the church he helped found around 1970).Enjoy it while it lasts. There's only so much usable content available to release as bonus material, so no promises you'll get one of these every in-between week going forward. But we'll do our best.Visit www.truebelieverpodcast.com to see additional materials related to each episode or to get in touch with us.

So far we've spent this series examining the details of Elizabeth Mackintosh's murder and the subsequent investigations. We'll come back to more of that later, but in this episode we focus on the way that the murder was handled by Covenant Seminary. Some people at Covenant felt free to talk about Elizabeth. Others felt that Covenant administrators wanted her murder hushed up. But everyone seems to agree that more should be done to remember and honor her.Visit www.truebelieverpodcast.com to see additional materials related to each episode or to get in touch with us.

In today's bonus content you'll hear Ruth and TJ's first interview from June 2023, about Ruth's background and interest in Elizabeth's case, and some of their personal feelings about what they'd uncovered up to that point.

In this episode we zoom out to examine the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), the denomination of Covenant Theological Seminary. What does the reaction to Elizabeth's murder tell us about how Christian institutions handle tragedy? And how should they talk about Elizabeth going forward?Visit www.truebelieverpodcast.com to see additional materials related to each episode or to get in touch with us.More info from this episode...• Read the Domestic Abuse and Sexual Assault (DASA) Report here.• Luke Davis: Check out his Cameron Ballack detective series, one of which is loosely based on the murder of Elizabeth Mackintosh.• Julie Roys: The Roys Report does reporting on the American Evangelical church• Liam Adams: Religion reporter for the The Tennessean• Katherine Spearing: founder of Tears of Eden, a nonprofit supporting survivors of spiritual abuse. She also hosts the Uncertain Podcast, which did an episode in July of 2023 about Elizabeth.

In this week's bonus content you'll hear the rest of our interview with Liam Adams, religion reporter for The Tennesseean. Liam talks about some specific cases of abuse and misconduct the PCA has dealt with, his reporting on the Nashville Presbytery, the PCA’s 2022 Domestic Abuse and Sexual Assault report, also known as the DASA report, the PCA’s Standing Judicial Commission (which is the PCA’s internal court), his approach on which stories are worth covering, how the PCA compares to other Evangelical denominations in the larger cultural conversations about abuse, and other topics. 

After Elizabeth's death, police ask a suspect, Michael, to sit for a polygraph exam. Reluctantly, he agrees, hoping that it will help clear his name. Ruth and TJ examine why that didn't happen.Click here to read a transcript of the polygraph clips heard in this episode.Visit www.truebelieverpodcast.com to see additional materials related to each episode or to get in touch with us.

Today's bonus content release happened to coincide with the 34th anniversary of the murder of Elizabeth Mackintosh, so we wanted to take a moment to honor and remember her.Read the full text (and a brief history) of "The Sands of Time Are Sinking" here.Visit www.truebelieverpodcast.com to see additional materials related to each episode or to get in touch with us.

A couple months after the murder of Elizabeth Mackintosh, Michael left Covenant Seminary (under "duress" as he described it) and moved his family to California. But his contentious relationship with Covenant has continued to this day. Using letters sent back and forth between Michael and Covenant, we examine what went wrong and how there's not much anyone could do about it.Visit www.truebelieverpodcast.com to see additional materials related to each episode or to get in touch with us.

For this week’s bonus content we have the rest of our two interviews with lawyer Ryan Davidson, whom you’ve heard in the last couple episodes. Ryan reached out to us in February because he had some critiques of how he thought we were characterizing Covenant Seminary, in terms of how they have or haven’t responded over the years, and the legal advice they might be following around that issue. We asked Ryan if he’d be interested in doing an interview about that and other topics, and he agreed. Ryan’s voice turned out to be incredibly valuable for providing some legal context around the fallout from Elizabeth’s murder, and he really added a lot to those last couple episodes.Visit www.truebelieverpodcast.com to see additional materials related to each episode or to get in touch with us.

Michael and his family left Covenant's campus in May of 1990, but the stigma of Elizabeth Mackintosh's murder followed them the rest of their lives. In this episode we hear from Michael's two oldest children, Karl and Kirsten, as they talk about the effect the murder had on them.Here are some resources if you or someone you know needs help with a domestic violence or child abuse situation.National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-SAFE or text “START” to 88788Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline : 1-800-4-A-CHILDVisit www.truebelieverpodcast.com to see additional materials related to each episode or to get in touch with us.

Sandra was one of the few unmarried, female students at Covenant in 1990. And she had a class *with* Elizabeth, which turned out to be incredibly influential on the rest of her life. She also went to Grace and Peace Church with Egon Middleman, whom we’ve briefly mentioned before in this series. Sandra’s story provides a fascinating look into what it was like to be a female student at Covenant Seminary in 1990, and the effect that Elizabeth’s murder had on the people that were there.Visit www.truebelieverpodcast.com to see additional materials related to each episode or to get in touch with us.

We’ve spent this series mostly focusing on Michael, Elizabeth Mackintosh’s supervisor on the Covenant Seminary house cleaning staff. In the eyes of the police, Michael was the prime suspect in Elizabeth’s death, literally from Day One. But he wasn’t the only person they looked at.In any large group of people, even at a seminary, there are going to be some people with checkered backgrounds. But as the police started looking into possible suspects, and Covenant began its own internal investigation, some startling things came to light. Not only about people’s pasts, but things that were happening on campus around the time of the murder. We also hear from another retired Creve Coeur detective who begins to talk about his own theories of the case.Visit www.truebelieverpodcast.com to see additional materials related to each episode or to get in touch with us.