In 2016, a pair of skiers collided on the slopes of Utah’s Deer Valley Resort. Retiree Terry Sanderson said the crash left him with brain damage and emotional pain, so he filed a $300,000 lawsuit against the other skier: A-list celebrity Gwyneth Paltrow. But Paltrow said Sanderson crashed into her . Rather than settle, she defended herself in court with an army of high-priced attorneys and expert witnesses. What might normally be a low-profile personal injury case turned into a televised cause c...
Feb 08, 2024•44 min
In 2000, the daughter of Dubai’s leader, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, ran off to England. Though her father was seen as a progressive champion of women’s rights in the Arab world, Shamsa claimed her father subjected his children to harsh punishment for disobedience. The princess was then forcibly taken from British soil by Sheikh Mohammed’s men, sparking a diplomatic crisis. After spending nearly four years in prison for her own escape attempt, Shamsa’s sister Latifa also fled the coun...
Feb 05, 2024•47 min
Emmilee Risling was last seen in 2021 on the Pecwan bridge. Hoopa Valley authorities were unable to determine whether the troubled woman threw herself into the Klamath River or met with foul play. Emmilee was just another in the growing number of indigenous men and women who vanished from tribal lands in the Pacific Northwest. All their stories are different. Some deal with addiction, mental health, or domestic violence. But what they all have in common is the same location in Northern Californi...
Feb 01, 2024•39 min
In 2000, a deputy was killed and another wounded in Atlanta’s West End while trying to serve an arrest warrant. Authorities said the gunman was Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, the leader of the local mosque and caretaker of the predominantly Muslim neighborhood. In the years before becoming Imam Jamil he’d been known as H. Rap Brown, a leader in the 1960s Black Power Movement accused by the FBI of inciting violence. West End residents did not think their spiritual leader was behind the fatal shooting an...
Jan 29, 2024•48 min
Growing up, Alex Estrada knew there was something important about the phone calls his father would receive from a man in prison. He learned his dad and Calvin Jones were accused of having their business partner killed in 1973. They dropped the charges against Rosalio Estrada, but Jones got a life sentence. Already navigating a toxic relationship, Rosalio’s possible culpability confirmed Alex’s belief his father was a bad man. But was he a killer? Alex sets off to scrutinize the fifty-year-old mu...
Jan 25, 2024•45 min
In 2015, Aaron Quinn told Vallejo police his girlfriend had been kidnapped in the middle of the night by home-invading frogmen. Detectives thought he made up the far-fetched tale to hide her possible murder. But days later Denise Huskins turned up at her parents’ house with a similarly elaborate story of abduction and sexual captivity. Citing its parallels to the movie “Gone Girl,” investigators accused the couple of a hoax. But miles away, a rookie detective uncovered an out-of-place piece of e...
Jan 22, 2024•47 min
After missing for six years, Miles Naslund was discovered at the bottom of an Alberta pond, his body welded inside a metal toolbox. Police arrested his wife Helen who said she shot him in 2011 while he slept after enduring three decades of abuse. But the full extent of her sons’ involvement in the killing remains murky. And Helen’s sentence was much harsher than that of other Canadian women who’ve used the Battered Woman defense. From The Globe and Mail comes the podcast “In Her Defence.” Host J...
Jan 18, 2024•46 min
TV producer Benita Alexander thinks the work of a transplant surgeon will make for a great story. Dr. Paolo Macchiarini is saving lives by implanting the first artificial tracheas, and Benita soon finds herself in a secret relationship with the charismatic medical pioneer. Once they’re engaged, Benita grows suspicious of his tales of famous friends and promises of a new life in Europe. But worse, Macchiarini has been obfuscating the results of his surgeries, treating patients like human guinea p...
Jan 15, 2024•44 min
As a child, Tracyrachel Bern’s father would beat her if she asked about the 1971 death of her baby brother Matthew. Her parents would later tell her what they told police: that the two-year-old girl threw the infant from his crib. After living years with the guilt, Tracyrachel came to question details of the accident and whether her abusive father, Jan Barry Sandlin, may have killed the baby and blamed it on her. She set off on a four decades long journey to learn the truth and get justice for M...
Jan 11, 2024•41 min
It was a crime story that shook Boston. The survivor of a fatal carjacking said his pregnant wife was murdered by an unknown Black man - triggering an unprecedented police crackdown in Black neighborhoods still dealing with the racial legacy of bussing. The city’s spotty track record on civil rights fueled police, politicians, and the media too eager to believe a fiction wrapped in racism. But even after it was revealed to be a hoax - and that Charles Stuart staged the death of his wife - the da...
Jan 08, 2024•45 min
In 1989, Boston was stunned by a dramatic carjacking. Charles Stuart said his wife Carol was shot in the head and he was gravely wounded by a Black man who robbed them. While the media fought each other for the latest details, police launched an aggressive and prolonged manhunt in the adjacent Black neighborhoods. Within the Black community, the harassment and heavy handed arrests opened fresh wounds in a city with a checkered past on race relations. But police were so willing to believe Stuart’...
Jan 04, 2024•52 min
In 2018, Micah Holsonbake’s family said the 34-year-old banker went missing from Bakersfield, California. Two weeks later, a friend of Micah’s reported his 20-year-old girlfriend Baylee Despot also vanished. Just weeks after that, another friend, 38-year-old entrepreneur James Kulstad, was gunned down in a quiet neighborhood. Their families believed the fates of the three were more than a coincidence. The three were loosely connected in a world filled with drug addiction, sex trafficking, and il...
Jan 01, 2024•49 min
There was something for everyone on the TV in 2023. We saw documentaries that dug deep into issues of crime and punishment. There were several true stories told in real time by the people in the middle of them. But there were also shows that made us laugh…and sometimes sing. But which TV shows and documentaries truly stood out? The crime writers will reveal their lists for the Best TV of 2023. Lara's Top Ten Great Photo, Lovely Life Navajo Police: Class 57 Victim/ suspect Reality Only Murders in...
Dec 28, 2023•1 hr 4 min
This year brought us podcasts that examined interesting characters - from the super famous to the terribly infamous. There were the meticulously investigated stories of people caught in a system stacked against them. And it provided us with many series told by hosts with very personal connections to the crimes they covered. But which titles truly stood out? All four crime writers present their top 10 podcasts for 2023. In Crime of the Week: A lot of nerve swerve . Lara's Top Ten Earwitness Suspe...
Dec 25, 2023•1 hr 4 min
International photojournalist Amanda Mustard returns home to pursue an open family secret. As her grandfather Bill Flickinger nears the end of his life, Amanda investigates the decades of sexual abuse he inflicted on his young chiropractic patients. Mustard looks at how Flickinger avoided accountability for decades and reaches out to her grandfather’s many victims. They include her mother and sister, but the effort to find forgiveness between them threatens to tear the family apart. In the raw H...
Dec 21, 2023•49 min
The Troubled Teen Industry comprises the wilderness programs, therapeutic boarding schools, and group programs desperate parents turn to when their kids are struggling with mental health, substance misuse, and behavioral issues - whether real or perceived. Often, kids are escorted to these programs by so-called Goons - transport agencies hired to take kids away from home, often against their will in the dark hours before dawn. But are these Goons a last-resort tactic for families at the end of t...
Dec 18, 2023•48 min
Amina Arraf grew a following for her blog recounting her life as an openly gay woman in Syria, a nation where homosexuality is illegal. She was revered by the queer community internationally, started an online romance, and drew attention from journalists covering the Arab Spring. Her legions of fans were shocked when Amina was arrested by the government and disappeared. But Amina’s descriptions of life under the Syrian regime didn't ring true to those in the small gay community of Damascus. As i...
Dec 14, 2023•41 min
In 2021, police in Oregon discovered the mummified corpse of Amy Carlson. Her body had been transported and adorned by the members of her small cult “Love Has Won.” The woman they called Mother God had been emaciated and her skin had turned blue. Her followers believed Carlson was the reincarnation of Joan of Arc and Marilyn Monroe, and communed with a group of Galactics led by dead celebrities like Robin Williams and John Lennon. The cult sustained itself through online donations and selling mi...
Dec 11, 2023•45 min
Journalist Tristan Redman had no idea his wife's great-grandmother Naomi Dancy had been shot in the eyes by her brother in a 1937 murder-suicide that happened in the house next door. He wondered if it was connected to the spooky incidents in his bedroom or claims from the new owners that it was haunted by a ghost with no face. Naomi’s husband had narrowly escaped a bullet during the crime, but modern researchers questioned whether it was he who might have killed his wife and brother-in-law. Redm...
Dec 07, 2023•49 min
Mommy-influencer Katie Sorensen went viral with a story of a couple who attempted to kidnap her kids in a craft store. When Sadie and Eddie Martinez saw their photos in the news, they knew they’d been racially profiled and falsely accused in the latest so-called “Karen” incident. As it became clear Katie had exaggerated the event, police charged her with filing false reports. The criminal case turned into a litmus test on the online phenomenon of white women accusing people of color of criminal ...
Dec 04, 2023•45 min
Screenwriter Gary DeVore vanished in 1997 driving through the Mojave Desert. He’d been writing an action film with input from CIA agent Chase Brandon. His wife Wendy wondered whether Gary's disappearance and his missing script were linked to the CIA and whether authorities were trying to scuttle the case. And even when his body and SUV were discovered a year later in the California Aqueduct, she still was convinced things didn’t add up. The newest season of “Witnessed: Fade to Black” looks into ...
Nov 27, 2023•50 min
A fight among children caught on video led to the arrest of eleven Black students, charged for not stopping the fight. Kids as young as 8 were cuffed and booked into jail, even though Tennessee law says juveniles can’t be detained for minor infractions. Two attorneys were shocked to learn that over a decade officials in Rutherford County arrested hundreds of children for small violations and left them in jail cells for days. The police, the prosecutors, and the detention center all ignored the c...
Nov 20, 2023•51 min
In 2014, Catherine Hoggle returned home without her three- and two-year old children. Though their bodies have never been recovered, Hoggle was placed in a psychiatric facility to treat her mental illness and restore her competency for trial. But Maryland law states if a defendant is still deemed incompetent after five years, their charges will be dropped. With the deadline approaching, both prosecutors and the children’s father accuse Hoggle of faking it, trying to run out the clock and avoid p...
Nov 16, 2023•45 min
In 1995, Deputy Sheriff William Hardy was shot while moonlighting at a Birmingham hotel. An informant told police the shooter was Toforest Johnson. Even though ten people saw him in a nightclub at the time of the crime, detectives believed they had their man. But after Yolanda Chambers’s statements were discredited, prosecutors turned to Violet Ellison who said she overheard Johnson confess on a three-way phone call. Years later, even the prosecutor has doubts about the so-called “earwitness” an...
Nov 13, 2023•46 min
In 2005, Kevin Jones discovered his girlfriend bludgeoned to death in her Russellville, Arkansas apartment. Police zeroed in on Jones, thinking the murder of former beauty queen Nona Dirksmeyer was an open-and-shut case. Despite a strong alibi and critical evidence pointing to an unknown assailant, prosecutors would not alter their theory of the case. And years after a jury would decide Jones’s fate - and DNA from the scene was linked to Nona’s violent neighbor - many would not change their mind...
Nov 09, 2023•45 min
The Navajo Nation is the only tribe that runs its own police academy, training officers for an understaffed force patrolling the largest reservation in the US. The latest class of about two dozen Navajo recruits must go through a rigorous 28 week boot camp to prepare them for the rigors of the job. But Class 57 begins to dwindle, with recruits dropping out or being dismissed for misconduct. Yet those who graduate find themselves unprepared for the emotional reality of patrolling a reservation fi...
Nov 06, 2023•48 min
A serial killer father! Truckers! Bunk beds! Prison letters! BEARS! This podcast seemed to have everything, except maybe a point. In this CWO Classic, we'll revisit our October 22, 2018 review of "Happy Face." For exclusive podcasts and more, sign up at Patreon . Sign up for our newsletter at crimewriterson.com.
Nov 02, 2023•19 min
Grad students James Monsees and Adam Bowen envisioned a new technology, one that would give smokers like them the hit of nicotine they craved without the carcinogens of a combustible cigarette. After a decade of refining vape products, they finally achieved commercial success with Juul. But instead of reaching smokers wanting to quit, Juul’s biggest customer base were young people attracted by their fruity flavors and extra pack of nicotine. Instead of being an alternative to Big Tobacco, the co...
Oct 30, 2023•52 min
The 1970 shooting of a Wisconsin man should have been an open-and-shut case - but it led the victim’s niece on a decade’s long search for the truth. On this CWO Classic we’ll revisit our epic April 12, 2021 review of MANslaughter. For exclusive podcasts and more, sign up at Patreon . Sign up for our newsletter at crimewriterson.com.
Oct 26, 2023•32 min
When Maya Lin Sugarman was cleaning out her grandmother’s home, she discovered some screenplays written by her late uncle. Galen Yuen was in a Chinese street gang before becoming a small-time actor. Maya had no idea the script about his life story was made into the 1997 movie “Crazy Six.” By the time Hollywood was finished with the semi-biographical thriller about an Asian crack addict looking to rip off some Oakland drug dealers, it featured Rob Lowe trying to steal plutonium from Eastern Europ...
Oct 23, 2023•48 min
