WAYNESBORO – Waynesboro’s Joshua Vaughn entered every stage of his podcast’s development with low expectations, so its rapid climb into the top 10 on Apple podcasts’ chart left him fairly dumbstruck.
“Death County, PA” was born from Vaughn’s ongoing reporting for PennLive related to deaths within the incarcerated population at Dauphin County Prison. He has catalogued 22 deaths since the beginning of 2019 and questions whether there were more that went unreported.
“Despite it being a local story, it hits on some national trends,” he said.
Those themes, he said, include people dying under mysterious circumstances, questions about whether those in power are hiding information, and a county coroner who already had some notoriety via a TV series that aired from 2016 to 2018.
“It’s all happening right here,” Vaughn said.
A 2003 graduate of Waynesboro Area Senior High School, Vaughn was working as an investigative reporter at Harrisburg-based PennLive in August 2023 when negotiations started with the Wondery podcast network. The joint project between PennLive and Wondery received a green light in January 2024.
Vaughn participated in the early recording and production from The Culver Studios in California. He has done additional recording in Pennsylvania.
“We have thousands of hours of tape at this point,” he said.
Those recordings were packaged as six main episodes totaling three hours. Released first on the Wondery app for subscribers to have early access, the episodes are now being distributed weekly on Apple.
“Death County, PA” was at No. 8 on the overall chart as of this writing, while ranked No. 2 in the true crime series.
The first episode opens with the death investigation involving Ty’rique Riley, a 21-year-old whose manner of death was listed as natural in 2019. Dauphin County Coroner Graham Hetrick’s report listed the cause of death as cerebral vasculitis/encephalitis, thromboemboli and rhabdomyolysis.
Vaughn said he was happy to hear from Riley’s family’s lawyer that they were pleased with the storytelling. He said he has not heard from county officials but hopes they find the reporting to be accurate.
Vaughn said he continues his day-to-day reporting, but there are no immediate plans for a second season of “Death County, PA.”
