The Confession That Wasn't His to Give - Episode 101

The Officer Who Investigated His Own Crime: The Disappearance of Rachel Good

A 20-year-old mother of three vanished on the night of October 18, 2003, and by the next morning, the officer assigned to find her was the same man investigators now name as their only suspect. He stood at the missing persons desk, pen shaking in his hand, and took the report himself. How does a police department hand a case to the man who may have been the last person to see her alive?

In this episode, we explore the secret relationship between Rachel Good and Officer Adam Williams that nobody at the Elkton Police Department was supposed to know about, the love letters her grandmother found inside a kitchen drawer days after the disappearance, and the phone records showing Adam called Rachel almost every day — then never again after she vanished. Was Rachel's pregnancy the motive, or did something go wrong that night in the national forest? The forensic science and the phone records tell a story the grand jury heard for over a year and still could not finish.

Case Details

Victim: Rachel Good, 20, mother of three children and approximately 10 weeks pregnant at the time of her disappearance.

Date: October 18–19, 2003.

Location: Elkton and Harrisonburg, Virginia, USA.

Case Status: Unsolved homicide. No criminal charges have ever been filed against Adam Williams, the confirmed primary suspect. A civil wrongful death suit remains active and awaiting a trial date as of recording.

Episode Key Points

- Officer Adam Williams took Rachel's missing persons report himself, visibly shaking and barely able to hold the pen, before anyone at the department knew he had been in a secret relationship with her.

- Adam gave Rachel $1,400 in cash to end a pregnancy investigators believe was his — Rachel did not use the money for that purpose and had threatened to expose the affair to his wife.

- Phone records confirmed by Virginia State Police show Adam and Rachel called each other almost daily before her disappearance; Adam never called her number again after she vanished.

- A special grand jury met for over a year after the prosecutor declared indictment was "certain" — and adjourned without returning a single charge.

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