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349. Dead Girls Don't Talk: The Case of Micki Jo West

·57 min·3 clips

A girlfriend says Marvin Irvin intercepted Mickey at the bus stop and later told her, “dead people don’t talk.”

1. Our True Crime Podcast covers the disappearance and murder case of Mickey Joe West in St. Joseph, Missouri. 2. Hosts Jen and Cam frame the story, and Edward October narrates the main case because he says the crimes on the show scared him. 3. The episode asks what happened to 19-year-old Mickey Joe West after she left home on September 11th, 1979. 4. Mickey left her mother Bernita’s house in a nurse’s aid uniform, with a khaki coat, white purse, glasses, and a four-block walk to the bus stop. 5. Ruth West tells the hosts that her husband, Marvin Lee Irvin, had been abusive and had already forced her out of a motel room in Elwood, Kansas. 6. Investigators believed Mickey may have been pressured to reveal Ruth’s location because she had been supporting Ruth during the divorce. 7. Ruth said Mickey had received threatening phone calls and feared Marvin, so she planned to carry a hammer to work. 8. Police searched Ruth’s home and Irvin’s residence, but they found no immediate physical evidence linking him to Mickey’s disappearance. 9. Irvin gave an alibi with Billy Hayes, passed one polygraph, and saw his story later challenged when the friend recanted. 10. The case stayed a missing-person investigation for years because prosecutors lacked Mickey’s body and could not file murder charges. 11. The most striking development came from anonymous letters mailed to police, newspapers, a shopping mall, and KQTV in St. Joseph. 12. One letter said, “I was with Marvin Irvin when he killed Mickey Joe West and hid the body,” while another used cutout magazine letters and referenced Psalms 6 and 11.5. 13. The FBI examined the letters and concluded they were likely genuine, noting the writer seemed afraid and knew details never released publicly. 14. Sandra Hemme also claimed Mickey had been killed in a ritualistic cult sacrifice near the Missouri River, but investigators found no evidence for that account. 15. Hemme’s own history mattered because she had been convicted of killing St. Joseph librarian Pat Jeske, and her 2024 conviction was overturned after more than 43 years. 16. The episode then turns to Marvin Lee Irvin’s background, including his birth in St. Joseph on May 4th, 1949, his brief time with the St. Joseph Police Department, and later assault and weapons convictions. 17. The hosts describe a later breakthrough involving other victims, forensic evidence, and testimony from former girlfriends and ex-wives who said Irvin confessed to Mickey’s killing. 18. The tone stays conversational and skeptical, with Jen and Cam reacting in real time while Edward October narrates the case history in a warning-heavy style. 19. Listeners who follow missing-person cases and cold-case breakthroughs will get the most from this episode. 20. Listeners who want light true crime or no graphic violence should probably skip it.

As heard by us

A grim, evidence-led case that turns one disappearance into a broader trail of proof.

Mickey Joe West's disappearance is treated as part of a wider case, and the episode keeps widening the frame as the evidence builds. It moves in order through a blood-smeared pickup truck, DNA testing that linked the blood to both women, the November 9, 1990 arrest of Marvin Lee…

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Why you'd press play

If you want one disappearance that opens onto a wider murder investigation, this is your episode.

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