WM3 journalist to speak at BRTC

Jared will be featured speaker at Frist Horison Lecture Series in March

ByJessica Rainwater

Black River Technical College

POCAHONTAS — Black River Technical College (BRTC) will host the third annual First Horizon Lecture Series featuring true crime author and award-winning investigative journalist George Jared on Tuesday, March 12 in the Randolph County Development Center.

There will be two presentations, one at 9:30 a.m. and another at 6:00 p.m.

Jared has covered murder cases and other types of news stories for nearly two decades. He wrote 100 news stories about the infamous West Memphis Three case which included a Death Row interview with Damien Echols.

Jared was the only journalist to attend every court date with

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the West Memphis Three. He profiled those experiences in his book Witches in West Memphis.

He is a Lyon College graduate and began his journalism career in 2004.

Months into his first job he started covering the Rebekah Gould murder case in Melbourne. He wrote about her case in two books The Creek Side Bones and Whispers in the Willows.

The books included his coverage of multiple death row executions and the infamous 1998 murders of the Elliott family by Billy and Chad Green.

Jared has been interviewed by numerous podcasts, newspapers, documentary filmmakers, and other media outlets through the years. They include The Murder Squad, Hell and Gone, Discovery ID's Still a Mystery, The Truth and Justice podcast, and the BBC's television series Life and Death Row and many others.

He was a featured speaker at Crime-Con in 2021 and 2022. He was interviewed and consulted on the films Paradise Lost III: Purgatory and West of Memphis, and the CW network’s documentary on Gould’s case. He also interviewed with “48 Hours” about his coverage of the Karen Johnson Swift murder.

He currently hosts a true crime podcast Diamond State: Murder Board,

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produced by Andrew Brown.

His latest book Silent Silhouette… Who killed Deborah Sue Williamson? co-written by Jennifer Bucholtz was released in late 2022.

He has won numerous firstplace awards with the Associated Press Managing Editors and the Arkansas Press Association. Through the years he’s written award-winning stories about true crime, business, politics, agriculture, entertainment, history, and more. He is a member of the Case Breakers, a national organization dedicated to solving some of the most notorious unsolved crimes including the Zodiac murders.

For more information about the event, contact Donna Statler, Dean for General Studies, by phone at (870) 248-4183, or by email at donnas@ blackrivertech.edu.

About Black River Technical College

Black River Technical College is a 2-year community college in Pocahontas and Paragould which offers associate degrees and certificates in general education and technical and career education.

The College houses one of the state’s law enforcement training academies and fire science academies. BRTC has 1,500 full- and part-time students.