Episode 38: Maria, or the Pyre Case with guest reader Dedee Pfeiffer

She Goes By Jane

In 1952, a man comes across the burned body of a woman in Cottonwood Gulch, just outside of Black Hawk, Colorado. He returns to this site several times before reporting what he found to the sheriff’s office, a fact that will immediately cloud his actions in suspicion. Without any identifying information, she becomes known as Maria to some, or more often as the Pyre Case for the way she was murdered. It’s been 72 years since she was murdered, and there are questions if she will ever be identified. You see, her remains are missing.

This week our guest reader is Dedee Pfeiffer. Dedee landed her first movie role in John Landis' film Into the Night. She went on to star in the horror cult classic comedy Vamp, in the film Red Surf, and made numerous other appearances in films such as Falling Down, and Tune in Tomorrow. Dedee played numerous roles on multiple television shows for the past 40 years such as her role as a series regular on Cybil as Cybil Shepherd's daughter Rachel. Pfeiffer and the rest of the cast were nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for outstanding performance by an ensemble in a comedy series. Pfeiffer went on to star in the series For Your Love and guest starred in iconic shows such as Simon and Simon, Murder She Wrote, Ellen, Seinfeld, Friends, two CSI series, ER, and Supernatural to mention a few. Dedee won awards and nominations as an actor and producer on her short films, The Tub and Laredo. She also appeared in the award-winning film L.A., I Hate You. Pfeiffer took a 10-year break from Hollywood to earn her Master of Social Work degree from UCLA, and returned to acting as a series regular on the ABC drama Big Sky for the past 3 years. She is a proud single parent who has raised her two boys and is grateful to be recovering out loud in the hopes to help reduce the social stigma and shame that still surrounds those suffering with their disease of addiction. This is where her podcast “Down with Dedee” comes in.

Join us on Patreon! Your support helps us continue to shine light on America’s missing and unidentified women. Flashlight level members also get access to additional content like Behind the Poem, a weekly conversation about the episode’s featured poem, and our monthly true crime/mystery book club. Our May 2024 selection is the fiction book Fruit of the Dead by Rachel Lyon.

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To buy Aimee’s book, Doe, it’s available now with University of Akron Press, at Bookshop.org, and Amazon.