It was Day Three of the highly charged Rachel Crook murder trial. The well-liked 71-year-old had mysteriously disappeared from Crook’s Corner, her Chapel Hill fish store, in the late summer of 1951. Her body was discovered the next day outside of town. She had been brutally murdered, and initial reports were that she'd been raped. 

“Bold as Lions” is the fourth and final installment of the Who Killed Rachel Crook? podcast series. Hobart Lee, a bulldozer operator with a history of sexual assault charges, faced the death penalty if found guilty. In a surprisingly abbreviated trial, the jury had listened to a day and a half of testimony from the prosecution’s witnesses, and a day and a half of final arguments before they began deliberating Lee’s guilt or innocence. Like everything else about the trial, even the jury’s deliberations were fast-tracked. After a little over an hour, they delivered their verdict.

This series is narrated by 27 Views podcast producer and writer Elizabeth Woodman. Dramatization in this episode is read by Jim Parker, Randall Roden, Kent Davis, James Rainsford, Sam Coleman, Eryk Pruitt, John Bemis, James Rives, and Tom Rankin. Commentary is by retired North Carolina District Court Judge Alonzo Coleman.