Her mother’s dying wish was that her daughter complete her memoir about her childhood in Nazi Germany. That’s how reporter Suzanne Rico learned a secret about her grandfather. Years before Robert Lusser was an American rocket designer, he was the German engineer who invented the V-1 flying bombs that rained down on London. Suzanne’s grandmother was killed when Allied planes dropped bombs on their secluded farmhouse, a revenge attack her elderly aunts believe was targeting Lusser. Suzanne and her...
Dec 12, 2024•47 min
San Diego’s McKamey Manor drew fame as a boundary breaking, interactive haunted house - not one filled with ghosts and goblins - but one where visitors are tied up, waterboarded, or buried alive. Now located in Tennessee, attraction goers are saying the manor is going too far with its physical and mental abuse. Owner Russ McKamey disagrees, pointing to its rabid online following for his no charge, “extreme haunt” experience. But its murky waiver forms, military-grade stress techniques, and intim...
Dec 09, 2024•48 min
Karen Falasca was the last person to see her sister Denise alive before she was murdered in 1969. Haunted by the tragedy, Karen spoke to podcaster Anthony Scalia about her five decade search for Denise’s unidentified killer. Scalia retraced Karen’s investigation into likely suspects. But the sister remained skeptical of the police’s findings. And as a terminal illness threatened to take her life, Karen made one request of Scalia: finish her work and learn the truth behind Denise’s murder. In the...
Dec 05, 2024•46 min
In 1971, Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo conducted an experiment with college students to evaluate behavior in a mock prison. Within days, the guards were abusing their power and mistreating the prisoners so badly the study was shut down early. The “Stanford Prison Experiment” was heralded in academia and in pop culture as a landmark study into the corrupting power of authority. But a re-examination of Zimbardo’s methods questions whether he manipulated the subjects into those behaviors, c...
Dec 02, 2024•49 min
When researchers found that providing stimulants to hyperactive children improved their behavior in school, educators, pediatricians, and drug manufacturers helped build interest in identifying and treating a new condition: Attention Deficit Disorder. Some saw it as a breakthrough in treating learning disabilities. But the implications of medicating children drew a backlash from advocates. Plus, doctors could not agree on concrete tools for identifying ADHD, prompting suspicions of over-diagnosi...
Nov 28, 2024•53 min
Speaking to an historian, Dolours Price discussed her life as a volunteer in the Provisional Irish Republican Army. Beginning in the 1970s, Dolours and her sister, Marian, convinced its operatives, including leader Gerry Adams, to let them fight in their guerilla war against British troops in Belfast. Throughout The Troubles, the sisters were part of a secret IRA unit whose missions included robbing banks, blowing up cars, and making traitors disappear. But decades later, as Adams negotiated an ...
Nov 25, 2024•50 min
Through her Facebook friends in the London Sikh community, Kirat Assi met a charming man named Bobby Jandu. Though a series of health problems and other entanglements kept him away from Great Britain, the two began a long term, online romance. But their virtual relationship took a turn as Bobby became more cruel and controlling. When Kirat learned he was back in the UK and living with his ex, her confrontation with him ended in confusion. In the Netflix documentary “Sweet Bobby: My Catfish Night...
Nov 21, 2024•42 min
American ambassador Kate Wyler believes the Prime Minister orchestrated a false flag operation to rally the nation and thwart a Scottish secession movement. As British forces hunt the Russian fixer behind the attacks, Kate takes a risk hiding a politician with inside knowledge of the plot. Kate sets aside her attraction to the Foreign Secretary to help expose the PM. Meanwhile, her politically-savvy husband, Hal, tries to convince his reluctant wife to embrace the offer to replace the sitting Vi...
Nov 18, 2024•44 min
Set in a Chicago housing project, the 1992 horror movie “Candyman” features a deadly ghost who can be summoned by chanting in a bathroom mirror. But some plot points were inspired by a real life robbery homicide in which the killer broke into an apartment through a hole in the medicine cabinet. A reporter found the flawed design of the bathroom walls were a contributing factor into Ruthie Mae McCoy’s 1987 death. The exposé raised questions about City Hall’s indifference to violence in the projec...
Nov 14, 2024•41 min
Just before the producers of “Grey’s Anatomy” could dismiss writer Elizabeth Finch for mediocre work, she revealed she had a rare form of cancer. Finch drew on her experience to write some powerful episodes for the medical drama. Finch crafted acclaimed storylines based on her own struggles with health, assault, sexual harassment and stalking. Hollywood was shocked when it was revealed Finch was faking. She’d taken other people’s real life trauma and claimed it for her own, stringing along those...
Nov 11, 2024•49 min
A white hat hacker provides journalist Carl Miller with backdoor access to a page on the dark web offering the services of a hit man. The site is just a scam, but the transactions identify more than 100 people who are in real life danger from someone motivated to harm them. Though the buyers are anonymous, Miller feels an obligation to find the targets and warn them someone is willing to pay to have them killed. Miller’s team is met with skepticism from the authorities, but many would-be victims...
Nov 07, 2024•50 min
Looking to get a break in show business, struggling actress Sheryl Bradshaw appears on “The Dating Game.” The first two bachelors are either shallow or lascivious, but bachelor number three has an easy charm that makes him the clear favorite. But Rodney Alcala is more than a smooth-talking photographer looking for love. He’s spent the past decade murdering unsuspecting women and eluding detection. How could Sheryl - or the TV audience - know she was about to go on a date with a serial killer? Th...
Nov 04, 2024•49 min
A Hollywood studio courts Charles, Oliver, and Mabel to make a star-studded movie based on their hit podcast. But Charles is shaken by another murder in the building: his longtime stunt double, Sazz, was killed in his apartment by a sniper, and her body burned in the incinerator. Before she died, Sazz had been poking into something about the first season of the podcast. The fatal shot came from the west side of the Arconia, occupied by an odd collection of residents with a secret to hide. Writer...
Oct 31, 2024•51 min
Comedian Gary Vider had a great childhood story about him and his father sneaking into scores of games at Madison Square Garden posing as a reporter for Sports Illustrated Kids . But the charming tale belied a deeper truth. Manny Vider was a prolific con artist, with a never ending stream of business scams, insurance fraud, and other schemes that eventually tore his family apart. Twenty-four years later, now a father himself, Gary set out on a quest to locate Manny. His goal was to process the e...
Oct 28, 2024•46 min
Filmmakers follow officers in a troubled Michigan city to confront the challenges of policing, race relations, politics, and what it means to be a community. We’ll go back to our 2018 review of the documentary series “Flint Town.” For exclusive podcasts and more, sign up at Patreon . Sign up for our newsletter at crimewriterson.com.
Oct 24, 2024•37 min
Former prosecutor Paul Bergrin made a name for himself as an aggressive defense attorney, handling difficult cases involving celebrities and hardened criminals in New Jersey. But as his reputation grew, so did suspicions about the lengths he’d go to get his clients off the hook. An FBI investigation found that Bergrin wasn’t just representing his unsavory clients; he was directing their criminal activities. They learned the lawyer was overseeing drug trafficking, directing an escort service, and...
Oct 21, 2024•44 min
In 1992, relatively stable patients at the VA hospital in Columbia, Missouri were dying on one ward’s overnight shift at an alarming rate. A review of the charts showed nurse Richard Williams had been present for most of the Code Blues, but he denied being responsible for the deaths. Whistleblowers accused VA administrators of keeping the situation quiet and retaliating against staff who tried to stop it. Even the FBI seemed to slow-walk the investigation, leaving grieving families to wonder whe...
Oct 17, 2024•45 min
After fishermen reel in a severed arm off of Key West, demoted police detective Andrew Yancy grows suspicious of the victim’s young widow and her mysterious new boyfriend. Yancy thinks Eve’s husband Nick might not be the victim of a boating accident, especially as more people wind up dead. Meanwhile, the couple have been scooping up property and displacing residents on the nearby island of Andros. Neville approaches the sultry Dragon Queen to put a curse on the speculators who stole his shack. Y...
Oct 14, 2024•47 min
New York’s police department says its mission is to protect and serve, but its long forgotten origin story says something different. Before they carried weapons and wore uniforms, the city’s loose affiliation of constables and watchmen hunted escaped enslaved people and made arrests for a fee. New York eventually formed a police force, one less focused on solving crime and more to serve the mayor’s political interests. In the 150-plus years that followed, police reforms and counter reforms shape...
Oct 10, 2024•52 min
A small-time Atlanta numbers runner named Chicken Man is given a big-time opportunity: throw a party for all the bosses of the Black mafia after Muhammad Ali’s comeback fight. But a group of robbers holds up the partygoers, making off with nearly a million dollars in cash and jewelry. Detective JD Hudson is tasked with finding the violent robbers - that is unless “Black Godfather” Frank Moten finds them first. Chicken Man finds himself in the crosshairs of both the police and the mob, needing to...
Oct 07, 2024•47 min
Oregon death row inmate Jesse Lee Johnson always proclaimed his innocence in the 1998 murder of Harriet Thompson. Seventeen years later, with little fanfare, authorities released Johnson from prison instead of retrying him for the crime. But if the case was too weak to pursue a conviction, how was Johnson arrested in the first place? Why did Salem police rely on recanted witness statements and badly documented evidence, while ignoring DNA placing other people at the crime scene? And was Johnson’...
Oct 03, 2024•53 min
A young woman from a posh English family sought clarity about her sexual orientation from therapist Anne Craig. She convinced Fipsi her issues were a result of childhood abuse at the hands of her family - abuse Fipsi had no recollection of. Anne convinced her to cut ties with them and focus instead on their sessions. Anne diagnosed most of her well-to-do patients as victims of an underground pedophile ring. The women spent years estranged from their families. It left their parents convinced Anne...
Sep 30, 2024•46 min
Cathy Terkanian learned the daughter she gave up for adoption decades earlier vanished under mysterious circumstances while a teenager. When she dug deeper into Aundria Bowman’s disappearance, she learned police never investigated her adoptive father, despite his history of violence. Convinced the Bowmans knew more than they were saying, Cathy began a crusade to force Aundria’s adoptive parents to talk. Could a chance encounter between cold case detectives and evidence left 1,000 miles away be t...
Sep 26, 2024•50 min
Dr. Robert Young rose to prominence in the world of holistic medicine claiming cancer was not a cell, but rather poisonous acid in the body, so a diet rich in alkaline would neutralize it. The charismatic practitioner opened the so-called Miracle Ranch, where sick people sought expensive treatments to balance their pH. Though he doled out advice and performed baking soda IVs, Young had never been to medical school. And as his devoted followers favored vegetable smoothies instead of chemotherapy,...
Sep 23, 2024•53 min
When we last listened to season three of “In the Dark,” Madeleine Baran had collected signatures from the families of the Haditha victims, hoping to obtain secret photographs of the massacre. In the final episodes of the season, the team gives the pictures to an analyst who says the images are clear evidence of a war crime. Military prosecutors eventually charged eight Marines for killing two dozen unarmed Iraqi men, women and children. But a cascade of immunity offers, intervention by commandin...
Sep 19, 2024•1 hr 1 min
Hours before a wedding at the Winbury’s Nantucket estate, the maid of honor’s body washes ashore. Investigators believe the death was no accident. All the family members are now suspects in the case. They include man-of-leisure Tag Winbury, his high-strung wife and mystery novelist Greer, and their three sons: cash strapped Thomas, adolescent Will, and Benji, the groom. Together with the fish-out-of-water bride, Thomas’s pregnant wife, a shifty best man, and a French cougar, everyone had reasons...
Sep 16, 2024•46 min
Secondary school student Pippa Fitz-Amobi selects a controversial topic for an extra credit project. She wants to re-investigate the murder/suicide that rocked her sleepy English village five years earlier. She’s not convinced popular teen Andie Bell was killed by her boyfriend, Sal Singh, and Pip enlists his brother to help her. Pip grills Andie’s friends about what led up to her death and disappearance. Soon she gets anonymous threats to back off. Is someone willing to kill again to keep the t...
Sep 12, 2024•49 min
Working off a tip, investigators in a small Georgia town made a gruesome discovery at Tri-State Crematory. Bodies that were supposed to be cremated were instead dumped around the business’s property. The deceased numbered in the hundreds and had been left to rot for years. Owner Brent Marsh was charged with several crimes. Meanwhile, loved ones felt re-traumatized, left wondering who - or what - was really in the urns they had. The true crime podcast “Noble” from Wavland and Campside Media revis...
Sep 09, 2024•47 min
In 2007, 18-year-old Justin Gaines left an Atlanta-area nightclub, got into a black car and disappeared. Seven years later, Dylan Glass told police he took part in Justin’s murder at an after-hours party and his mother helped clean it up. He was never charged and later recanted his statement. Over the years, tips about Justin’s fate and his whereabouts have led investigators to nothing but dead ends. Theories include a robbery, a jealous boyfriend, and a drug debt to the Mexican cartel. But podc...
Sep 05, 2024•41 min
California, September 1975. Within a span of 17 days and less than 90 miles, two women, working separately, tried to assassinate the president of the United States, Gerald R. Ford. These are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate an American president. The first, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, was already infamous as a prominent follower of cult leader Charles Manson. The second, Sara Jane Moore, was a 45 year-old housewife who infiltrated San Francisco's violent radical ...
Sep 04, 2024•5 min
