(Clemmons to Monroe 1 hour and 36 minutes)
Profiling the most twisted criminal case in North Carolina
Trigger warning: content contains subjects such as murder, abuse and police brutality
Charlotte Nightclub waitress, 26-year-old Kim Medlin, was on her routine drive home after work around 3 a.m on March 29, 1997, however, Medlin would never return to her doorstep. At 4 a.m., Medlin’s red Jeep was found, running on the side of the road. The only thing missing from her vehicle was her license. Medlin’s disappearance should have been no surprise, being that a few weeks before her disappearance, Medlin urged cops to help her when a driver followed her too closely and started honking while she was on her way home from work. Fearing this was a customer following her, Medlin begged the Monroe Police Department to ensure she got home safely. The Monroe police informed the field officers on duty to look out for Medlin’s red Jeep around 3 a.m., the time she would usually be taking her route home. This tactic failed horribly as Medlin was nowhere in sight.
Their first suspect was Medlin’s husband, Bridger Medlin. Monroe officer Josh Griffin reported seeing his truck on the road, around the same time his wife had disappeared. However, her husband was found innocent when an ATM camera caught him leaving the area where he lived to come to talk to cops at the scene where Medlin had gone missing.
The next day, Medlin’s body was found in a deserted field; her neck was broken and she had been strangled, beaten and stomped on, leaving what was the only clue, a boot print. There had also been signs of her hands being restrained. Robbery was not considered to be a motive, since all of her expensive jewelry was left untouched. The cops and the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) reevaluated what happened to the kidnapping turned murder of Medlin. The first question they had was, why would Medlin be pulled over on the road, especially after her fear before? The answer was brought to light after a witness came forward. The night of Medlin’s disappearance another driver had spotted Medlin’s Jeep. She had been pulled over by a cop, which was very confusing to the witness since he felt Medlin had done nothing wrong to be pulled over. The witness described the car to be a Monroe police officer vehicle. This is where the boot print came into the picture. The forensic analyst determined that the perpetrator had a shoe size of eight or nine, the brand was Thurgood Company, and had a “V” pattern on the tread. The investigators looked into every officer-issued boot that matched this description and discovered only three officers had those exact shoes, although only one was off duty that night, which happened to be a familiar name to the case, Josh Griffin.
Griffin was 24 years old and had been with the department for only a year, but already had a bad reputation. He was known for making perverted comments about women to other officers. None of these comments were reported until after Medlin’s death, when other officers spoke up after hearing Griffin was a suspect. They reported hearing him comment about Medlin’s appearance and took an inappropriate interest in her. Women of Monroe came forward with complaints about Griffin’s harassment towards them as well.
Another thing Griffin was known for was having a messy vehicle, yet when the investigator searched, it was spotless. When police searched his residence there was no sign of the boots, when asked about them, Griffin said he had thrown them away due to them being damaged. Investigators were left hopeless with no evidence leading Griffin to be the killer, although they had one last thing they could try, his phone’s location. Griffin’s phone location put him right at the scene of the crime at the same time Medlin was killed. Griffin had just got off his shift and had made a phone call for another driver to a tow truck company, this is the call that puts him at the scene of the crime. Griffin then got back in his patrol car. He was in a restaurant parking lot where he watched Medlin drive by, witnesses later reported seeing him pull Medlin over. Griffin was later confirmed to be on duty when the alert to be on the lookout for Medlin’s Jeep was issued. With all of this, Griffin was arrested for first-degree murder and kidnapping. The story of what happened that night finally emerged when investigators solved the case. The prosecution and investigators believed Griffin saw Medlin drive by and decided to pull her over. He took her license like a routine traffic stop but then invited Medlin into his vehicle, where he tried to take advantage of her, which she refused. This caused him to rage and panic, making him handcuff her and drive to a field, where she tried to get out, but he caught her and began stomping on her, killing her. The story Griffin had was that he had owed drug dealers money and he could pay off the debt if he pulled over Medlin and killed her, however, this was proven to be false. Griffin is now spending life in prison; he later admitted that he did kill Medlin and threw away his shoes and flushed her license down the toilet. Medlin’s case was featured in the TV show “Forensic Files,” which shed light on her brutal murder by a Monroe police officer.
