In 1975, after Manson Family member Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme’s attempt to kill President Gerald Ford, the FBI found a cache of letters in the would-be assassin’s Sacramento apartment. The return address belonged to future forensic psychologist Jeffrey Smalldon, then a young undergraduate. A decade later, after the shocking murders of two co-workers, Smalldon’s quest to understand the twisted minds and motivations of killers became personal in a way it never had been before. THAT BEAST WAS NOT ME...
Sep 02, 2024•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 811
Power, privilege, and blood—this is the definitive and thrilling true story of Alex Murdaugh’s violent downfall, from a veteran Wall Street Journal reporter who has become an authority on the case. Alex Murdaugh was a benevolent dictator—the president of the South Carolina trial lawyers’ association, a political boss, a part-time prosecutor, and a partner in his family’s law firm. He was always ready with a favor, a drink, and an invitation to Moselle, his family’s 1,700-acre hunting estate. The...
Aug 26, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 810
The true story of a trailblazing detective’s search for a beautiful college coed who vanished without a trace. In 1981, detective Kay Schucker was the lead investigator in the high-profile missing persons case of Old Dominion University student Janice Starr. The beautiful co-ed disappeared without a trace from ODU’s Norfolk, Virginia campus. Among the only leads was Janice’s diary, which included detailed journal entries about her daily activities. As Kay studied the diary—going several years ba...
Aug 19, 2024•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 809
Joseph Weldon Brown confessed to more than a dozen murders across seven states. He was convicted and sentenced for killing a woman whose body he dismembered and scattered across three Indiana counties. In prison, he hogtied and strangled his cellmate, then asked the judge to lock him up for life because if he was released, he would continue killing. Police detective Rick Reed was on the scene when Brown led authorities to the scattered remains of Ginger Gasaway in 2000. After Brown’s arrest, he ...
Aug 12, 2024•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 808
The shocking true-crime story of a U.S. Border Patrol agent turned serial killer, the four sex workers whom he mercilessly killed, and the upended border town of Laredo where his heinous crimes occurred. Twelve days is all it took. Melissa Ramirez, Claudine Anne Luera, Guiselda Hernandez, and Janelle Ortiz were four marginalized women striving to make ends meet as sex workers. They looked out for one another. But they would soon share a connection that none of them could have imagined. When Meli...
Aug 05, 2024•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 807
The bestselling author of Norco ’80 returns to True Murder with a riveting story of mid-1980s San Diego that placed one young Black man at the center of a whirlwind of crime and punishment that profoundly altered Southern California. March 31, 1985. Two white patrol officers in search of a gang member followed a pickup truck carrying seven young Black men up a dirt driveway in the Encanto neighborhood of Southeastern San Diego. Minutes later, gunshots rang out, and the truck’s driver, Sagon Penn...
Jul 29, 2024•1 hr 35 min•Ep. 806
Mike and Denise Williams had a tight knit, seemingly unbreakable bond with childhood friends, Brian and Kathy Winchester. The two couples were devout, hardworking Baptists who lived perfect, quintessentially Southern lives. Their friendship seemed ironclad. That is, until December 16, 2000, when Denise’s husband Mike disappeared while duck hunting on Lake Seminole. After no body was found, everyone assumed that Mike had drowned in a tragic accident, his body eaten by alligators. But things took ...
Jul 22, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 805
It’s a case that has stumped generations of detectives and Internet sleuths. On Sept. 16, 2009, 24-year-old Richardson was arrested at an oceanside Malibu restaurant and taken to Malibu/Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station. With no money, no phone, and no ride, and in the midst of what was later described by law enforcement as a severe bipolar episode, Richardson was released by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Dept. just after midnight, and disappeared into the night. Her whereabouts confounded authori...
Jul 15, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 804
On May 31, 1985, two days before her high school graduation, Shari Smith was abducted from the driveway of her family home in South Carolina. Based on the crime scene and the abductor’s repeated and taunting calls to the family, law enforcement quickly realized they were dealing with a sophisticated and highly dangerous criminal. A letter arrived the next day entitled “Last Will & Testament,” in which Shari, knowing she was to be murdered, wrote bravely and achingly of her love for her paren...
Jul 08, 2024•55 min•Ep. 803
Before the sensational cases of Amanda Knox and Casey Anthony—before even Lizzie Borden—there was Polly Bodine, the first American woman put on trial for capital murder in America’s debut media circus. On Christmas night, December 25, 1843, in a serene village on Staten Island, shocked neighbors discovered the burnt remains of twenty-four-year-old mother Emelin Houseman and her infant daughter, Ann Eliza. In a perverse nativity, someone bludgeoned to death a mother and child in their home—and th...
Jul 01, 2024•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 802
A Harvest of Innocence is Dan Stidham's story, until now untold, regarding his involvement in the West Memphis 3 murder case. He stepped into its current as a young lawyer, unaware of its strength and the immutable, unpredictable eddies that would forever change his life and his view of the law. He tells it now because it must be told. He spent most of the past 30 years viewed in widely disparate lights. In the beginning, to some he was a pariah, a man so bold as to represent a teenager accused ...
Jun 24, 2024•1 hr 32 min•Ep. 801
Award-winning author and journalist Ivor Davis, author of Manson Exposed: A reporter's 50-year journey into Madness and Murder discusses he and his wife Sally's investigation into their longtime friend and neighbor when he is arrested for the murder of his wife and stepson.Ivor and Sally Davis were horrified when their Malibu neighbors, Verna Roehler and her son, Doug died in a terrible boating accident. The nightmare only continued when her husband, their friend, Fred Roehler, was arrested and ...
Jun 17, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 800
Step back in time to the winter of 1929, where the magic of Christmas in Brooklyn, New York, was shattered by a heinous act that reverberated through the ages. In "The Murder of Mary Falzone: A Shocking True Crime Story,” Rod Kackley unravels the chilling tale of a family torn apart by an explosion that claimed the lives of Mary, Philip, and Rose Falzone, innocent children whose lives were extinguished by a bomb disguised as a holiday gift. As the city grappled with the aftermath of this unspeak...
Jun 10, 2024•56 min•Ep. 799
No Hollywood script can compare to the terror of the 37 true tales in OF MOBSTERS AND MOVIE STARS: The Bloody "Golden Age" of Hollywood! In this gripping historical account, expert crime historian Joan Renner explores the shadowy world of fame and crime during Hollywood's most glamorous era. As Los Angeles transformed into the epicenter of film, it also became a haven for notorious criminals and mobsters, weaving a complex tapestry of allure and danger that is sure to intrigue.Renner brings to l...
Jun 03, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 797
In 2004, the FBI was tipped off to a gruesome pattern of unsolved murders along American roadways. Today at least 850 homicides have been linked to a solitary breed of predators: long-haul truck drivers. They have been given names like the “Truck Stop Killer,” who rigged a traveling torture chamber in the rear of his truck and is suspected to have killed fifty women, and “The Interstate Strangler,” who once answered a phone call from his mother while killing one of his dozen victims. The crisis ...
May 27, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 796
On August 23, 1987, the body of Selonia Reed, 26, was found partially clothed in the passenger seat of her car in an empty parking lot in Hammond, Louisiana. She had sustained incredible blunt force trauma to her head and face, her upper body suffering more than a dozen stab wounds from an-ice pick type weapon. Killed elsewhere, her body drained of blood, she had been displayed, sexually violated with an umbrella. Police investigated but with little evidence the case soon went cold. Selonia's so...
May 20, 2024•59 min•Ep. 795
In 1992, a store clerk was found shot to death in broad daylight at the Boot Village in St. Charles, Missouri. Nothing was stolen and there was no sexual assault. This bizarre and seemingly isolated murder was quickly connected with others in Indianapolis, Wichita, Terre Haute, and Raytown. The media dubbed the suspect “The I-70 Serial Killer.” He has never been captured, and the story quickly fell out of the media’s attention. But the cases never went cold for the officers in those cities. In 2...
May 13, 2024•59 min•Ep. 794
Connected by Fate unfolds against the haunting backdrop of the Ozark National Forest, where the unresolved murder of Melissa Witt has cast a long shadow over the dense woodlands for almost three decades. The mystery, woven into the fabric of the remote mountaintop, has become a part of the lore of the land, with the true identity of the murderer eluding capture, concealed by the forest's imposing presence. Enter LaDonna Humphrey, driven by a profound sense of justice and a personal commitment to...
May 06, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 793
John F. Kennedy's life is promoted by sentimental myth-makers as pure legend, but a sinister shadow lies across his life. JFK's death was such a shocking event that the vivid memory of his assassination still blinds us to much of what went before. It is almost always seen through the prism of that single, terrible day in Dallas, obscuring the dark corners of his life and government. For JFK, power was soundbites over policy, the White House a fairytale castle, and the President a hypersexualised...
Apr 29, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 792
Jeff German, a veteran Las Vegas Review-Journal investigative reporter, was no stranger to controversy or the danger of his work. For more than four decades, he wrote stories relentlessly confronting the mob, corrupt politicians, and greedy bureaucrats. As a result, he was often threatened—enough that he and his friend and fellow investigative reporter, Arthur Kane, sometimes joked about reporting on these threats if they were ever acted upon. Then, in the spring of 2022, German received a tip a...
Apr 22, 2024•59 min•Ep. 791
Elmer Wayne Henley, Jr. was only fourteen when he first became entangled with serial rapist and murderer Dean Corll in 1971. Fellow Houston, Texas, teenager David Brooks had already been ensnared by the charming older man, bribed with cash to help lure boys to Corll’s home. When Henley unwittingly entered the trap, Corll evidently sensed he’d be of more use as a second accomplice than another victim. He baited Henley with the same deal he’d given Brooks: $200 for each boy they could bring him. H...
Apr 15, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 791
At the beginning of 2020, Dr. Peter McCullough was a highly regarded practicing physician, program director, teacher, and clinical investigator at a major academic medical center in Dallas, Texas. When COVID-19 arrived in March, he felt a duty to find a treatment for the disease. He wasn't alone. Other doctors all over the world were also searching for a cure. They followed the longstanding principle that it's best to tackle a sickness early, before it becomes life threatening. This is the story...
Apr 08, 2024•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 788
Moments before boarding a passenger flight on 11 May 2019 as the first officer, pilot Christian "Kit" Martin, a former army ranger, was arrested by a swarm of heavily armed officers for the murders of three of his neighbors. The arrest captured global attention as Martin's mugshot, clad in a pilot's uniform, spread across the internet, sparking a media firestorm with headlines such as "Monster in the Cockpit." A combat helicopter pilot, Kit Martin had seen his life unravel after seeking a divorc...
Apr 01, 2024•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 787
John Wayne Gacy raped, tortured, and murdered 33 boys and young men, burying most of them in the crawlspace under his Chicago home. Karen Cont i was in high school at the time watching the bodies being removed on the television news. Fourteen years pass. Through a twist of fate, Conti, now a young and inexperienced attorney, is called upon to handle Gacy’s final death row appeals. The serial killer soon becomes her most famous, difficult, and haunting client. Thirty years after Gacy’s execution,...
Mar 25, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 786
Sandra Bridewell was a beguiling Dallas socialite in the seventies and early eighties. Her first husband was a prominent dentist who was found shot to death in their home in 1975. The medical examiner ruled his death a suicide. Her second husband, Robert Bridewell, developed the Mansion on Turtle Creek—the first property of Rosewood Hotels and Resorts. Shortly after Mr. Bridewell died of lymphoma in 1982, his treating doctor’s wife was found shot to death in her car at Love Field a few hours aft...
Mar 18, 2024•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 785
From historical accounts to modern cases, explore the captivating psychology behind these killer women, unraveling their motives and unveiling the dark complexities of human behavior.The fair sex. We’ve often heard this clichéd expression being used to refer to women. Although it has become increasingly outdated, the mindset still exists that women are the gentle and nurturing sex. When it comes to murder, that notion gets turned on its head. And this isn’t a recent phenomenon; we can find plent...
Mar 11, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 784
At daybreak on January 6, 1986, a couple on a camping trip in the Mojave Desert set out for a stroll and never returned. The local sheriff’s office eventually discovered that Barry and Louise Berman had been murdered. As years passed and the double homicide remained unsolved, the Berman case spawned speculation and conjecture. Despite extensive investigation by local and federal authorities, to date there’s never been an arrest made in the case – let alone a conviction. But this doesn’t mean the...
Mar 04, 2024•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 783
In the late 1800's in Rochester, New York, Monroe County—there were 5 sensational murders. The first story is about the home invasion murder of a young wife and mother. Her body was found in the cellar, a flour sack tied tightly around her neck, and her skirt hiked up. At first, of course, the husband is arrested amid rumors he and his wife are swingers. The husband's supporters protest he couldn't be the killer—it must have been a transient. The man is released in favor of a preferable suspect,...
Feb 26, 2024•58 min•Ep. 782
Was this small-town TV repair man “a harmless eccentric or a bizarre killer” (Atlanta Journal Constitution). For the first time, Alvin Ridley’s own defense attorney reveals the inside story of his case and trial in an extraordinary tale of friendship and an idealistic young attorney’s quest to clear his client’s name—and, in the process, rebuild his own life. In October 1997, the town of Ringgold in northwest Georgia was shaken by reports of a murder in its midst. A dead woman was found in Alvin...
Feb 19, 2024•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 781
From the outside, Hollywood starlet Lana Turner seemed to have it all―a thriving film career, a beautiful daughter, and the kind of fame and fortune that most people could only dream of. But when the famous femme fatale began dating mobster Johnny Stompanato, thug for the infamous west coast mob boss Mickey Cohen, her personal life became violent and unpredictable. Lana's teenage daughter, Cheryl, watched her beloved mother's life deteriorate as Stompanato's intense jealousy took over. Eventuall...
Feb 12, 2024•59 min•Ep. 780
