True Crime Episodes

We take a trip back to '40s and '50s London this week to cover the grimy and gruesome story of serial killer John Reginald Christie, who gassed and strangled 8 women to death and stowed their bodies in and around his London flat. Sean takes us through the case that helped get the death penalty abolished in the UK, and we tackle all the most important unanswered questions - like how this guy stayed married as long as he did. ________________________________________ Connect with us on social med...

This week we tackle the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft, one of the most notorious and high-value art heists of all time. One March night in Boston, 1990, two men donned police disguises to enter the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Once inside, they subdued security and walked off with a collection of art potentially valued at over $1 billion in 2024. Vermeers, Rembrandts and more were lost to the world that night, never to be seen again. To this day, no one has ever been charg...

Last week we shared the first half of the dramatic tale of one of America's so-called "Crimes of the Century" - the kidnapping, and tragic murder, of Charles Lindbergh Jr., toddler son to one of the most famous men in the world: aviator Charles Lindbergh. In this, our 2nd and final part, we detail the painstaking investigation that eventually led to the arrest of German immigrant Richard "Bruno" Hauptmann for the murder of little Charles. The years-long search for the kidnapper and killer invol...

On the night of March 1st, 1932, little Charles Lindbergh Jr. was tucked into his crib for a good night's sleep. Mere hours later, the family nurse discovered that Charles Jr. was no longer in his bed...nor was he anywhere else to be found. The disappearance kicked off the beginning of one of America's so-called "crimes of the century", and one of the world's earliest international true crime sensations. Because Charles Jr. wasn't just any toddler - he was the son of megastar aviator Charles Li...

Born in small-town Italy in 1893, Leonarda Cianciulli had led a hard and tragic life - but her friends and neighbors in Correggio, Reggio Emilia knew her as a kindly woman and a good neighbor. Naturally, they were all shocked when she was arrested for luring three local women to their violent deaths. Axe Murder March finishes with a bang (a whack?) as we find out why Cianciulli is known as the Soap-Maker of Correggio, and explore whether her murders really were, as she claimed, motivated by hum...

This week, we finish our two-parter on the rise of the Norwegian black metal scene and the leaders of the pack, Mayhem, as the culture descends into edgelord-on-edgelord crime - first with a series of arsons across Norway, and eventually spinning into the inevitable end of chaos and murder. Experience such real-life characters as Varg Vikernes, black metal musician and out-and-proud white supremacist-turned murderer; Euronymous, the (still-young) godfather of the Norwegian black metal scene and...

In the early 1990s, a series of crimes rocked the historically peaceful country of Norway. Churches were burned, home-grown terrorist plots were revealed, and arrests were made. Then, the murders came. This rash of crime all stemmed from one seemingly-innocuous source: Norwegian black metal bands and their fans. It seemed like these musicians were trying to out-edgelord each other, and no band pushed harder for the title of "Most Evil" than the fathers of Norwegian black metal, Mayhem, led by ...

On Christmas Eve, 1945, a mysterious fire burned the home of George and Jennie Sodder to the ground. George, Jennie, and four of their children escaped the blaze. The five remaining Sodder children, aged 5 to 14, were not so lucky. However, no remains - of any of the five Sodder children who were lost that night - were ever found. As the years went on, it became clear there was a conspiracy of silence surrounding the Sodder case in their town of Fayetteville, West Virginia. Had George Sodder pi...

Perhaps the most notorious carnival sideshow performer of all time, Grady Stiles Jr. is known to history as Lobster Boy. Born with severe ectrodactyly, a genetic condition that left him unable to walk and with forked, two-fingered hands, Grady followed his father into the family business playing to the crowds in traveling carnival sideshows. But as he got older, and had a family who he would also pull into the carnival circuit, a lifetime of resentment and hard drinking boiled over into violenc...

Our two-part jaunt into murder, madness and 19th century elections continues (and ends) this week, as Sean finishes the heartbreaking tragic story of the death of James Garfield — followed by the slapstick comedy romp that was the trial of Charles Guiteau. Convinced he was destined to play a role in history and spurned in his several half-assed attempts to earn it, Guiteau turned his efforts toward eliminating the man most emblematic of the system that rejected him...and also waved his arms aro...

James Garfield was shot on July 2, 1881, just a few months into his tenure as 20th President of the United States. The man who shot him, Charles Guiteau, was a lifelong loser who had previously tried his hand at (manic) street preaching, lawyering and insurance sales - and who had made James Garfield a sworn enemy without the President ever giving him a second thought. In this first of a two-part series, we learn about the lift and times of the incredibly annoying Mr Guiteau, and introduce Jame...

Here we are: the end of the line for the Manson Family. This week, we bring our epic series on the Manson Family Murders to an explosive conclusion with the August 9th killings of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, the retaliation murder of Shorty Shea (and possibly lawyer Ronald Hughes), the capture of the Family during a ranch raid, and the final sensational trial that made Charlie Manson, the Manson girls and "Helter Skelter" household names. We also give a bit of a "where are they now" for the Fam...

And here we are. The infamous murders of August 8th, 1969, where 5 people - some famous - would meet horrific ends at the hands of the Manson Family, directed by Charlie to create "copycat murders" to lessen the heat on the real killer, Bobby Beausoleil, and hopefully spring him from jail before he could rat on Charlie to the cops. But it's not just about the deaths. It's about the lives - and this episode, we take a deep dive into the too-short lifetimes of the 5 people killed at 10050 Cielo D...

This week, the horror of Helter Skelter begins on part 4 of our Manson Family deep-dive with the lesser-known murder of the Family's first official victim, former friend Gary Hinman. We explore the circumstances leading to the powder keg-like situation the family was in, and how it all exploded into violence when Charlie decided that the money required to fund the Family's flight to Death Valley was basis enough for murder. Caught up in the Family's madness was innocent victim Gary Hinman, who ...

In week 3 of our Manson saga we travel with the Family to the worn-down Western movie set of Spahn Ranch, where Charlie and co set up shop and begin their descent further into shared cult madness - separated from their loved ones, fully dependent on Charlie, hungry, overworked, and addled out of their minds on constant LSD consumption. It's a potent cocktail, ready to explode in the California heat...and boy, will it ever. When The Beatles' White Album is released, the darkness at the Ranch coa...

"Cease to exist, just come and say you love me Give up your world, come on you can be, I'm your kind, I'm your kind, and I see..." This week, we take a tour through the epicenter of the hippie movement right at the peak of the Summer of Love, when Charlie Manson finally leaves prison and makes his way to the Haight-Asbury neighborhood of San Francisco. There, he sows the first seeds of what would become the Family cult, attracting his first followers with a blend of pop culture sermonizing and t...

The innocence of the Summer of Love and the hippie counterculture movement came to an abrupt end in August 1969, when a string of brutal murders in the Los Angeles area rocked Hollywood, the country, and the world. The perpetrators? A strange hippie cult called "The Family", headed by a creepy, scrawny guy with an odd charisma by the name of Charles Manson. This August, we're diving in to the explosive story of the Manson Family Murders with a multi-part series investigating the who, what, wh...

In the summer of 1974, a body was discovered among the dunes of Cape Cod by a young girl chasing her dog. Despite the efforts of local and state police, the so-named "Lady of the Dunes" would go unidentified for nearly 50 years - as would her killer. Join us as Sean lays out the facts of the discovery, the investigation, and decades worth of theories - along with stunning developments from just the past year. And, yes, were talking about Jaws again this week! __________________________________...

In the 1920s and 30s, colonial Kenya was playground to a social clique of wealthy British expats called the "Happy Valley Set," famed for their excessive tastes and drug-fueled sex parties. One of the foremost members of the set, Josslyn Hay, Earl of Erroll, caused an international stir when he was found behind the wheel of his car with a bullet in his head. This week, it's hot summer nights and high society gossip with the ritzy free-love crowd, as Sean lays out the tale of pre-war politics, j...

This week, we explore how a crime story can inform pop culture with the true tale of Grace Brown's murder at the hands of Chester Gillette in 1906. In a collaboration with the You're Missing Out podcast, we took a (virtual) trip to Upstate New York to investigate the famous "Murder in the Adirondacks": the likely drowning death of Grace Brown caused by her sometime-boyfriend and factory superior, Chester Gillette. Brown had just discovered she was pregnant, and due to societal restrictions at t...

Between 1911 and 1912, at least 11 Black families were murdered with an axe in their beds, in towns along the Southern Pacific railway line in Louisiana and Texas. The only person ever punished for any of these crimes was a teen girl named Clementine Barnabet. In this week's episode, Sean caps off Axe Murder March with a gruesome sidecar to last year's "Man From the Train" series, as families keep turning up dead in the Louisiana countryside and one Lafayette girl keeps confessing... And confes...

In this 4th and final part of the Lizzie Borden story, we round out the rest of the sensational Borden Murders trial, hear the final verdict, and learn what Lizzie Borden did with the rest of her life after her (spoiler alert) acquittal in June 1893. Meet the witnesses that added quite a bit of color to the case, including skull-boiling doctors, confusing and contradictory policemen, a lollygagging ice cream salesman, and more; see the defense's star witness Emma Bordan take the stand against...

Screw it, we're doing 4 parts! The tea is too scorching and the drama too intense to not give Lizzie's case room to breathe, so we're dedicating all of Axe Murder March to Miss Borden herself. This week: Lizzie is charged, arrested, and brought to trial. The press continues their field day with Lizzie's story, hounding her at every turn, insulting her looks, and even falsely reporting a pregnancy. Multiple important witnesses take the stand, including housemaid Bridget Sullivan, Doctor Seabury ...

Axe Murder March plunges on, Part 2 is coming in hot, and we're making it a 3-parter for the story of the Borden Murders and the accusations levied against Lizzie Borden, she of "40 whacks" fame. This week, we explore the pre-forensic era investigation into who could have killed Andrew and Abby Borden, and the official inquest into the crime itself. Witness a cavalcade of Fall River locals, Borden family members, and frustrated District Attorneys go back and forth attempting to establish a fact...