Ten years have gone by since Matthew Jacobs’ death and yet, questions still linger about the events surrounding his passing.

In the Oxygen True Crime documentary Southern Fried Lies, now available for streaming on Peacock, those who were close to Matthew reminisce about the moment they discovered he had passed away in a car accident on January 19, 2015 — and that his will had left almost everything to his fiancée, Jordan Alexandra “Alex” Peterson.

A minimal part of his estate was allocated to his son, Jordan Jacobs, raising doubts about the will’s authenticity. This led to an FBI investigation into the will, which authorities claim Alex’s mother, Donna Herring, illicitly prepared, as the documentary reveals.

Ultimately, Alex and Herring, along with Herring’s sister, Marion Kinley, and her brother-in-law, John Wayne Kinley, Jr., were all sentenced by a U.S. District Court judge for their roles in a conspiracy to commit wire fraud in November 2019. 

But even still, questions remain about Matthew’s death and if it was really an accident as Camden, Arkansas locals assumed at the time. Now, the filmmakers behind Southern Fried Lies are hoping to get to the bottom of this mystery and give the Jacobs family a sense of resolution.

“Even law enforcement and FBI, they say if more evidence emerges, if people come forward — which sometimes they tend to do after a documentary like this comes out — they say we can reopen the case,” director Rachel Holbrook told Oxygen in an interview.

Southern Fried Lies filmmakers hope people come forward

Holbrook and executive producer Joel Chiodi noted that Camden locals continue to speculate about the death of Matthew, as well as two other Camden locals, because it’s not every day that people from the town die by accident. 

“The three deaths that occur in this film, they, for one reason or another, weren’t fully investigated right at the time that the death happened because they were just considered an accident, or there just weren’t resources or time,” Holbrook opined.

Chiodi added that he thinks there are too many “weird coincidences and weird things” involved, but it’ll take people coming forward for authorities to act. “There needs to be more information that comes out,” Chiodi said.

No one has ever been charged in connection with Matthew’s death, and authorities list his official cause of death as blunt force trauma resulting from the auto accident.

Donna Herring’s relationship with Matthew

Herring was convicted of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, but there’s more to her than her criminal record. Chiodi recognized that Herring was there for Matthew in the last years of his life, helping to bring the Deepwater Horizon survivor back into the community after his traumatic experience.

“She’s the one who said, ‘You can sit here with your $2 million or you can come work at our pest control company and be out and feel productive and feel like you’re part of society again,’ and all of those things I think happened with Donna’s guidance, and perhaps heavy hand,” Chiodi said.

To learn more about the events that unfolded in the small town of Camden, Arkansas, watch Southern Fried Lies on Oxygen and Peacock.