Alexandra Kitty joins True Crime, Authors & Extraordinary People to discuss Murder in a Sundown Town, the murder of Carol Jenkins, and the responsibility of telling the stories history too often leaves behind.
True crime is often built around a mystery. Who did it? What clues were missed? How was the case finally solved? But for author Alexandra Kitty, the heart of true crime has always been somewhere else.
“To me, it was always about empathy… it was always about the people who got hurt.”
In a recent conversation with David McClam on True Crime, Authors & Extraordinary People, Alexandra discusses the story at the center of her book, Murder in a Sundown Town: the 1968 murder of 21-year-old Carol Jenkins in Martinsville, Indiana.
Carol had arrived in Martinsville to sell encyclopedias door-to-door. It was her first day on the job. Before the night was over, she had been stabbed in the heart.
Her murder would remain unsolved for more than four decades.
But Alexandra’s conversation with McClam goes beyond the question of who killed Carol. It explores another, equally troubling question:
Why was Carol’s story so easy for people to overlook?
The Stories True Crime Chooses to Tell
Alexandra came to true crime first as someone fascinated by mysteries, and later as a journalist and researcher working behind the scenes in true crime television.
That experience gave her a perspective most viewers never see: how decisions are made about which cases become television episodes—and which don’t.
In the interview, Alexandra talks candidly about race, media portrayals, the structure of true crime programming, and the circumstances that can cause some victims and cases to receive attention while others disappear from public consciousness.
Carol Jenkins was a young Black woman murdered in a town where racism was not simply an abstract social issue. It was part of the danger surrounding her that night.
Her case became entangled in racism, sexism, gossip, silence, and ultimately decades of unanswered questions.
Murder in a Sundown Town brings Carol back to the center of her own story.
More Than a Cold Case
One of the most compelling parts of Alexandra’s conversation with McClam is her insistence that Carol should be remembered for more than the terrible thing that happened to her.
That distinction matters.
When true crime is at its best, the victim isn’t simply the opening scene of someone else’s mystery.
They were a person.
They had relationships, hopes, plans, personalities and futures that should have continued.
Alexandra’s work asks readers to look at Carol Jenkins that way—and to examine the social forces that allowed her murder to remain unresolved for so long.
The result is more than the reconstruction of a decades-old crime. It is an examination of whose stories receive attention, whose are forgotten, and why those choices still matter today.
Listen to the Conversation
In this episode of True Crime, Authors & Extraordinary People, Alexandra and David McClam discuss Carol’s case, racism, and media portrayals, why the murder received so little attention, the dangers surrounding Martinsville at the time, and the importance of keeping Carol’s legacy alive.
Listen to “Author Alexandra Kitty: Murder in a Sundown Town” on True Crime, Authors & Extraordinary People.
Read Murder in a Sundown Town
In Murder in a Sundown Town, Alexandra Kitty takes an in-depth look at Carol Jenkins’s final hours, the investigation that followed, and the racial and gender politics surrounding a case that remained cold for four decades.
It is the story of a murder.
But more importantly, it is the story of a young woman whose life deserves to be remembered.
Discover Murder in a Sundown Town by Alexandra Kitty from Genius Books.
