I Was Never There

Thirty-four years ago, Marsha “Mudd” Ferber vanished without a trace from Morgantown, WV. Mother-daughter duo Karen and Jamie Zelermyer are going back to the land to figure out what the hell happened. From Wonder Media Network, I Was Never There is as much true crime show as it is an ode to Appalachian countercultural movements of the 1970s and 1980s. Named a 2022 Tribeca Festival Official Selection for audio storytelling, the series premieres June 2022.

In 1961, Norma and Mel Gabler were a quiet couple living in Longview, Texas. One day, they noticed some factual errors in one of their sons’ textbooks. What began as a small complaint morphed into a multi-decade crusade to shape what children of Texas ​​— and therefore the country — read in their textbooks...

Karen and Jamie sit down with Zayd Ayers Dohrn and his mom Bernardine Dohrn of Crooked Media’s Mother Country Radicals to look back at the process of making a show so deeply rooted in personal family history. Jamie and Zayd interview the moms to learn how they felt reliving their radical pasts and what it was like to make a podcast with their children. And in a time that feels so similar politically to the turbulent decades Karen and Bernardine lived through - how do they find hope?

We're bringing you another podcast from Wonder Media Network that we think you'll love: White Picket Fence. White Picket Fence interrogates the structures of inequity affecting women since America’s founding. On the newest season, host Julie Kohler investigates mothers as a political force — how motherhood has been utilized for political gain and why the identity of “mother” remains so politically potent. In the fall of 2020, a group of mothers gathered around a kitchen table...

Hey listeners! We've sharing the first episode of another podcast we think you'd love: As She Rises. On the latest season, we're traversing the Colorado River Basin – understanding water through a new lens and centering stories of resilience in the face of the drought...

I Was Never There launches with the range of theories swirling around the disappearance of Marsha “Mudd” Ferber. We meet our hosts, Jamie and Karen Zelermyer and learn who they are in relation to Marsha's story, and why they've decided to try to find out what really happened to her now.

Through interviews with Marsha’s friends, Jamie and Karen detail everything that is known about the days leading up to and following the disappearance. They read through the police notes which leaves them with more questions than answers. Why didn’t the detectives do better follow up with one of the primary suspects? And, why didn’t anyone investigate the role Marsha’s drug business might have played in all of this?

We go back to Marsha’s early days as a suburban housewife and independent bookstore owner in New Jersey. We follow her and her cohort of Back-To-The-Landers to rural West Virginia, where she built a commune called the Mudd Farm, and gained a new name: Marsha Mudd.

Marsha’s bar was much more than a place to grab a drink. It was ground zero for a cultural revolution, a haven of progressive politics, free expression, and creativity. In an episode brimful of music, we hear recollections from the musicians, teens, and bartenders of two extraordinary community projects that would ultimately be Marsha’s swan song and establish her as a folk hero.

In a swirl of partial truths and murky theories, Jamie and Karen find one person who believes he knows exactly what happened to Marsha. What Jamie and Karen find out sounds like a plot line from an action movie, not what they expected to hear about someone Karen considered a close friend. Did Marsha really just get in over her head?