On a Saturday night in 2004, 22-year-oild Xavier Barnes can be seen exiting the Iron Spike Saloon in Opelika, Alabama, with a phone to his ear.

He looks one way. Then another. He nods at someone. 

And then he walks off camera and is never seen again.

For more than 20 years, police, online conspiracy theorists, and armchair detectives have posited that Barnes was killed for a drug debt by a connected drug dealer, that he was kidnapped by a jealous lover, or that he simply walked away from the life he was building as a promising psychology student.

In an attempt to piece together a mystery that has plagued Opelika and the University of Auburn for decades, this is the first comprehensive look at what really happened to Barnes that night.

This is Crime Adjacent episode 589: The Disappearance of Xavier Barnes, told live in Duluth during our tour.

OK, profilers. Can you solve an unsolvable murder?

Join host and serial killer survivor Chase Patrick live on stage for Crime Adjacent, the world’s biggest true crime podcast. Every week, at shows across the country, Chase reopens the most haunting, enduring mysteries from the grim underbelly of American true crime and challenges you to solve them.

“An atmospheric and immersive podcast where true crime and psychological thrillers intersect.” — Earworthy

From the Zodiac to the Rest Stop Killer, the Michigan Nightstalker to the Cross Country Killer, each episode unfolds like a real investigation — like the whip smart, nerdy love child of Murder, She Wrote and War of the Worlds — and dares you to unravel the mystery and provide justice for those who need it most.

It looks like a true crime podcast. It sounds like a true crime podcast. But what happens when the cosmology of our escapist entertainment looks terrifyingly like our real world? That’s Crime Adjacent. It’s a fully scripted, intimate, locked-room mystery that pulls back the curtain on our social obsession with true crime and what this fascination with humanity’s darkest impulses says about … us.

“Crime Adjacent is redefining the true crime genre.” — Podcasting Today

Crime Adjacent is written and performed by Mike Adamick, a former crime reporter turned contributor for NPR, The New York Times, and McSweeney’s. He uses degrees in sociology and gender studies from UC Berkeley, along with an obsession with criminal profiling, true crime, and Jessica Fletcher, to explore why people commit crimes, why we are enthralled with them, and who, ultimately, pays the price.

So listen closely, profilers. Because with every episode, a new crime is afoot and every detail matters.

It’s not crime. It’s Crime Adjacent. 

New live shows every Wednesday from theaters across America.

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Web site -- www.crimeadjacent.com

Crime Adjacent is produced & edited by Multitude.

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