In June 1998, eight year old Robbie Middleton was attacked in the woods behind his Texas neighborhood,. He was then doused in gasoline, and set on fire in what investigators would later describe as one of the most horrifying attacks they had ever seen. Burned over nearly 99 percent of his body, Robbie somehow survived and spent the next thirteen years enduring more than 150 surgeries while the person accused of attacking him remained free. Then just before his death in 2011, Robbie gave a final ...
May 12, 2026•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 390
Seven year old Athena Strand disappeared from outside her family’s home in Paradise, Texas on November 30, 2022, only minutes after a FedEx driver delivered a package containing her Christmas present. Within hours, investigators uncovered a disturbing trail involving truck recordings, GPS data, conflicting statements, and evidence that suggested Athena had been abducted alive. The investigation quickly led authorities to FedEx driver Tanner Horner, whose shifting stories began collapsing as more...
May 08, 2026•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 389
Between January 1969 and January 1971, three women were murdered inside their own homes across Southwestern Ontario Canada, with their cases unfolding with no clear connection at the time. Each scene pointed to the same kind of controlled, violent attack. However without shared systems or forensic tools, investigators were left working each case in isolation as leads quickly dried up. It would ultimatley take decades, a family confession, and DNA evidence preserved from 1969 to reveal that one m...
May 05, 2026•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 388
On June 20, 1994, emergency services in Dunedin New Zealand received a call from 22 year old David Bain reporting that his entire family had been shot dead inside their home. Within days, he went from the sole survivor to being charged with five counts of murder, setting off a case built on conflicting timelines, contested forensic evidence, and two completely different explanations of what happened. What unfolded next would become one of New Zealand’s most debated murder cases, one where the tr...
May 01, 2026•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 387
In March 1989, 21 year old pre-med student Mark Kilroy disappeared during a spring break trip to Matamoros, Mexico after being separated from his friends for just a few minutes. But what initially operated as a standard missing person case quickly escalated into an international investigation involving U.S. and Mexican authorities. As the search intensified, it led to the discovery of a place called Rancho Santa Elena, which was a remote property tied to drug trafficking and ritual practices. It...
Apr 28, 2026•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 386
She looked like a harmless little old lady. She was a soft spoken landlady in Sacramento who took in elderly, disabled, and mentally ill tenants who had nowhere else to go. But inside her home, she controlled their money, intercepted their mail, and in many cases, they quietly disappeared while their Social Security checks continued to be cashed. Then when a missing person report led police to dig in her backyard in November 1988, they uncovered multiple bodies buried just beneath the surface. W...
Apr 24, 2026•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 385
In July 2016, 17 year old Mike Mansholt arrived in Malta for a solo trip after deciding to extend his stay beyond an initial visit with his girlfriend. Over the following days, he explored the island independently, keeping in contact with his family as he moved from place to place. Then on the morning of July 18, he left his hotel, rented a mountain bike, and sent a final message home describing the steep roads ahead. After that, there was no further contact, and by July 22, when he failed to bo...
Apr 21, 2026•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 384
In 1971, 16 year old Stephen Spahalski killed a man in Elmira, New York and was sent to prison, in a case that seemed shocking but contained. But nearly two decades later, in Rochester, a different story was quietly unfolding. Between 1990 and 2005, four people would be murdered in separate incidents, each one investigated on its own, each one going unsolved, and none of them connected at the time. For years, the truth remained buried in those cases, until a confession in 2005 finally brought ev...
Apr 17, 2026•50 min•Ep. 382
In 1971, 16 year old Stephen Spahalski killed a man in Elmira, New York and was sent to prison, in a case that seemed shocking but contained. But nearly two decades later, in Rochester, a different story was quietly unfolding. Between 1990 and 2005, four people would be murdered in separate incidents, each one investigated on its own, each one going unsolved, and none of them connected at the time. For years, the truth remained buried in those cases, until a confession in 2005 finally brought ev...
Apr 14, 2026•53 min•Ep. 382
Starting in 1926, women renting out rooms began turning up dead in cities across the United States and into Canada. In each case, the circumstances were nearly identical, the victim had let someone into her home, and the encounter ended in violence. At the time, there was no system in place to connect cases across jurisdictions, so each investigation stayed local. Police followed leads within their own cities, unaware that similar scenes were unfolding elsewhere. It would take time before anyone...
Apr 10, 2026•48 min•Ep. 381
Starting in 1926, women renting out rooms began turning up dead in cities across the United States and into Canada. In each case, the circumstances were nearly identical, the victim had let someone into her home, and the encounter ended in violence. At the time, there was no system in place to connect cases across jurisdictions, so each investigation stayed local. Police followed leads within their own cities, unaware that similar scenes were unfolding elsewhere. It would take time before anyone...
Apr 07, 2026•56 min•Ep. 380
About a year after her husband’s sudden death, a Utah woman published a children’s book about grief, hoping to help her three sons cope with the sudden loss of their father. But behind that story was a very different reality, one investigators had already begun uncovering. Her husband, Eric Richins, had been found dead in their bed in March 2022, and an autopsy later revealed he had five times the lethal dose of fentanyl in his system. What initially appeared to be a sudden medical emergency qui...
Apr 03, 2026•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 379
On May 24, 2019, 50 year old Jennifer Dulos dropped her five children off at school in New Canaan, Connecticut, and returned home, then seemingly vanished within a two hour window. Inside her garage, investigators would later find significant blood evidence, while her abandoned vehicle turned up nearby in Waveny Park. What came next was a complex investigation involving surveillance footage, recovered discarded evidence, and a timeline that pointed directly toward her estranged husband and those...
Mar 31, 2026•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 378
Kim Wall set out to interview a man who had built his own submarine. It was an unusual story, but not an unusual assignment for her as a professional journalist. Hours later, she was gone, and the man she had been with was the only one to resurface. His explanation began to change as evidence came in, each version falling apart under scrutiny. What followed was an investigation that exposed a controlled environment and a crime carried out in complete isolation. Our other podcast: "FEARFUL" - htt...
Mar 27, 2026•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 377
In April 2009, 8 year old Tori Stafford disappeared just blocks from her home in Woodstock, Ontario after leaving school. Surveillance footage showed her calmly walking away with an unknown woman, suggesting she didn’t feel threatened. What started as a missing persons case quickly escalated into one of the largest investigations in the province, as police worked to figure out who she went with and why. Our other podcast: "FEARFUL" - https://open.spotify.com/show/56ajNkLiPoIat1V2KI9n5c?si=OyM38r...
Mar 24, 2026•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 376
65 year old Brian Egg was a creature of habit, a man whose daily routine rarely changed, that is until it suddenly stopped altogether. In a neighborhood where his presence had become part of the everyday rhythm, his absence didn’t go unnoticed for long, but it wasn’t immediately understood either. As the days stretched into weeks, small details began to surface and quietly stack up, each one suggesting that something inside his home wasn’t right. What was eventually discovered would reveal a cri...
Mar 20, 2026•57 min•Ep. 371
In December 1992, a 16 year old girl from Moston, Manchester was falsely accused by a group she trusted and lured into a house where she was held captive for nearly a week. During that time, she was beaten, burned with cigarettes, injected with drugs, deprived of food, and subjected to sustained physical and psychological torture. As the days passed, the abuse only escalated, and it became clear she was not going to be allowed to leave. The group soon began to plan how it would end, but despite ...
Mar 17, 2026•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 374
In 2020, a report submitted to San Diego County Crime Stoppers prompted police to begin looking into allegations involving inappropriate online communication with a minor. Detectives soon discovered the suspect was not a stranger hiding behind an anonymous profile. Instead, the investigation pointed toward a correctional deputy working for the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department. As investigators gathered evidence, the scope of the case continued to grow, and what they uncovered would lead to ...
Mar 13, 2026•57 min•Ep. 37
In the early hours of May 1, 1999, sixteen year old Marianne Vaatstra disappeared while cycling home through the quiet countryside of Friesland in the Netherlands. Later that morning, her body was discovered in a field near the village of Veenklooster, the victim of a brutal rape and murder. The crime shocked the nation and quickly became one of the most controversial investigations in Dutch history. For more than thirteen years, the killer remained unknown, until finally a groundbreaking DNA in...
Mar 10, 2026•59 min•Ep. 372
Dead Man’s Flats is one of the strangest place names in the Canadian Rockies, and most people passing through have no idea where it came from. But the name isn’t just local legend, it traces back to a real and disturbing crime. In the spring of 1904, a man named François Marret murdered his own brother inside their small cabin along the Bow River, striking him with an axe while he slept before dumping the body into the water nearby. More than a century later, the land where it happened still car...
Mar 06, 2026•47 min•Ep. 371
In the summer of 1999, a quiet financial office in Atlanta became the final stop in a three day killing spree for one man. Before the gunfire erupted at his work place, this man had already murdered his wife and children inside their suburban apartment. By the time police closed in, twelve people in total were dead and more than a dozen were wounded. However, investigators also uncovering disturbing links to an earlier unsolved double murder, which would increase his murder count to 14. Our othe...
Mar 03, 2026•56 min•Ep. 370
In March 1981, a quiet courtroom in Lübeck, West Germany, erupted in gunfire when a mother shot the man accused of killing and assualting her seven year old daughter. The shocking act instantly transformed a tragic child murder case into one of the most controversial true crime stories in modern German history. But to truly understand how that moment happened, you have to go back to the years of grief, legal battles, and growing anger that led a grieving mother to take justice into her own hands...
Feb 27, 2026•53 min•Ep. 369
The Smurl family never expected their home to become the center of a national paranormal mystery. Over the course of more than a decade, they claimed their quiet duplex in West Pittston, Pennsylvania, became the stage for unexplained noises, violent incidents, and a growing sense that something unseen was watching them. As their story spread, it drew in priests, skeptics, and the famous demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren, turning a private nightmare into a public spectacle. What followed would...
Feb 24, 2026•1 hr 2 min
In the fall of 2009, police in Cleveland entered a house expecting to arrest a man accused of sexual assault. Instead, they stepped into one of the most shocking crime scenes in the city’s history. Hidden inside the home, and buried in the yard, were the remains of eleven women. They were the victims of a killer who had blended into the neighborhood for years. What followed was a devastating investigation that exposed not only a serial murderer, but a long trail of missed warnings and overlooked...
Feb 20, 2026•1 hr•Ep. 367
In October 1970, a thirteen year old girl stumbled into a Los Angeles welfare office, weighing just 59 pounds she had spent nearly her entire life strapped to a chair in a darkened bedroom, cut off from language, sunlight, and normal human contact. She could barely walk, could not speak grammatically, and had lived almost entirely without language. Soon the scientific community would descend on her case, and the world came to know her as Genie. Our other podcast: "FEARFUL" - https://open.spotify...
Feb 17, 2026•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 366
In the woods of a small New Hampshire town, four bodies were hidden in two metal barrels and left to decay in silence. For decades, no one knew who they were, where they came from, or who had killed them. The only certainty was that they had been beaten to death and abandoned far from home. What followed was a relentless investigation that would not only expose a serial killer who lived under stolen identities, but also help pioneer the use of genetic genealogy, changing the way cold cases are s...
Feb 13, 2026•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 362
For years, residents of Nehe, a quiet city in Heilongjiang Province of China, watched people vanish without explanation. Travelers arrived by train, stepped into the streets, and were never seen again. Police had few leads and even fewer answers, while rumors spread through the community. It wasn’t until a routine arrest in 1991 that investigators finally uncovered the gruesome truth hidden beneath an unremarkable home. Our other podcast: "FEARFUL" - https://open.spotify.com/show/56ajNkLiPoIat1V...
Feb 11, 2026•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 364
In September 2015, three people in the small communities of Crowsnest Pass, Alberta, were caught up in a series of violent events that would leave the entire region shaken. What began with the murder of a senior living alone quickly escalated into the killing of a young father and the sudden disappearance of his two year old daughter under a province wide Amber Alert. As police raced against time to find the missing child, evidence began pointing back toward someone from inside the community. Wi...
Feb 06, 2026•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 363
From the outside, it looked like a perfect life: a brilliant scientist, a successful marriage, and a prestigious career in pharmaceuticals. But behind the scenes, secret affairs, obsessive surveillance, and carefully crafted lies were quietly taking over. A hidden love triangle inside one workplace would spiral into stalking, betrayal, and brutal violence. What started as love, turned into murder, and eventully expose a calculated killer hiding in plain sight. Our other podcast: "FEARFUL" - http...
Feb 03, 2026•53 min•Ep. 362
From the outside, it looked like a perfect life: a brilliant scientist, a successful marriage, and a prestigious career in pharmaceuticals. But behind the scenes, secret affairs, obsessive surveillance, and carefully crafted lies were quietly taking over. A hidden love triangle inside one workplace would spiral into stalking, betrayal, and brutal violence. What started as love, turned into murder, and eventully expose a calculated killer hiding in plain sight. Our other podcast: "FEARFUL" - http...
Jan 30, 2026•58 min•Ep. 358
