True Crime Episodes

Axe Murder March is back, and this time, the ladies are doing it for themselves! That's right, after our fan-favorite series last year covering the Axeman of New Orleans, the Villisca Axe Murders, and the Man from the Train, we're heading back to the chopping block with stories of women who, well...took matters into their own hands. First up is one of the biggies in American history: the story of Lizzie Borden, who may or may not have taken an axe, given her mother 40 whacks, and when she ...

On November 1, 1909, in the small UK mill town of Staleybridge, construction magnate George Harry Storrs was stabbed to death in his kitchen. Four eyewitnesses, including George Harry's wife, saw the attack and got a good luck at the murderer - yet over a century later and despite several trials, the crime remains unsolved. In the thrilling conclusion to our two-parter on the case, we meet Cornelius "Cornie" Howard and Mark Wilde, the two unfortunate ne'er-do-wells who were tried in Storrs' d...

On November 1, 1909, in the small UK mill town of Staleybridge, construction magnate George Harry Storrs was stabbed to death in his kitchen. Four eyewitnesses, including George Harry's wife, saw the attack and got a good luck at the murderer - yet over a century later and despite several trials, the crime remains unsolved. This week, in the first of two episodes on the crime and investigation, Sean introduces us to George Harry Storrs and the town of Stalybridge, and catches us up with the e...

In 1985, a gang of mail-order assassins staged a string of murders-for-hire across the country - but this hitman story is less "John Wick" and more "Fargo by way of The Three Stooges." Sean introduces the sordid tale of Richard "Doc" Savage, a Vietnam veteran and strip club owner who arranged paid killings through an ad placed in Soldier of Fortune magazine. What followed was a whirlwind of slapstick misadventure and murder - and plenty of failure - with a team of miscreants who make Home Alo...

New Orleans, one year post Hurricane Katrina. A man is found dead after jumping from the roof of the Omni Royal Orleans Hotel. In his pocket is a note directing police to go back to his apartment. There, the note says, they'll find the dismembered body of Addie Hall. The police had no idea the kind of scene they were about to find. The inside of 826 North Rampart Street on October 17th, 2006 was nothing short of nightmares. But what drove the man, identified as Zackery "Zack" Bowen, to ...

It's the thrilling conclusion to our monthlong Jack The Ripper series! Last week, Carrie presented some of the likeliest and best-known suspects put forth for the Ripper crimes, from Mary Kelly's jilted ex-lover to a parade of shabby, misogynist psychotics. This week, Sean makes the case for some of the more... colorful theories, from "Jill the Ripper" to a vast royal conspiracy to...H.H. Holmes? Hundreds of people have been implicated in the Ripper murders over the past 130-plus years, an...

In this third episode of our Jack the Ripper series, we move past the events of the case and review selected main suspects to see if any can fit into the role of Saucy Jack. We discuss multiple serial poisoners, doctors and quacks, famous authors and artists and even an ex-lover of one of the victims. Are any of these men the possible real Jack the Ripper?? Next week, Sean will be diving in to take us through the conspiracy theories related to the Ripper case, and the possibility of it bei...

In the second episode of our Jack the Ripper series, we continue and finish the story of the initial 1888 killing spree with the final 3 of the "Canonical Five" victims: Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly. Stride and Eddowes would, shockingly, be murdered the same night in September 1888...and the Ripper would seem to end his spree with the shocking, horrific murder of Mary Kelly in her own home in November. We also discuss the infamous "Jack the Ripper" letters, which r...

IT'S THE BIG 100! That's right, we've hit 100 episodes and 2 years of the show...so, in celebration, we're heading back to 1888 London to investigate one of the biggest true crime cases of all time: the grisly murder spree of Jack the Ripper. In the Whitechapel district of London, England in the fall of 1888, a series of 5 gory murders shocked the lower and upper classes alike. The victims were sex workers, and all had been...well..."ripped", with several missing organs and being posed almost...

This week we take our first blazing steps into the dark, yet sorta wacky, world of millennial death cults with the tragic tale of the Order of the Solar Temple and its power-mad leaders, Joseph Di Mambro and Luc Jouret. Ostensibly a fraternal secret society like the Freemasons, the OST escalated from goofy chants with robes and swords all the way to ritual murder and suicide by the time of the fiery collapse in the mid-90s that would eventually kill more than 70 members. Why? How? Is my lo...

This week we hit the foreign districts and seedy neighborhoods of pre-war Beijing with a look at the unsolved murder of Pamela Werner. The 19-year-old was found beaten to death and gruesomely mutilated one January morning in 1937, as Beijing found itself awash in refugees and expatriates and Japanese Army units camped closer and closer to the city. Pamela’s death would fascinate the media, but an international police team was stymied until the outbreak of war permanently interrupted the inves...

The Amityville Horror is one of the most publicized hauntings in American history. But 13 months before the Lutz family's short and spooky stay in the famous house on Ocean Avenue, the real horror came - in the form of six grisly murders, in one night, under one roof. In the first of a two-part series, Sean gives us a primer on the horror behind the horror - the tragic deaths of the DeFeo family, and the "comedy" of errors that followed. ________________________________________ Connect with u...

On part two of our two-part Slender Man series, we dive into the very real consequences of this modern legend of a monster with the infamous "Slender Man Stabbing" case. In May 2014, 12-year old Payton Leutner was discovered, injured and bleeding, on the outside of the woods in her native Waukesha, Wisconsin. Payton had an unbelievable story to tell law enforcement: she had been attacked and stabbed by her two preteen friends, Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier, who had apparently believed that P...

Between 1967 and 1971, the small city of Stamford, Connecticut was terrorized by a little-known serial killer. A total of five Black women were strangled - most with their own brassieres - and dumped within a 750-yard stretch of the Merritt Parkway. While a colorful local character was eventually arrested and prosecuted for the crimes (sound familiar?), doubts linger to this day about who was behind these women's' fate. This week Sean takes us through the facts of the case in the Bra Murders,...

In March 1998, the Bradley family - dad Ron, mom Iva, son Brad, and daughter Amy - embarked on a "trip of a lifetime": a luxurious cruise on the Rhapsody of the Seas, sailing between Puerto Rico, Aruba, and Curacao on a whirlwind vacation of carefree fun and family time. Three days into the trip, 23-year-old Amy vanished from the cruise, never to be seen again. ...Or was she? We discuss all the clues in this baffling case, including supposed sightings of Amy in the Caribbean as recently as 20...

Axe Season 2022 comes to a close with the end of our discussion of Bill and Rachel James' 'Man From The Train' theory. We follow our proposed serial murderer from his probable several-year stint in prison to his roving, cross-country murder spree - a spree that will claim dozens of victims as the axeman tears a path from Virginia, to Texas, to Seattle, all the way to - in 1912 - Villisca, Iowa. We might even tie in another old Ain't It Scary cold case! ________________________________________...

We’re rounding out Axe Murder Month with two weeks on Sean’s favorite solution to last week’s unsolved mystery, the 1912 axe murders in Villisca, Iowa: the roving serial-murderer theory proposed by famed baseball writer Bill James in his 2017 book “The Man From The Train.” This week Sean spends a long time raving about Bill James, and then weaves the tale of a 19th century East Coast murder spree stretching from Massachusetts to Florida. Were these family murders all committed by one man? Was...

Sometime in the overnight hours of June 9-10, 1912 in the tiny town of Villisca, Iowa, eight people - including six children - were killed by an intruder, with an axe, in cold blood. The case caused a national uproar and years of investigation...and it remains unsolved to this day. This week, Sean takes us through the facts in one of the most infamous axe murders in American history, and some of the principal suspects throughout the years. Were the Moore family and the young Stillinger girls ...

Sean has officially declared March to be axe murder month - much to the chagrin of March-born Carrie - and so we begin a multi-part series on horrific axe murders! Well, in like a lion, out like a lamb, as they say. Our first part focuses on one of the most famous early unsolved murder sprees in American history. From 1910 to 1911, and again from 1917 to 1920, New Orleans' famous French Quarter was stalked by a madman with a lust for blood. This mysterious figure, dubbed "The Axeman of New...

This week we take a look at Indiana's most prolific serial killer, Herb Baumeister. After a string of disappearances of gay men in the Indianapolis area throughout the early 90s, the police investigation eventually leads to an apparently...

Graduation Night, 1992. Suzie Streeter and Stacey McCall arrive home to Suzie's mother Sherrill's house in a giddy daze. They're finally done with high school, and they have summer - and their whole lives - ahead of them. The next day they're heading...

Plenty of trigger warnings apply as Sean takes us back to the grim world of serial killers with the human string of misadventures known as Paul John Knowles. After killing (probably) 20 people on a cross-country crime spree, Knowles was dubbed the...

Dr. John Dale Cavaness was a beloved small-town doctor and respected member of his community, so there was a public outcry when he was accused of murdering his own son, Sean, for insurance money in 1984. It didn’t come out until his trial that...

Natalie Wood was one of the biggest film stars of the late 50s and early 60s, starring in such classics as Miracle On 34th Street while still a child and continuing on to acclaimed roles in Rebel Without a Cause, Splendor in the Grass, West Side...