Joseph Douglas was a career criminal, who spent most of his life mixed up in small-time scams. The kind of guy who history might have easily forgotten were it not for the bombshell he dropped as he lay dying at the scene of a burglary. He says he has answers to a question that has gripped the nation. Where is four-year-old Charley Ross, and why did Douglas and a fellow crook take him and leave his brother behind? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices...
Jun 22, 2022•45 min
When Rachel Hasson woke up to discover that almost all of the timepieces from the LA Mayer Museum had been stolen, she believed they would never be seen again. However, in 2006, a surprising confession from a Californian high school teacher reopened the investigation and created a trail leading back to one of Israel’s most intelligent and notorious thieves... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices...
Jun 15, 2022•40 min
The murder of Jimmy Carroll rocked the small town of Hohenwald, Tennessee, back in 1977. Local man James Brewer was arrested and charged but disappeared like smoke on the breeze before he could stand trial. Thirty-two years later, and six hundred miles away, a man called Michael Anderson claimed on his deathbed that he was in fact James Brewer, and that he needed to get what happened that day off his chest. If he’s telling the truth, this could finally give Jimmy Carrol’s family the answers they...
Jun 08, 2022•33 min
In 1989, explorers searching for cave entrances in Eastview, Kentucky, make a horrifying discovery: a dead body has been discarded at the back of a cave. Police identify the corpse as TJ Jones, a young drug dealer who disappeared in 1988. 26 years later, Elizabethtown police receive a tip directing them to East Railroad Avenue, where another dead body has allegedly been buried. The tip comes from a woman who claims her uncle was the cold-blooded killer behind both murders. The deathbed confessio...
Jun 01, 2022•43 min
The friendly town of Lincoln, Illinois, was devastated by the tragedies of 1976. A 19-year-old student disappeared from his home, a middle-aged realtor was abducted from her car, and a young, popular couple was found shot to death in their small trailer. Former Lincoln College student, Russell Smrekar, was arrested for the murder of the couple, but police remained clueless about the disappearance cases. But then, as he lay dying in jail 36 years later, Smrekar admitted that he was the only livin...
May 25, 2022•41 min
Paul Branch was not the kind of man you wanted to cross. A member of the Pagans biker gang. A man that even other bikers feared. Someone for whom violence was a part of everyday life. When seventeen-year-old Amy Billig went missing, Branch claimed to be in a unique position to help bring her home to her parents. But some questioned his motives. Others said he was being economical with the truth. Branch was determined to have the last word, and surprised everyone, including Amy’s mother, with wha...
May 18, 2022•48 min
Amy Billig was only seventeen when she vanished in broad daylight. Hundreds of bikers had swept through the town that day, including Paul Branch, an enforcer for the Pagans. But how do you penetrate a wall of silence, where speaking out could cost you your life? Branch was one of the few who talked, and his final words could be the key to unlocking a decades-long mystery. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices...
May 11, 2022•41 min
In the small, sleepy village of Effingham, Surrey, Tony Wakeford confessed to a dark secret that would destroy both himself and his wife, Patricia. He admitted to having had an affair with her best friend during their 50-year marriage. But when he didn't die, the Wakeford's were sentenced to a further five years with each other…despite both knowing that the marriage was a lie. News of the affair destroyed Patricia, who’d dedicated her life to caring for her husband. A seed of hatred grew inside ...
May 04, 2022•48 min
The small town of Shelby, North Carolina was rocked by the murder of eleven-year-old Brenda Sue Brown in 1966. Police had their suspects, the chief one being local teenager Robert Roseboro, but there was never enough to pin it on him. It wasn't until forty-one years later that they finally charged a suspect, but it wasn't Roseboro. Shelby resident Earl Parker cleared his conscience before his death. He told his granddaughter that he knew exactly what happened to Brenda Sue, and that police had i...
Apr 27, 2022•37 min
In Preston, a city tucked away in the North of England, the brutal murder of a young sex worker sparks terror that a violent killer is on the loose. But although DNA and blood samples are left on her body, forensic testing is too basic to match any suspects — so the murderer, Christopher Smith, escapes. He leads a peaceful life surrounded by family until, just 6 days before his death, police arrest him for driving while drunk. Smith leaves a guilty deathbed confession that will finally re-open t...
Apr 20, 2022•48 min
The Brabant Killers had the country of Belgium living in fear in the early eighties. They robbed and killed with little regard for their victims. After eighteen months of chasing them, police had little to show in the way of suspects, and conspiracy theories abounded that suggested the killers might even come from their own ranks. But things were about to get a whole lot worse. Everything that has happened so far was merely a warm-up by comparison to the fresh wave of violence the gang was about...
Apr 13, 2022•47 min
Belgium in the 1980s was divided in so many ways, but one thing citizens had in common was a fear of a group of spree killers known as the Brabant Killers. A gang of three unknown men targeted supermarkets, and thought nothing of leaving bodies littered behind them. Were these men common criminals out for a fast buck? Or could there be any truth to the rumors that members of law enforcement were at best assisting, and at worst participating, in the atrocities? And can the words of one dying man ...
Apr 06, 2022•35 min
In 1994 in the city of Tulsa, a 19-year-old is murdered when she’s caught in a gang crossfire. Police investigate and find the weapon on Michael Lee Wilson, but instead of arresting him, they frame two innocent teenagers. While they suffer behind bars, Wilson is on death row for another murder. He uses his final hours to tell the true story about what happened that fatal day. The case is retried, and new evidence is given to try to understand why police sent two innocent people to prison. Learn ...
Mar 30, 2022•46 min
In 1874, a Methodist minister traveling in Pennsylvania is called to the bedside of a dying man. Ianto Parker tells the minister how he came to America from Wales in 1831, after taking part in a violent riot in which around 24 people died. For more than forty years, Parker has been haunted by what happened that day. He is desperate to confess a shameful secret that forced him to flee his native land. He escaped British justice once, but soon, he believes, he will have to face divine judgment. Th...
Mar 23, 2022•45 min
In 1995 Joyce Goodener was brutally murdered, her body rolled up in a rug and set on fire. The police were desperate to find her killer, but the case went cold in less than a month. Twelve years later, when Nashville, Tennessee convict James Washington begins to experience chest pains, he is rushed to the local hospital. Afraid to take what he knows to the grave, his deathbed confession reopens Goodener’s investigation…but is Washington’s confession the truth or the result of drug-induced halluc...
Mar 16, 2022•39 min
After decades in prison, Mark Read vows to go straight. He swaps bullets for words, becoming an author, a musician, even having his life story hit the silver screen. But old habits die hard. Read was never far from trouble, bouncing back in and out of jail. For every offense he’s convicted of, he’s suspected of a dozen more. Some of these he denies outright, some appear as stories in his books. The tales he saves for the end call everything that’s come before into question. We already knew he wa...
Mar 09, 2022•40 min
Mark “Chopper” Read was one of the most feared criminals in Australia in his day. A man who shocked even fellow criminals with his brutality. He preyed on anyone who earned a dishonest living, serving time in one of the country’s toughest prisons for everything from assault to arson. The one thing they never pinned on him was murder, despite him being suspected of as many as nineteen, and acquitted of one. Read was a natural storyteller, and as it turns out, he saved his best stories till last. ...
Mar 02, 2022•36 min
In the sleepy town of Coatbridge, Scotland a little girl named Moira Anderson disappears during a snowstorm. Police hunt for her abductor, but no culprit is ever found. Decades later, a local woman begins to suspect her father, Alexander Gartshore, of the crime, and starts unraveling a conspiracy that goes straight to the top. But the only way she can prove it is to get her aging father to confess his crimes on his deathbed. Can she succeed where police have failed? Learn more about your ad choi...
Feb 23, 2022•48 min
Any murder is difficult for a family to come to terms with, let alone a cold case that drags on for decades. Lorraine Jacob was only nineteen when she was found dead in a Liverpool alley back in 1970. No arrests were ever made and police didn’t even have a main suspect. While her family was left to grieve, a quiet family man named Harvey Richardson held onto a secret — one he kept for almost forty years. One that, when revealed, could be the key to giving Lorraine, and her family, the peace they...
Feb 16, 2022•37 min
For years, an army of conspiracy theorists probed and prodded the army’s official explanation for the debris they found outside Roswell. It’s hard to prove anything when you’re up against a machine as big as the U.S. military. But as the years go by, something shifts. The men who were on the base back then start to open up. Share details they’ve kept close all these years. None more so than First Lieutenant Walter Haut. The words he wrote before he died might just be the sledgehammer that cracks...
Feb 09, 2022•44 min
After something crashed to Earth on a remote cattle ranch in Roswell, the Army declared they’d recovered debris from a downed flying saucer — only to u-turn 24 hours later. The man who issued those press releases was First Lieutenant Walter Haut. He was one of a select group of men who attended closed briefings… Who saw the debris… Who for years after, would say very little on the matter. But Haut did have opinions of his own. Ones he has recorded in a sealed affidavit, only to be released after...
Feb 02, 2022•34 min
In 1993, the remains of more missing backpackers were found in the Belanglo Forest. Despite an overwhelming amount of leads, police were unable to find the killer — until Ivan Milat’s only surviving victim, Paul Onions, came forward and positively identified him. Ivan Milat finally got his day in court, but he and his family claimed his innocence. In 2019, Australian police continued to try and get a deathbed confession from Ivan before he succumbed to terminal cancer. But it appeared less likel...
Jan 26, 2022•43 min
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a spate of young backpackers began going missing in the Australian outback. Their families' pleas for help fell on deaf ears until the gruesome discovery of their remains was found deep within the Belanglo Forest. The crimes are pinned on serial killer Ivan Milat in 1996 but he never confessed to any of the murders despite irrefutable evidence. In May 2019, as Milat lay dying of terminal cancer, police raced against the clock to elicit a deathbed confession. Wi...
Jan 19, 2022•35 min
For a decade, a man known only as the Pockmarked Killer terrorized women and children in and around Paris. Despite police having witnesses, a detailed description, and even his DNA, he remained at large; a ghost. Then, as suddenly as he’d burst onto the scene, he simply stopped. Was he dead, or in prison? For thirty-five years, his photo-fit is pinned to the wall in police headquarters, mocking investigators. It isn’t until officers follow up a routine missing persons report that they find the a...
Jan 12, 2022•38 min
In 1967, the murders of 20-year-old Carolyn Hevener Perry and her sister-in-law, 19-year-old Constance Smootz Hevener, at an ice cream shop confounded the citizens of Staunton, Virginia, for years. The police hunt for a killer but no culprit is ever found. The families of the victims resolve themselves to the fact that they may never have answers — but four decades later all is revealed when a local outcast begins confessing on her deathbed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices...
Jan 05, 2022•46 min
In 1936, a daring theft takes place at Carnegie Hall. A valuable Stradivarius violin is stolen from the dressing room of Polish virtuoso Bronislaw Huberman while he is on stage. The whereabouts of the Stradivarius remain a mystery for 50 years, until one day another musician, Julian Altman, lies dying in a Connecticut hospital. In his final days, he tells his wife the secret of the violin he has been playing for most of his career. It’s a story so incredible it can only be true. Learn more about...
Dec 15, 2021•42 min
A barber from Milwaukee was known by locals for taking an unusual interest in missing persons cases, especially those of children. What they didn’t know was that Vernon Seitz had a secret he’d been keeping for fifty years — one he’d kept under lock and key until confessing to his psychiatrist days before his death. He’d had a traumatic childhood experience of his own. What police officers later find in his basement is the most baffling, yet chilling, discovery of their careers. Learn more about ...
Dec 08, 2021•40 min
In late 1970s Norway, two young women were brutally murdered. Demand for justice was swift, and despite what some saw as a prosecution case built on shaky foundations, a man spent the best years of his life paying for those crimes. Balance was restored, or so police thought, until almost thirty years later, when Tor Hepso's final words blew the case wide open again... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices...
Dec 01, 2021•44 min
Who killed JFK? If you believe the authorities, the president’s killer was Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone. But if so, why was Oswald himself murdered in police custody just 48 hours after his arrest? One man claimed he had all the answers: former CIA agent E. Howard Hunt. And in his explosive deathbed confession, he laid out a conspiracy that went right to the top. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices...
Nov 17, 2021•45 min
President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963. According to the official version, he was killed by a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald. But right from the outset, conspiracy theories were rife. For decades, a rumor persisted that the CIA itself was behind the president’s assassination. Then, in 2003, as he believed himself about to die, former CIA agent E. Howard Hunt wrote down the bare bones of a plot that involved not just the CIA but also Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon ...
Nov 10, 2021•42 min
