This program includes a bonus episode of Case Closed, a true-crime podcast based on Secrets of a Marine’s Wife, that brings Erin Corwin’s story to life through firsthand interviews conducted by author Shanna Hogan. Available wherever you listen to podcasts.

Award-winning journalist and New York Times best-selling author Shanna Hogan tells the true story of a young Marine wife whose illicit affair ended in tragedy. 

In June 2014, 19-year-old Erin Corwin was living a quiet life in Twentynine Palms, California, expecting her first child with her husband, US Marine Corporal Jon Corwin – until the day she drove off into the desert and never returned. As temperatures climbed into the hundreds, friends and family teamed up with local law enforcement in a grueling search of Joshua Tree National Park. Nearly two months after her disappearance, Corwin’s body was found at the bottom of an abandoned mine shaft, a homemade garrote wrapped around her throat.  

Detectives quickly turned their attention to the Corwins’ next-door neighbors: fellow Marine Christopher Lee and his wife. The couples had leaned on each other for support, but it soon became clear that Chris and Erin’s relationship had developed into a whirlwind romance that consumed them both and left the paternity of Corwin’s baby in question. Lee told investigators he’d gone out hunting the day of Corwin’s disappearance, but his claims of innocence soon began to crumble. And while Corwin was researching baby names, Lee was reportedly searching the internet for ways to dispose of a human body.