Send us a text

A quiet weekday morning at a family fun center shouldn’t end in gunfire. Yet in 2006, 39-year-old mother and co-owner Doris Worrell was found shot inside John’s Sports Park in Douglas, Georgia—no forced entry, no theft, no witnesses. The scene looked staged, the timeline felt too neat, and the community was left with grief and rumors but few answers. Nearly two decades later, everything changes. We revisit the strained marriage, the live-in nanny working in Tube Town, and the “errands” that put John out of the building just before Doris was killed.
We follow the trail from Coffee County to Florida to Costa Rica, where John eventually lived with the deported nanny, Paula Yarbury. The optics raised eyebrows for years, but hard evidence lagged—until Georgia’s cold case unit pulled the file in 2025 and pushed the investigation across borders. With new cooperation abroad, investigators secured an arrest in Missouri and brought John back to Georgia to face charges of malice murder, felony murder, and conspiracy. Court filings suggest a fear of losing custody, a carefully maintained alibi, and a plan that points to recruitment behind the scenes. The alleged triggerman remains unnamed, but the indictment outlines the bones of a conspiracy.
We share what’s known, what remains sealed, and how a case that once felt frozen found momentum through persistence. Along the way, we talk about staged crime scenes, the pitfalls of early assumptions like “robbery” or “gang retaliation,” and why time can be an ally for truth seekers. For Doris’s children, now grown, the possibility of real accountability is finally within reach. Press play to hear how a small-town homicide stretched across continents, why a cold case unit matters, and what to watch as the legal strategy pivots to venue and jury bias. If you find this kind of deep-dive reporting valuable, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review so others can find it too.

https://people.com/doris-worrell-husband-charged-decades-after-killing-11741838
https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/24/us/cold-case-murder-husband-fled-nanny
https://gbi.georgia.gov/cases/unsolved-homicide/doris-worrell