Megan Huntsman and her husband Darren West were drug users who hid it from everyone in their lives, or so they thought. Darren goes to prison for possession and Megan is forced to move out of their home. Years later, Darren is released and he goes back to the house, owned by his parents, to get things out of the garage. He finds a strange looking box that smells bad and he opens it. He cannot believe what he finds inside. It is the decomposing body of a newborn infant. Darren calls the police wh...
Mar 19, 2025•28 min
Shari Smith was just getting ready to graduate from high school. She stops at the mailbox in front of her house to check the mail but she never comes inside. Her father gets worried and drives to the mailbox down the long drive. Shari's car is running. The passenger door is open. Shari is nowhere to be found. The FBI is brought in. Two days after the abduction, the kidnapper begins calling the Smith family using a creepy voice distortion unit. He taunts Shari's mother and her sister, Dawn. The F...
Mar 17, 2025•28 min
Early one morning in 1982, a young girl named Mary Kellerman isn't feeling well. She takes some Tylenol and dies instantly. Several hours later, a postal worker named Adam Janus is home from work, sick. He takes some Tylenol and is dead within seconds. His family is stricken with grief and returns home to comfort each other. His brother and sister in law then take some Tylenol and they too collapse. A phone operator, a flight attendant, and others all suddenly drop dead and Chicago doctors and n...
Mar 12, 2025•34 min
Richard Chase, The Vampire of Sacramento, was in and out of mental health facilities throughout his youth. Even though he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, his mother decided he no longer needed his medication. Living alone, abusing drugs, Richard spiraled into madness. He began killing the neighborhood pets and then he moved on to human victims. Some of the details of this story are very disturbing but I've tried to present them in a respectful manner. This is a story about the failures of the ...
Mar 10, 2025•33 min
The Lafferty brothers were raised in a very bizarre home and as they grew, their Mormon beliefs became more and more extreme. When Ron and Dan Lafferty declare themselves to be prophets of God, they are excommunicated from the Mormon church and their wives divorce them. The two men decide that their sister in law, Brenda Wright Lafferty, was to blame for their divorces and they target her and the people responsible for their shunning by the Mormon church. What follows is a brutal double murder a...
Mar 05, 2025•31 min
This is the story of Jerry Ambrozuk and Dianne Babcock, two Canadian teenagers who decided to elope. Jerry was training to be a pilot and believed he could safely land the small plane they rented on the water so the couple could vanish together. He was wrong. The plane crashed and Jerry disappeared. What followed was a man hunt that landed Jerry on America's Most Wanted for decades. Then, a woman meets a man on an online dating app and she begins to dig into his past. What she finds sends her to...
Mar 03, 2025•30 min
Helle Crafts and Richard Crafts were in an unhappy marriage. Helle told her friends that she wanted to divorce her pilot and part time cop husband, but she was afraid of him. Richard cheated on Helle and she hired a private investigator named Keith Mayo. Then Helle disappeared. Her friends and family had to beg the police to investigate. Richard was one of their own but those who loved Helle were not giving up. Finally, some evidence is uncovered but when it is, the prosecution is concerned. Wit...
Feb 26, 2025•27 min
Robert Kleason was a man with a troubled past. He converted to Mormonism while living in Austin, Texas but that didn't stop his criminal behavior. He landed in jail for a weapons charge and when the Mormon church did nothing to get him out of jail, Kleason became angry. Two young men, Mormon missionaries named Mark Fisher and Gary Darley were told by their bishop not to meet with Kleason anymore because area leaders in the church believed he was dangerous. Sadly, the missionaries thought they ow...
Feb 24, 2025•21 min
Candy Montgomery was a woman who always got what she wanted. She had the big house, the two beautiful kids, and a husband who made a great living. Still, it was not enough. Candy decides to have an affair to spice up her life and she chooses her friend Betty Gore's husband as her lover. Then, Betty is found murdered, chopped up with an ax. Candy Montgomery plays the loving and concerned neighbor, bringing dinners and flowers to the grieving family but police have discovered a bloody fingerprint ...
Feb 19, 2025•30 min
By the late 1990s, the Satanic Panic phenomenon had died down in the United States but it was just reaching Europe. Teenagers all over Italy were obsessed with Satan and heavy metal music and using those things as an excuse to do terrible things. They called themselves The Beasts of Satan, or Bestie di Satana. Andrea Volpe, Elisabetta Ballerin, Nicola Sapone, Paolo Leoni, Mario Maccione, Pietro Guerrieri, Marco Zampollo and Eros Monterosso decided to trick two new group members, Fabio Tollis and...
Feb 17, 2025•26 min
When a man in the Czech Republic plugs in a new baby monitor, what he sees on the screen is truly terrifying. He is picking up the feed from a nearby camera. The police locate the home and what they discover inside has become known as the Cottage of Hell. Klara and Katerina Mauerova are sisters who were member of the cult, The Holy Grail Movement and their beliefs were bizarre. Klara's thirteen year old daughter Ana escapes after being taken into foster care and she goes on the run for a year. W...
Feb 12, 2025•32 min
Chuck Morgan was an escrow agent in Tucson, Arizona. First, he vanishes and reappears at his home with his wrists and ankles bound. Chuck claims a hallucinogenic substance has been painted in his throat and he cannot speak. When he can, he tells his wife that if he tells her what is going on, their entire family will be killed. Then Chuck disappears again only this time, he is gone for good. He turns up dead in the desert and his death is ruled a suicide even though he is wearing a bullet proof ...
Feb 10, 2025•27 min
I want to give all the credit for today's episode to John Williams (not his real name) and Joshua Kaplan, who published this article in ProPublica. You can read the story on that website. When John Williams realized he had used his wilderness expert training to assist a dangerous militia, he was angry. Then, after witnessing the violence during the insurrection, John decided he had to do something about it. He created a fake personal and went undercover without telling a single person. He quickl...
Feb 05, 2025•36 min
This is the story of a seventeen year old boy, living in my hometown of Cedar City, Utah who was working at a gas station. One night, someone went into the station, hit Arden over the head, robbed the store and then abducted Arden. What followed was a months long search and a horrific discovery. A manhunt ensued looking for the killer. All that is left of this story is the file kept by my father and we both want to ensure that Arden Heap is not forgotten ❤️ Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/cha...
Feb 03, 2025•27 min
Today we are talking about the murder of 16 year old Preston Lord in Gilbert, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix. In the wake of Preston's murder, it becomes apparent that a gang of violent teenagers who call themselves The Gilbert Goons, is running amok in Phoenix. Their wealthy parents seem to have a hold on the police department and it takes months of community outrage in order to get anything done. A reporter then discovers that violent attacks have been taking place for months and even years, and...
Jan 29, 2025•31 min
In 1900, Rolfe Tiede, his daughters Trisha and Linae, his wife Kaye and his mother in law Beth Potts arrive on snowmobiles at their family cabin to celebrate the Christmas holidays. They enter the cabin and are confronted by two escaped convicts, Von Lester Taylor and Edward Steven Deli, who have walked away from a Utah halfway house. The men pull guns and begin shooting. The girls, Trisha and Linae are then abducted and forced to drive the killers away on snowmobiles but the killers are not awa...
Jan 27, 2025•27 min
This is the story of the Hi-Fi Shop Murders which took place in Ogden, Utah on April 22, 1974. United States Air Force soldiers William Andrews and Dale Selby Pierre went into the store with the intention of robbing it. They were not expecting people to enter the shop during the robbery or that the parents of the employees would come looking for their children. Soon, they had five hostages in the basement of the store. The hostages were forced to drink Drano, a caustic substance for unclogging d...
Jan 20, 2025•26 min
Today we are talking about The Butcher Baker Serial Killer, Robert Hansen. When women started disappearing in the Anchorage, Alaska area, not much was done about it. Even when Cindy Paulson came forward, telling police she had been abducted and raped, and the police knew who she was accusing, they did nothing. Not until so many women are missing and murdered bodies start turning up, do the police take action. John Douglas, the father of profiling, is brought in and the FBI begins to aid in the i...
Jan 15, 2025•36 min
The Son of Sam case refers to a series of shootings that took place in New York City during the summer of 1976 and into 1977. The killer, who became known as the "Son of Sam," was David Berkowitz. He murdered six people and wounded seven others, primarily targeting young couples parked in cars. Donna Laurie, Jody Valenti, Carl Denaro, Rosemary Keenan, Donna DeMasi, Joanne Lomino, Christine Freund, John Diel, Virginia Voskerichian, Alexander Esau, Valentina Suriani, Salvatore Lupo, Judy Placido, ...
Jan 13, 2025•29 min
The myth about Kundalini Yoga is that it is an ancient practice. The religion was, in fact, made up by Yogi Bhajan, Harbhajan Singh Khalsa who was once respected and even honored at the White House. Then, women began coming forward with horrific stories of psychological, physical and sexual abuse. Katie Griggs, Kundalini Katie, Guru Jagat then becomes the face of the Millennial Girl Boss yoga movement. She has tried to become famous through many means and finally, she is. She becomes radicalized...
Jan 08, 2025•34 min
Lucinda Lynn Schaefer, Andrea Joy Hall, Jackie Doris Gilliam, Jacqueline Leah Lamp and Shirley Lynette Ledford all lost their lives in horrific and shocking murders at the hands of Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris who met in prison. If it weren't for a good citizen, a former inmate named Joseph Jackson, the killers would have taken many more victims. Paul Bynam was assigned to the case and when the killers are finally caught, Paul takes his own life stating in a ten page suicide note that he can...
Jan 06, 2025•34 min
Tyrone Hassel III was a great guy. He was a Sergeant in the military, he had a new son and his wife, Kemia seemed to love him. But Tyrone did not know that another solider, Jeremy Cuellar, was infatuated with his wife and Kemia and Jeremy had come up with a terrible and devious plan to kill Tyrone and take his $400,000 life insurance policy. Kemia is brought in for an interview. Sadly, the audio is terrible so I don't share much of it with you, but she soon cracks and admits to the plot. Tyrone'...
Jan 01, 2025•23 min
Today we are discussing the murder of Johnny Altinger and the attack of Gilles Tetreault who were both lured by Mark Twitchell posing as a woman on dating apps. The men thought they were going to meet a woman for the first time. Instead, they were attacked upon entering Mark's rented garage where he used a stun baton and a plastic gun on them. One man was lucky enough to get away. The other was not. Mark was a huge Star Wars fan and professional film maker who also loved the TV show Dexter. When...
Dec 30, 2024•31 min
We discuss the killing spree that occurred over Christmas in 1992. Six murders were committed by a group of teenagers who were bored. They shot people randomly on the streets and stole their sneakers. They robbed a neighborhood grocery store, murdered the clerk and wounded a customer. They got only forty four dollars for her life. They shot and killed one of the gang member's ex boyfriends and then went back and murdered two of his friends, dumping their bodies in a gravel pit. The police were o...
Dec 25, 2024•23 min
Our story begins with the birth of Charles Ray Hatcher. We discuss his alcoholic and abusive father, Jesse James Hatcher and the horrific event Charles witnessed as a child, the electrocution of his older brother while flying a kite attached to a wire. Charles becomes a criminal while still a child and then he is sent to prison for the first time. There, psychiatrists diagnose him with different mental illnesses and disorders but he never gets real treatment. And then, when he is released, child...
Dec 24, 2024•29 min
I have two terrible stories of family annihilation for you today. What is going on in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma? Why has there been two such rare instances there? Is the land cursed, as some believe? I'm also going to talk about a subject that often gets me into trouble: the ties between homeschooling and family annihilation. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/dark-hearts-with-stacy-lee-podcast/donations Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information abou...
Dec 18, 2024•32 min•Ep. 59
A rare story about a new age practitioner who used the ancient practice of trepination on willing participants. These people were living out in Beryl, Utah, near my hometown of Cedar City, doing something unbelievable. They were drilling holes in each other's skulls because they believe that the surgery increases blood flow to the brain, cures depression, and opens the spiritual third eye. When 20/20 and journalist Chris Cuomo get involved, the Iron County Prosecutor, Scott Burns decides to file...
Dec 16, 2024•31 min•Ep. 58
This is an incredible story of struggle, near death, survival and then excellence. Katrina Brownlee had a very difficult life and when her cop boyfriend Alex Irvin attacked her and almost killed her, she wanted to give up. Instead, she took inspiration along the way and what she did with her second chance at life with leave you with all the feels. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/dark-hearts-with-stacy-lee-podcast/donations Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz...
Dec 09, 2024•30 min•Ep. 57
Today we are talking about the dangerous and insidious Texas cult known as The House of Yahweh. A man named Buffalo Bill Hawkins and his brother JG change their names to Yisrayl and Yaaqob and state that they are The Two Witnesses prophesied in the Book of Revelations. They gather a small following and before long, as in all cults, everything gets dark. Children are horrifically abused. Women are treated like cattle. Fire and brimstone reign down from Yisrayll's pulpit and he begins making predi...
Dec 04, 2024•38 min•Ep. 56
This is the story of Ashley Byers Benefield and Doug Benefield. Ashley couldn't cut it in the ballet world and never made it past the youth ballet she was in. But her dreams in the ballet world continued and she talked her new man, Doug who was thirty years her senior, into helping her form the American National Ballet Company in Charleston, South Carolina. Dancers moved from all over the world to become part of the new company and then Ashley washed her hands of the whole thing and walked away ...
Dec 02, 2024•33 min•Ep. 55
