In 1945, after his capture at the end of the Second World War, Hermann Göring arrived at an American-run detention center in war-torn Luxembourg, accompanied by sixteen suitcases and a red hatbox. The suitcases contained all manner of paraphernalia: medals, gems, two cigar cutters, silk underwear, a hot water bottle, and the equivalent of $1 million in cash. Hidden in a coffee can, a set of brass vials housed glass capsules containing a clear liquid and a white precipitate: potassium cyanide. Jo...
Nov 14, 2013•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 148
Final Exams features four fascinating true crime cases from the files of Cyril H. Wecht, M.D., J.D., one of America’s most respected forensic pathologists. Coauthored by crime writer Dawna Kaufmann, Final Exams explores both the technical and the human side of murder. From the heartbreaking case of abducted child, Jessica Lunsford, held captive within shouting distance of her loved ones, to the peculiar story of a murder for hire with a most unlikely victim, Final Exams takes the reader behind t...
Nov 12, 2013•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 147
On January 10, 2013, Kendrick Johnson's parents reported their 17 year-old son missing. The next day at Kendrick's school, Lowndes High School in Valdosta, Georgia, in the gym students saw what they thought was a pair of socks sticking out of a gym mat, but when they approached they told investigators they realized it was a body. According to Lowndes County Sheriff Chris Prine, Kendrick Johnson died while reaching into an upright gym mat in the old gym on Jan. 10 trying to retrieve a sneaker tha...
Nov 06, 2013•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 146
An African American soldier returns home to New York City from the Vietnam War in the late 1960s. It is a time of turbulence and change and racism is very much alive in America. Times are tough for a young black man in America, especially one who has fought for his country in an unpopular war. Rick Talley takes what he believes the only economic road open to him: drug dealing. Prisoner of Dreams presents a large cast of characters, from small time street hustlers and pimps to Hollywood and Las V...
Oct 31, 2013•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 145
In 1992, Lois Duncan, acclaimed author of fictional suspense novels, wrote a horror story she could never have imagined writing—a true account of the murder of her own daughter, Kaitlyn Arquette. Kait, 18, was shot to death as she drove home from a friend’s house on a Sunday evening in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Police closed the unsolved case as a “random shooting,” refusing to accept information that indicated otherwise, although it had all the earmarks of a professional hit. That first book, WH...
Oct 30, 2013•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 144
On November 8, 1985, 18-year-old Tom Odle brutally murdered his parents and three siblings in the small southern Illinois town of Mount Vernon, sending shockwaves throughout the nation. It remains one of the most horrific family mass murders in U.S. history. Odle was sentenced to death and, after seventeen years on death row, expected a lethal injection to end his life. However, Illinois governor George Ryan’s moratorium on the death penalty in 2000, and later commutation of all death sentences ...
Oct 24, 2013•1 hr 30 min•Ep. 143
In 1958, 19-year-old Charlie Starkweather went on a murder spree that paralyzed Nebraska, shocked the nation, and left 11 people dead. With him when he was captured was his 14-year-old ex-girlfriend Caril Fugate. The question soon arose, was Caril a kidnapped victim, or a heartless accomplice? Appointed to her case, Attorney John McArthur initially accepted the assignment out of a sense of constitutional duty. But as he delved deeper, he found that the truth was far more complicated than anyone ...
Oct 17, 2013•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 142
Award-winning journalists investigate the attempted assassination of Gabrielle Giffords and the unsolved lynching of Claude Neal; an identity thief finds herself confronted by one of her victims; a triple homicide rattles a high school swim team; a young adventurer supports her travels by smuggling Peruvian pre-Columbian artifacts; a woman struggles to live free of the ex-boyfriend who kidnapped and tortured her; and more. In this collection of 13 diverse and compelling narratives, writers--amon...
Sep 26, 2013•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 141
One late spring evening in 2010, Shannan Gilbert, after running through the oceanfront community of Oak Beach screaming for her life, went missing. No one who had heard of her disappearance thought much about what had happened to the twenty-four-year-old: she was a Craigslist prostitute who had been fleeing a scene—of what, no one could be sure. The Suffolk County Police, too, seemed to have paid little attention—until seven months later, when an unexpected discovery in a bramble alongside a nea...
Sep 12, 2013•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 140
In february 1975 a case began to unfold like nothing the quaint Detroit suburban area of Orchard Lake had ever seen. In the hours following a near head-on collision between a mysterious sedan and an on-duty patrolman, the frightening truth behind the speeding car's driver would be discovered. The vehicle was littered with weapons, drugs, and cash, yet these items weren't even the beginning. The most menacing item law enforcement could imagine was made of paper. Found in Chester Wheeler Campbell'...
Sep 05, 2013•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 139
Joyce Wishart was living out her life's dream, running her own art gallery in sunny Sarasota, Florida. But that dream ended in nightmare when a deranged drifter named Elton Brutus Murphy walked through the door with a knife in his hand and a voice in his head commanding him to rape and kill. In the space of half an hour, Joyce was dead - brutally mutilated - and the tony arts enclave plunged into terror as a frenzied manhunt ensued. Told in the convicted murderer's own words, a chilling tale of ...
Aug 29, 2013•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 138
The true crime story of sex killer Westley Allan Dodd--his victims were too small to fight...and too young to die! Includes eyewitness execution report. By all appearances, twenty-nine-year-old Westley Allan Dodd was the perfect all-American boy—model high school student, camp counselor and U.S. Navy enlistee. But behind his mask of normalcy lurked a predatory sex fiend with a seventeen-year history of appalling acts of molestation and violence. Children were his victims and the parks of the Pac...
Aug 22, 2013•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 137
This is the remarkable story of Frank Matthews, a charismatic drug kingpin from the late 1960s and 1970s, who organized a huge criminal enterprise before jumping bail in 1973 with $15-20 million and a beautiful woman. Nicknamed Black Caesar, Matthews has never been seen again in what has become one of organized crime’s most intriguing mysteries. Lewis Rice spent twenty six years as a Special Agent with DEA: 1974- 2001. During that time he conducted hundreds of major international narcotic invest...
Aug 08, 2013•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 136
No crime is as horrific, as mesmerizingly perplexing, as a child's murder at the hands of a parent. In most cases, the perpetrator is the father. A veteran journalist explores five examples of "family annihilators" in this troubling snapshot of American crime twisted by the dark trajectory of machismo in economically stressful times. Her research includes some fifty in-depth interviews of victims' friends and family, an examination of police files, and detailed profiles of the researchers who tr...
Aug 01, 2013•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 135
A vain man of good looks, small means, and no family links to the mob, Vincent “Vinny Gorgeous” Basciano steadily worked his way up to acting boss of the Bonanno crime family, becoming its leader when official boss Joseph Massino went to the clink in 2003. But at a time when the Mob was crawling with secret operatives and informants caving to government pressure to flip, Basciano obeyed the code of La Cosa Nostra. “I got faith in one guy,” he told a group of mobsters during a secretly taped meet...
Jul 18, 2013•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 134
The crimes of Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy and other high-profile killers are so breathtakingly awful that most people would label them "evil." Renowned psychiatrist Michael H. Stone—host of Discovery Channel’s former series Most Evil—uses this as his starting point to explore the concept and reality of evil from a new perspective. Basing his analysis on the detailed biographies of more than 600 violent criminals, Stone has created a 22-level hierarchy of evil behav...
Jul 11, 2013•1 hr 28 min•Ep. 133
This book is the first comprehensive account of three centuries of thug life in the city where America began. In chilling new detail, veteran Boston journalist George Hassett reveals the legendary crime stories of Boston - from Prohibition to the Mafia, the Irish Gang War to Whitey Bulger. The forgotten chapters of Boston gang history are also covered - from the role of street gangs in the American Revolution to Chinatowns infamous Tong Wars to the murder of number king Daddy Black - it is all h...
Jul 04, 2013•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 132
On January 28, 2011, the Tampa Police Department received a phone call from a woman who was worried about her daughter, Julie Schenecker. A devoted Army wife and mother of two, Julie had sent her mother an email that could be described as “suicidal.” When authorities arrived at the Schenecker home, they encountered a horrific scene… Sixteen-year-old Calyx and thirteen-year-old Beau Schenecker were found dead—both of them shot, then covered with blankets. Upon questioning, Julie admitted that she...
Jul 02, 2013•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 131
The case that captivated the Coachella Valley and San Francisco Bay area for years! Author Sherrie Lueder and her Literary Team, Dawn Taarud-Martinez and Kim Hansen, along with Tyson Wrensch, a former friend, now victim of the con men unravel the threads of a decade long crime spree filled with twists, turns and shocking revelations. Filled with a cast of characters drawn from San Francisco's Castro District, the "Dark Prince" and "the Boiz" take you from one con to the next until a single braze...
Jun 20, 2013•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 130
Beau Webster is a Tallahassee, Florida based private investigator who is a former officer with the Fort Lauderdale Police Department. Like Travis McGee, the famous fictional private investigator created by John D. McDonald, Webster prowls the southern tier of the U.S., working for those in need of justice. Like Kendrick Johnson, A Valdosta, GA teenager, Johnson, an African American, was found dead in the gym of the high school he attended rolled up in a gym mat. Investigating, the Georgia Bureau...
Jun 14, 2013•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 129
In this explicit first-hand account, a biker who spent 46 years as a member of the Hells Angels and Satan's Choice invites bestselling author Peter Edwards into the story of life lived as we've only imagined it. A kid raised by his father's fists on the wrong side of a blue-collar town, Lorne Campbell grew up watching the local bikers ride past, making him wonder what that kind of freedom and power would feel like. He soon found out. At the age of seventeen, he became the youngest-ever member of...
Jun 13, 2013•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 128
The 2011 Casey Anthony trial became the most sensational news story of the year. Time magazine called it the social media trial of the century. The 22-year-old single mom was charged with three felonies including first degree murder, aggravated child abuse and manslaughter. When pictures surfaced on the internet showing her at a nightclub shortly after her two-year-old daughter, Caylee, went missing, the media and public went ballistic. Thirty-one days passed after Caylee disappeared before poli...
May 30, 2013•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 127
This multifaceted probe of murder offenses, offenders, victims, and characteristics of homicide in American society breaks new ground by examining issues generally ignored or neglected among researchers. Topics include murders occurring in the workplace and in schools, those perpetrated by gangs and terrorists, those incited by bias, and intimate and intrafamilial murders. The book discusses sexual killers, serial and mass murderers, and suicide. It also examines psychological and sociological t...
May 23, 2013•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 126
Dead just one week into her Australian honeymoon, Tina Watson's body lay a hundred feet below the ocean's surface at the foot of the Great Barrier Reef. Across the globe, three days into a secret Aruban getaway with an older gentleman she met online, Robyn Gardner vanished from the same Aruban town as Natalee Holloway just five years earlier. Why did Robyn Gardner's travel companion purchase a $1.5 million insurance policy and make himself the beneficiary? Did Tina Watson's husband really insist...
May 16, 2013•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 125
Weaver and fiber artist Edith “Pen” Meyer knew her friend Sandy Merritt’s relationship with a married man was wrong. She had even urged Sandy to take out a restraining order against Kenneth Carpenter. Which was why her call to Sandy on February 23, 2005, seemed to come from out of the blue. During it, she told Sandy to drop the restraining order and get back together with Ken. Pen was never seen again. One man stood to gain from Pen’s disappearance: Ken Carpenter. But evidence was bleak: no bloo...
May 09, 2013•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 124
John Sohus, a twenty-something resident of San Marino, California, was allegedly murdered in 1985 by con man Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, who has become infamous under his most-known alias, Clark Rockefeller. Rockefeller, the prime suspect in Sohus murder, may have been the last person to see him alive. Nine years after his death, Sohus bones were dug up in the backyard of the home he once shared with his wife Linda, whose whereabouts remain unknown. Rockefeller s 2008 arrest for abducting his...
Apr 25, 2013•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 123
In Tampa in 1948, known gangster Jimmy Velasco was gunned down by a hit man. In the ensuing weeks, when neither the Tampa Police Department nor Hillsborough made an arrest, Jimmy’s brothers took the investigation to the governor, who ordered a grand jury investigation. In February 1949, the findings were revealed. Among the discoveries was a “pay off” list written by Velasco prior to his death detailing the public officials he paid off to remain immune to law enforcement. The public was captivat...
Apr 18, 2013•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 122
A beautiful, young American woman was kidnapped and confined against her will in the putrid depths of Tijuana, Mexico. Drugged and tortured, she lived in constant fear for her life. Kidnapped by the Cartel opens the doors into the secret covens of Mexican Organized Crime, a terrifying place where many are lost forever. The slimy backstreets of Tijuana are graphically revealed as the disgusting, gruesome, and violent places they are known to be. The U.S. State Department has warned against non-es...
Apr 11, 2013•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 121
Where was Sandra? Across the country, parents watched with growing panic as the surveillance video was replayed on the evening news: a young girl in black leggings and a Hello Kitty t-shirt, skipping alone through the mobile home park where she lived. Her bouncing steps carried her quickly across the screen and beyond the camera's view-just two weeks after she celebrated her eighth birthday, Sandra Cantu disappeared. Within days, panic gave way to horror when investigators reported that Sandra's...
Apr 04, 2013•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 120
From ancient Rome through the Dark Ages to the burgeoning West to the open highways of urban America, from the unconscionable exploits of French religious zealot Gilles de Rais to such all-American monsters as Jeffrey Dahmer and Aileen Wournos, Katherine Ramsland makes an eye-opening case for the existence of serial killers throughout time, and offers a complete chronological record of the serial-killer phenomenon-as well as the parallel development of psychology, forensic science, and FBI profi...
Mar 21, 2013•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 119
