Marietta podcaster Sean Kipe explores mysterious death of Natalie Jones

Sean Kipe spent many years as a musician in Los Angeles and was briefly the guitarist for one-hit wonder band the Calling, known for the 2001 pop song “Wherever You Will Go.”

The Hagerstown, Maryland, native and now Marietta resident pivoted in 2014, moving to Atlanta and becoming a location scout for productions such as “Hidden Figures,” “Spider-Man: Homecoming” and “Ozark.”

While scouting for an HBO series, Kipe heard about the Dixie Mafia, a loose federation of criminals who wreaked havoc throughout the Southeast from the 1960s through the 1980s. He became fascinated by the history of Georgia “enforcer” Billy Sunday Birt, suspected murderer of dozens of people. Kipe parlayed his interest into a successful 2020 podcast called “In the Red Clay,” with help from Birt’s eldest son.

“Being in the entertainment industry, I knew how to tell a story,” Kipe said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “It came naturally to me. I did everything. I interviewed people. I researched, pulled records. I wrote all the episodes, recorded the music.”

Kipe showed both Birt’s vicious side and his gentler personal life. “It was a weird juxtaposition,” Kipe said. “He did horrible things, but he loved animals and he loved his kids.”

Kipe dove into more true crime podcasts, all with Georgia ties. His latest is about Natalie Jones, a 27-year-old Heard County mom of two sons who disappeared July 5, 2020, and was found dead three months later in her hot pink Chevrolet Cavalier in a wooded area in Franklin.

His six-episode podcast, “The Truth About Natalie,” debuted Monday with two episodes. He explores her background and theories about how she died.

“This story got a lot of coverage, but nobody had done a real narrative,” he said. “When I first heard about it, I knew nothing about the story. A Facebook page about the case had 11,000 people on it. That’s a lot.”

While the police concluded Jones had died of a drug overdose, “there is still mass suspicion something nefarious happened,” Kipe said.

The police found drugs and a rolled-up dollar bill in her vehicle. But her smartphone was gone and never found. So were her shoes and her belt. Some of her teeth were missing as well.

“She had some pretty unsavory people in her life,” Kipe said. Ultimately, “this was intriguing and not cut and dried.”