What Remains

Christian Leus

In 1939, 19-year-old Irene Taylor was brutally murdered in Altheimer, a small town in the Arkansas Delta. This is the first episode of a six-part podcast exploring the lingering legacies of the violence surrounding her death, including the racial violence perpetrated against her alleged killer by Altheimer’s white citizens and by the state justice system.

Framed by Leus’s personal relationship to Irene Taylor and to the case, What Remains contextualizes this true crime story within questions of family, memory, and landscape.

Christian Leus is a writer, editor, and documentarian currently pursuing her Master’s in Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi. Her work explores memory and violence in Southern landscapes. She serves as the Southern Studies Graduate Writing Fellow and works as an editor on the Oxford American’s podcast, Points South.