Around 1:30 a.m. on Jan. 18, 2008, according to April Lewis, intruders broke in to her home in Columbus, Ohio twin 17-year-old sons, Dennis and Derris. They held April at gunpoint, ransacked the home, then fatally shot her 17-year-old son Dennis. Prosecutors said that Dennis was killed by his identical twin brother Derris, jealous that his twin had more money than he did, and a car. Both twins were model students and devoted to each other. In March 2009, of the following year, Derris Lewis went ...
Oct 15, 2023•23 min
Jeffrey Pyne 22, was a star athlete, high school valedictorian and University of Michigan biology student. He was all set for a career in medicine when his mother, Ruth, developed bipolar disorder and Jeffrey began to get concerned for the safety of his behaving violently and erratically. She became hyper-religious, and Jeffrey became. concerned about the safety of his sister Julia, 12, who was being home schooled. Ruth spent time in jail for assaulting Jeffrey in 2010, but charges were dropped ...
Sep 23, 2023•2 hr 10 min
At 2 AM in March 29, 2019, Samantha Josephson, 21, ordered an Uber to take her home after a night out at a bar in Columbia, South Carolina. Outside the bar, she mistakenly got into a car driven by a man named Nathaniel Rowland, 27, who trapped her in the vehicle by activating its childproof locks, then kidnapped and murdered her. Her body was found the following day by turkey hunters in the woods 65 miles away. In court, Nathaniel Rowland’s ex-girlfriend, Maria Howard, testified she saw blood in...
Sep 17, 2023•1 hr 12 min
(see episode 120 for Jane Doe #1). This episode contains the testimony of Jane Doe 2 in the rape trial of Kellen Winslow Jr., a former NFL tight end, in San Diego County Superior Court in early November. Jane Doe, who remained nameless and was not shown on camera, was a 59-year-old homeless woman from Encinitas, California who was picked up and raped by large black man with tattoos who drove a black Hummer and identified himself as “Kevin.” She testifies that he drove her to a parking lot close ...
Sep 15, 2023•2 hr 44 min
Brothers Erik and Lyle Menéndez were convicted in 1996 for the murders of their parents, José and Mary Louise (“Kitty”) Menéndez (see episode 169 for testimony from Lyle’s girlfriends). The trial had many subplots. One of the most juicy involved the brothers’ therapist, Dr. Jerome Oziel, and his mistress / patient, Judalon Smyth. Erik Menéndez, torn apart by guilt after the murders, apparently confessed to Oziel, who then told his mistress, Judalon Smyth, who went to the cops. The affair was a s...
Sep 01, 2023•50 min
This episode contains testimony from the Murdaugh family’s longtime housekeeper, Blanca Turrubiate-Simpson, during South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh’s trial for the murder of his wife Maggie and youngest son, Paul. Simpson testified that said she never knew Alex and Maggie to argue, other than “some minor disagreements” over things like like over the paint color of their beach house remodel. But Maggie also told Blanca that the couple were worried about a lawsuit against Paul, who had been r...
Aug 14, 2023•1 hr 54 min
This episode contains more audio from the trial of Sandy Murphy and Rick Tavish for the murder of Ted Binion. Binion was a wealthy American gambling executive and one of the sons of Vegas casino magnate Benny Binion, owner of the Horseshoe Casino. Ted, a multi-millionaire, loved the high life and ran the Horseshoe for a while, hosting the casino’s poker tournaments. But in 1998, Ted, 55, was having problems. Due to his heroin addiction and associations with known criminals, he’d recently lost hi...
Jul 31, 2023•1 hr 14 min
This episode returns once again to the 1992 trial in which Jeffrey Dahmer pleaded guilty but insane to the murder and dismemberment of 15 boys and men. A number of psychiatrists testified at Dahmer’s tril. Judith Becker, a professor of psychiatry and psychology, was the second expert witness for the defense. Dr. Becker diagnosed Dahmer as a necrophiliac, although she added that Dahmer was not a “classic” necrophile in that he preferred comatose sexual partners to deceased ones “75 percent of the...
Jul 23, 2023•50 min
During the O.J. Simpson trial in 1995, screenwriter Laura Hart McKinny testified about the 13 hours of taped interviews she conducted with LAPD officer Mark Fuhrman, who was involved in the investigation of the 1994 murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. McKinny claimed the tapes contain many instances of Fuhrman expressing racist opinions and using offensive language and misogynistic slurs. Fuhrman and McKinny began meeting for taped interviews in February 1985 and continued meeting u...
Jul 17, 2023•1 hr 26 min
Renegade Mormons Lori Vallow Daybell and Chad Daybell developed their own doomsday cult, telling their small circle of followers that demons had turned their family members into “zombies” or “vampires” who needed to be killed. On May 14, 2023, an Idaho jury found Daybell guilty on all charges, for her role in the deaths of her two children and her husband’s first wife. Chad Daybell will be tried separately next year. On Day 5 of the Vallow Daybell trial, Zulema Pastenes, the widow of Lori’s brot...
Jul 14, 2023•54 min
Dixie Shanahan, 36, a hard-working nurse’s aide from Defiance, Iowa, was abused by her stepfather all through her childhood, then, in 1995, she married an abusive husband. Scott Shanahan, 40, had a violent temper, was twice convicted of beating Dixie, and once tied her up with wire coat hangers, and locked her in the basement for three days. One night, Scott threatened Dixie and her unborn baby with a loaded gun. Dixie, afraid for her daughter’s life, waited until Scott was asleep then shot him ...
Jun 15, 2023•1 hr 15 min
This episode features a phone call between Jodi Arias and Travis Alexander, whom she was dating intermittently between February 2007 and Alexander’s death in June 2008. A member of the LDS church, Alexander presented himself in public as a virgin and politely courted a number of LDS women while keeping his highly sexual relationship with Jodi as a “dirty little secret.” Eventually the two broke up, but Jodi continued to drive from her home in Yreka, CA to visit Travis in Mesa, AZ. As Travis incr...
May 26, 2023•47 min
In December 2019, in Celebration, Florida, police performed a wellness check on the home of the Todt family, who hadn’t been seen for some time. Anthony Todt, 44, was discovered unkempt and shaking. Wife Megan, 42, was found dead, along with their three children: Alek, 13; Tyler, 11, and Zoe, 4. They had been stabbed in the stomachs and smothered to death, and lay decomposing with crucifixes gripped in their hands. Also dead was the family dog, Breezy. Anthony claimed that Megan had recently joi...
May 05, 2023•1 hr 36 min
This episode contains testimony from public hearings of the Mollen Commission, a board established in 1992 to investigate police corruption in New York City. First is testimony from rogue cop Michael Dowd, who agreed to appear before the commission after being turned in by his partner. Dowd describes to commissioners how he and other officers at Brooklyn’s 75th and 94th Precincts began colluding with drug dealers to rob their rivals and sell cocaine, finally graduating to extortion, grand larcen...
Apr 28, 2023•1 hr 46 min
In 1999, Carolina Panthers wide receiver Rae Carruth, 26, had a problem. A casual girlfriend, stripper Cherica Adams, 24, told him she was pregnant with his child. Rae was already paying a significant amount of child support to a woman in California, and had no desire for another baby. Prosecutors claimed Carruth conspired with three men to gun down Cherica as she was driving home from a movie. Before she died, Cherica was given a C-section and delivered Carruth’s son, Chancellor, who was born w...
Apr 10, 2023•1 hr 26 min
Christopher Sutton, the adopted son of John and Susan Sutton of Coral Gables, Florida, was a troubled young man, constantly in trouble with the law. To curb his behavior, his wealthy parents sent him to a reform school in Samoa, and Chris never forgave them. After returning home to Florida, Chris, 25, offered his friend Garrett Kopp $10,000 to kill his parents. Kopp broke into the Suttons’ home on August 22, 2004, and shot the couple, killing Susan and blinding John. The initial suspect was John...
Mar 29, 2023•1 hr 11 min
Richard, Sheryl and Stacey Kananen survived a horrific upbringing of violence and abuse on the part of their father. Sheryl left home to marry and raise a family, but Stacey and Ricky continued to live at home with their parents in Orlando. When their father Larry disappeared, no-one missed him. But when their mother Marilyn disappeared 15 years later, police became suspicious, especially when, shortly after her mother went missing, Stacey, 37, moved with her partner Susan to live in a nudist re...
Jan 29, 2023•1 hr 29 min
In June 2014, at his home in Lake Oswego, Oregon, a man making his dinner heard gunshots. He looked through the window and saw his neighbor across the street, 41-year-old Adrien Wallace, standing in his driveway pointing a hunting rifle at the dead body of his mother, 71-year-old Saundra Wallace. He then walked to the car where his 16-year-old nephew, Nick Juarez, was sitting on the passenger seat. Wallace squatted, pointed the gun at the car, and fired. He smoked a cigarette then called 911 and...
Jan 25, 2023•10 min
Tommy Carlton, a registered nurse living in Osceola County, Florida, was very angry with his ex-wife, Elizabeth. The couple were involved in a bitter custody battle, and Tommy owed $85,000 in child support. In 2008, He hired a hit man to kill her, but the hit man turned out to be an undercover cop. With the help of Elizabeth, police staged a sting operation using posed photos where she appeared to be shot in the head. When the police told him his wife had been murdered, Tommy replied, “I can’t s...
Jan 20, 2023•2 hr 5 min
In this continuation of episode 180, Marc Benayer interrogates Rabbi Zalman Bukiet, of the Chabad Weltman Synagogue in Boca Raton, where the shooting occurred. He accuses the Rabbi of, among other sins, being anti-Sephardic, cheating, taking money for performing Bar Mitzvahs, and turning a somersault in the synagogue. Benayer also testified on his own behalf, doing himself no favors. He was questioned by defense attorney, Christopher Haddad. The long-suffering judge was Richard I. Wennet, of Wes...
Jan 14, 2023•1 hr 38 min
This episode contains the testimony of Marc Benayer, 81, who represented himself at his 2007 murder trial in Boca Raton, Florida. After Benayer’s girlfriend Marta Pinto, 44, had broken up with him, he allegedly began stalking and harassing her, claiming she owed him $10,000. Marta, who spoke very little English, worked at an electronics company, and she turned to her bosses, Mark Levy and Jonathan Samuels, for help in getting a restraining order against her elderly suitor. In 2005, after the Ros...
Jan 13, 2023•1 hr 22 min
When sentencing Ted Bundy to death, Florida Judge Edward Cowart told him that, had things turned out differently, he would have made a fine lawyer. Cowart’s statement is followed by Bundy’s interview with Dr. James Dobson the night before his execution by electric chair in January 1989, in which he blames his crimes on access to hard-core pornography as a teenager.
Jan 12, 2023•30 min
December, 2018. Lisa Jeffrey, 48, of Ocala, Florida, hadn’t been seen for a few days; relatives became concerned and contacted the police. When cops searched the trailer where Lisa lived with her ex-husband, 57-year-old Bo Pete Jeffrey, they found her body, along with a pair of blood-stained boxing gloves, stuffed into garbage bags under his camper bed. Lisa, who had Crohn’s disease, alcoholism and a drug problem, had been beaten to death. During the police interview, Bo Pete is not in good shap...
Jan 10, 2023•3 hr 16 min
On August 8, 1996, playboy bachelor Lance Herndon, 41, was found bludgeoned to death in his bed at his home in Roswell, a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia. Police claim the killer climbed onto his naked body and straddled him, then beat him in the head and face. The murder weapon was never found. The investigation into Herndon’s death uncovered a complicated web of relationships. He was still closely involved with his third ex-wife, Jeannine Price, the beneficiary of his insurance policy. His current ...
Dec 30, 2022•2 hr 21 min
In January 1992, Aileen Wuornos, a sex worker, stood trial for the murder of 52-year-old Richard Mallory, who’d picked her up when she was hitch-hiking. When she was intially interviewed by police, Wuornos said she shot Mallory because he threatened to rape her. However, at trial, her testimony about the incident was much more graphic and disturbing. At this time, she’d confessed to murdering six men in addition to Mallory, all in self-defense (in fact, Mallory had a prior conviction for sexual ...
Dec 28, 2022•1 hr 2 min
Marvin Heemyer had come to the end of his tether. The welder and muffler repairman had moved to the small town of Granby, Colorado, around 1990. In 1992, he bought 2 acres of land for $42,000 to build a muffler repair shop. He subsequently agreed to sell the land to a man named Cody Docheff, who wanted to build a concrete plant. Around 2001, he became embroiled in an arcane zoning dispute that left him completely unhinged. Heemyer, 53, began to plan a vigilante attack. He bought a heavy-duty bul...
Dec 15, 2022•28 min
Dan Brophy, 63, was a well-known chef and popular teacher at the Oregon Culinary Institute in Portland, Oregon. In the morning of June 2, 2018, Dan was gunned down while he was prepping for the day’s work in the school’s kitchen. He had no known enemies. However, Dan and his wife, Nancy, were having serious financial problems and to shore up the couple’s finances, Nancy, a self-published romance novelist, had taken a job selling life insurance. Friends of the couple testified that their marriage...
Dec 03, 2022•2 hr 45 min
This episode contains testimony from the trial of Andy McCauley for the murder of his girlfriend’s 15-year-old daughter, Riley Crossman. The crime took place in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, a small working-class community blighted by Opiods and other drugs. Riley and her boyfriend, Hayden, always stayed in close contact by text and social media, even “sleeping together” at night on Facetime. On the night of May 7, 2019, at 11:01 p.m., Riley was in bed when something disturbing happened. She ...
Nov 21, 2022•1 hr 13 min
This episode contains the long, grueling interrogation of Cat Mellender, 21, the girlfriend of 23-year-old Chandler Halderson. As she testified at trial in January 2022, Cat had always believed that Chandler was a recent college graduate who worked for an insurance company, volunteered as a rescue scuba diver, and was had recently been offered a job in Florida with SpaceX. But when Chandler’s parents, Bart and Krista Halderson, went missing in July 2021, his web of lies came undone. Chandler had...
Nov 05, 2022•2 hr 27 min
In November 2007, Adam Kaufman, a prominent Florida real estate salesman, woke to find his wife Lina, 33, draped by the neck, dead, over a magazine rack by the toilet in the couple’s ritzy waterfront home. There was suspicious bruising on Lina’s neck, although the marriage was apparently untroubled. A year-and-a-half later, the Miami-Dade County medical examiner ruled Lina’s death a homicide by mechanical strangulation, and Adam was arrested and charged with second-degree murder. The defense arg...
Oct 28, 2022•1 hr 22 min
