A pair of Stanford students turned their senior project on making a new kind of clean e-cigarette into the multi-billion dollar company known as JUUL. But a product envisioned as a way to give adults an alternative to smoking soon contributed to a new epidemic of teens getting hooked on nicotine. Though public outrage, bad press, and legislative action has largely gutted JUUL’s market share, new vape products have taken its place - many with dubious quality and questionable ingredients. And whil...
Sep 02, 2024•49 min
For the first time, network TV’s biggest true crime personality brings his signature style to podcasting. We’ll rewind to our September 30, 2019 review of the quirky classic from Dateline NBC, “The Thing About Pam,” with a "Date with Dateline" cameo appearance. For exclusive podcasts and more, sign up at Patreon . Sign up for our newsletter at crimewriterson.com.
Aug 29, 2024•31 min
An Iraqi lawyer reaches out to an American investigative journalist about a massacre that killed family members and others in his hometown. In 2005, after an IED attack on their convoy, US Marines stormed a village and executed 24 men, women, and children. The servicemen claimed they were returning fire from insurgents, but the evidence collected - including secret photographs - suggested a war crime was committed. Despite international condemnation of the Haditha massacre, none of the Marines s...
Aug 26, 2024•55 min
A man awakes to find his one-night stand has been murdered. Can a down-on-his-luck lawyer win his freedom? We’ll go back to our July 22, 2016 review of HBO’s Emmy award winning “The Night Of." For exclusive podcasts and more, sign up at Patreon . Sign up for our newsletter at crimewriterson.com.
Aug 22, 2024•44 min
A group of young girls prepare for a special Daddy-Daughter dance with their incarcerated fathers at a Washington, D.C. jail. For most, it’s the only time they’ll be able to touch or hug their dads until they’ve completed their sentences. The inmates must first complete a course on the meaning of fatherhood and contemplate their relationships with their children. But after the tearful last dance, the men grapple with how to be part of their daughters’ lives either in or out of jail. The Netflix ...
Aug 19, 2024•50 min
An intelligence analyst and a cunning assassin play a sexy game of cat and mouse. We’ll do a classic rewind to our June 8, 2018 review of BBC America’s “Killing Eve” starring Emmy winners Sandra Oh and Jody Comer. For exclusive podcasts and more, sign up at Patreon . Sign up for our newsletter at crimewriterson.com.
Aug 15, 2024•29 min
As he nears the end of his life, an aging hitman makes a confession to podcast host Marc Smerling. In 1978, he traveled to Rome to help the Italian mafia assassinate Pope John Paul I to cover up wrongdoings by the Vatican bank. Anthony Raimondi says he got into organized crime because his father was a ruthless mob enforcer. Instead of going to prison for killing a rival, he was recruited into a secret commando squad in Vietnam, and later instructed mobsters how to poison the Pontiff. The only pr...
Aug 12, 2024•50 min
Who’s ready for a “number two”? America’s favorite true crime teenagers return to investigate who is the Turd Burglar. We’ll go back to Oct 7, 2018 for a classic rewind to our review of the Peabody Award-winning comedy series “American Vandal" season 2. For exclusive podcasts and more, sign up at Patreon . Sign up for our newsletter at crimewriterson.com.
Aug 08, 2024•39 min
Their parents think they need tough love to get off drugs or improve their behavior. That’s how many adolescents wind up in a facility for so-called troubled teens. Billed as schools or camps, staff members often use violence to maintain discipline or mete out punishment. For decades, these programs resulted in physical and sexual abuse, deaths, long-lasting trauma, and few consequences for staff or management. Only now, after a series of high-profile incidents and celebrity awareness, attention...
Aug 05, 2024•48 min
Was a cold war rock song actually a piece of CIA propaganda? We’ll rewind the cassette to our May 25, 2020 review of "Wind of Change " from Spotify, Pineapple Street, and Crooked Media, with host Patrick Radden Keefe. For exclusive podcasts and more, sign up at Patreon . Sign up for our newsletter at crimewriterson.com.
Aug 01, 2024•33 min
In 2009, after her release from the LA County Sheriff’s Department on a minor arrest, Mitrice Richardson walked into the night and vanished. Her naked, mummified body was discovered months later in a remote Malibu Canyon creek bed. Authorities said the cause and manner of her death were undetermined. Mitrice’s family accused the department of botching the investigation, mishandling her remains, and ignoring signs of foul play. They also failed to get answers from the last person who saw her aliv...
Jul 29, 2024•44 min
A therapist discovers the mysterious clinic where she works is treating war vets by erasing their memories. We’ll go back to our Dec 30, 2016 review of Gimlet’s “Homecoming” starring Catherine Keener and Oscar Isaac. For exclusive podcasts and more, sign up at Patreon . Sign up for our newsletter at crimewriterson.com.
Jul 25, 2024•27 min
In 2011, more than a dozen high school girls in Le Roy, New York began displaying Tourette-like twitches and tics. Health officials could not find a physical or environmental cause for the symptoms, and believed the teens were suffering from conversion disorder. But some rejected the implication their illness was all in their heads, insisting a medical cause was to blame. Was Le Roy High School the site of the latest chapter in the history of mass hysteria? From Wondery and Pineapple Street Stud...
Jul 22, 2024•50 min
It was a water park focused on crazy rides and little concern for safety...and Rebecca has the scars to prove it. We’ll return to our Sept 21, 2020 review of “Class Action Park.” For exclusive podcasts and more, sign up at Patreon . Sign up for our newsletter at crimewriterson.com.
Jul 18, 2024•24 min
While conducting a routine firearms background check, a federal agent hears a rumor about Thomas Gibison that dated back to high school. He’d bragged that he and a friend shot a Black man to earn a skinhead spider web tattoo. Investigators get accomplice Craig Peterson to confirm 15 years earlier they killed a random pedestrian in Philadelphia. But with no name, date, or open case to work from, the agents are at a loss as to how to solve this crime. They’re able to match the details to the unsol...
Jul 15, 2024•46 min
A pair of FBI agents teams with a researcher to interview the most dangerous serial killers to create a new investigative tool: criminal profiling. We’ll revisit our Oct 27, 2017 review of Netflix’s “Mindhunter” For exclusive podcasts and more, sign up at Patreon . Sign up for our newsletter at crimewriterson.com.
Jul 11, 2024•45 min
In 1989, 23-year-old Kevin Hughes was killed when he was ambushed by a gunman along Nashville’s famous Music Row. Hughes had been troubled that the country music record chart he worked for was accepting money under the table to manipulate the rankings of up-and-coming artists. Hughes’s opposition to the dirty practice put him in the crosshairs of powerful independent music promoters who paid for chart positions to milk money from their unsuspecting clients. Detectives wondered if Hughes was exec...
Jul 08, 2024•50 min
After seeing a report about facilitated communication, a student of professor Anna Stubblefield asked if she could help his disabled brother. With support for his arm and hand, Derrick Johnson could type on a small keyboard. With Stubblefield’s assistance, the nonverbal man could express a wide range of thought, feelings, and academic promise. Over time, the pair fell in love and started a sexual relationship. But the Johnsons speculated Stubblefield was manipulating his communication, guiding h...
Jul 04, 2024•44 min
In 1982, restaurant manager Michael Moore shot accountant Jordan Rasmussen, then laundry van driver Buddy Booth who discovered the body. Though he escaped the firing squad, Moore sought advice from the sentencing board on how he might someday win his release from prison. The murders left gaping holes in the lives of the victims’ families, but when they learned Moore was an exemplary prisoner who was contrite about his crimes, some saw the killer in a new light. They began a process of forgivenes...
Jul 01, 2024•44 min
As California’s gay community began flourishing in the 1970s, a conservative politician pushed through a statewide ballot question: should gay and lesbian teachers be banned from California schools? State Senator John Briggs told voters children were at risk of molestation and indoctrination in the classroom. Though their political influence was small, queer activists began to mobilize against a growing anti-gay countermovement. If Proposition 6 passed at the ballot box, it would be more than a ...
Jun 27, 2024•42 min
In May 2021, Belize police superintendent Henry Jammott was shot in the head with his own service weapon. Investigators arrested socialite Jasmine Hartin, who claimed the gun accidentally fired while Jammott was teaching her to handle it. Many in Belize assumed Hartin would get special consideration because her common-law husband was the son of British billionaire Lord Michael Ashcroft. Instead, Hartin believed the Ashcrofts weren’t using their considerable clout to help her - they were doing al...
Jun 24, 2024•48 min
In 2019, authorities in California searched the sea for Scottish tourist Kim Avis, who was last seen going for a swim. BBC journalist Myles Bonnar remembered Avis as an eccentric street vendor from his hometown. But American police believed Avis faked his disappearance to avoid criminal prosecution for sexual assault back in Scotland. An international manhunt failed to turn up the fugitive. But a thousand miles away, a Colorado woman was growing suspicious of her new friend with the indiscernibl...
Jun 20, 2024•44 min
For fifty years, George Coulam has owned the Texas Renaissance Faire, which he runs with an iron fist. Seeking to fill his remaining years with romance, the 86-year-old is considering selling the faire. His earnest general manager Jeff Baldwin believes “King George” will someday pass the reigns to him. For reasons unclear, the mercurial owner sours on his loyal employee, forcing him to share responsibility with a former elephant trainer. Meanwhile, a kettle korn vendor with deep pockets makes a ...
Jun 17, 2024•49 min
In 2015, the gentlemanly world of professional curling was rocked by a new breakthrough. A team debuted the Hardline broom, one whose brushes were incredibly effective at guiding the gliding rock across the ice to the target with astonishing precision. Opponents bristled, claiming the Hardline broom provided an unfair advantage. Then a competing manufacturer unveiled an even better broom, one that practically allowed players to steer the rock. In a sport operating mostly on handshakes, this broo...
Jun 13, 2024•48 min
Workers discover a young woman has overdosed in a hotel room filled with drugs and a video camera, but the police never take any action against the older man who was with her. After getting a tip, LA Times investigative reporter Paul Pringle learns the man is Doctor Carmen Puliafito, the dean of USC’s medical school, who’s been living a secret life of hard drugs and coercive sex with the victim. Pringle and his colleagues are stonewalled by Pasadena police and the administration at USC. But once...
Jun 10, 2024•45 min
What do some of the most prominent Indigenous celebrities, politicians, and cultural leaders have in common? They’re not actually affiliated with the tribes they claim to have ties with. More and more so-called “pretendians” are being unmasked, accused of fabricating their native heritage. Some fake their ancestry to accumulate power, reshape their public image, or obtain benefits meant for Indigenous people. While motivations vary, risk of exposure or accountability remains low. In “Pretendians...
Jun 06, 2024•43 min
Writer Rebecca Godfrey returns to her parents’ home in Vancouver to develop a book about local teens in a foster home. One of the troubled girls she focuses on is soon connected to the disappearance of her frenemy, Reena Virk, last seen fleeing a group of teens who chased her from a party. When Reena’s body is discovered, Rebecca inserts herself in the teens’ world to find the real story for her book. Meanwhile, Rebecca’s childhood friend, Officer Cam Bentland, seeks her own answers as to what h...
Jun 03, 2024•47 min
Two decades ago, reporter Tonya Mosley got an unexpected phone call from a man claiming to be her nephew by a half-sister she never knew about. Antonio Wiley said his mom vanished in Detroit in the 1980s when he was just 14-years-old. When Anita Wiley’s body was identified in 2020, Tonya and Antonio teamed up to retrace her life and examine why she died. The journey changed the way the journalist looked at her hometown, her family, and herself. From APM Studios and TMI Productions comes the late...
May 30, 2024•43 min
Behind the scenes, years before Robert Durst’s hot mic murder confession made it to air, investigators in the Susan Berman case had been reviewing evidence uncovered by the producers of “The Jinx.” And as America grew transfixed with the 2015 TV series, the man connected to three high-profile crimes felt the heat. Once the millionaire fugitive was captured, prosecutors began building their legal case by tying together two crimes. They argued Berman knew Durst was behind the disappearance of his ...
May 27, 2024•47 min
How did America law enforcement get to its present state of near-unaccountability? An examination of its history shows policing has its origins in running slave patrols, displacing indigenous tribes, and coercing organized labor. Once used as a tool by the powerful to maintain social order and protect their personal property, modern police have become a power unto themselves. With the help of “tough on crime” politicians, law enforcement has only grown in strength and resources. And despite an o...
May 23, 2024•44 min
