True Murder: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History

A riveting new look at the parallel lives of Charles Manson and Roman Polanski reveals connections beyond the notorious Tate-LaBianca murders.Since the horrific murder of Sharon Tate in 1969, the names Charles Manson and Roman Polanski have been brutally linked. But new analysis of the parallel and intertwining stories of these two men reveals a connection that preceded that fateful day.
Manson and Polanski shared remarkably similar, and similarly awful, childhoods. In their early years they both developed a hatred of the establishment and of authority—Manson, from being abused by relatives, school staff, and jailors, and Polanski from living under the Nazi regime and then Polish Communists in the 1950s.
Manson was released from prison and promptly went to the wildest place in North America (San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury) at around the same time as Polanski got out of communist Poland and headed for the wildest place in Europe (swinging London). Both men went overboard with the new freedom of the era. Their paths crossed in Hollywood in the late 1960s, where Polanski had wild success, Manson utter failure. Then on August 8, 1969, Manson orchestrated the murder of Polanski’s wife, actress Sharon Tate, and her unborn son.
Combining international celebrity biography, analysis of a high-profile murder, and in-depth consideration of the lasting legacy of the crime in Polanski’s directorial work,
Blood and Fame is a riveting investigation that will appeal to both film lovers and true crime readers alike.
BLOOD AND FAME: The Intersecting Lives of Roman Polanski and Charles Manson—Peter Rowe. 

A startling profile of one of the most prolific serial killers and the disturbing experience of the journalist who earned his trust for the sake of justice.

When crime journalist Maria DiLorenzo mailed a letter to Gary Ridgway, she never expected him to reply. He refused to speak to reporters and would send only religious materials back to anyone who contacted him in prison—if he replied at all. But instead of silence or a boilerplate letter, Maria’s phone rang–and it was the Green River Killer calling.

Over the next several years, Ridgway would call Maria hundreds of times, using all of his free time in prison to speak with her. Her goal: to pry the details of his dozens of unidentified and unsolved murders from him. His motivation in speaking to her: unknowable. Through these hundreds of hours of phone calls, Ridgway revealed new details about his life, his crimes, and his motives – and manipulated Maria much like he tormented his victims.

An insightful and deeply personal profile of a dangerous mind, Confessions of the Green River Killer is the closest depiction of Gary Ridgway ever seen and a disturbing glimpse into what it’s like to truly know a killer. Experience Gary Ridgway through the eyes and ears of a woman he came to deeply trust—and deeply covet. CONFESSION OF THE GREEN RIVER KILLER: A True Story of Manipulation, Madness and A Search for Justice-Maria DiLorenzo

Jerry Langton is a veteran investigative journalist and bestselling author, writing primarily about outlaw motorcycle gangs and organized crime.
Former Harris County Sheriff's Department Deputy Joseph Kent McGowen was sentenced in 2002, to 20 years, his second conviction—for murdering Susan Diane White, in her home, August 25, 1992.
In 2021, after almost 20 years—Kent McGowen was released.
A bestselling book and documentary, depicting McGowen as a killer had been widely seen by the public.
In 2025 McGowen contacted Langton—he wanted to set the record straight and have Langton tell his story.. Langton was very skeptical but decided to conduct his own investigation—and what he discovered—was a man wrongfully convicted of murder.
Author Jerry Langton joins me to discuss his new book, Reasonable Doubts: How Rumor and Innuendo Convicted Deputy Kent McGowen of Murder. 

Texas Deputy Kent McGowen shot and killed Susan White after she pulled a gun on him.It seemed like an open-and-shut case of an officer acting in self-defense. But before his first court date, the Houston region was inundated with rumor, innuendo and speculation about the case. Many believed those fabrications and half-truths to be fact. And an unsubstantiated-but-persistent story of how McGowen allegedly set up White as a murder victim because they had a relationship, or that she refused to have one, sealed his fate. McGowen was found guilty, Twice.
He's already done his almost 20 years in prison, with this case worth examining for all the incredible ways criminal courts can be manipulated by media, fast-talking lawyers and dubious witnesses. REASONABLE DOUBTS: How Rumor and Innuendo Convicted Deputy Kent McGowen of Murder—Deputy Kent McGowen

The District Attorney began his opening statement with, "If you don't know what hell is like, you're about to find out." In 1979, Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris went on a rape and killing rampage. The pliers, screwdrivers, hammers, sledgehammers, and ice picks they used on their victims became their calling card and moniker: The Toolbox Killers. They were soon apprehended and convicted for their atrocities, but for decades, refused to reveal the location of their victims' bodies. More than two decades later, criminologist Laura Brand had the opportunity to interview this sadistic pair as they sat behind bars, probing the depths of their depravity right up to the days of their deaths. Over this relentless six-year period, Bittaker finally gave Brand what he had withheld from law enforcement and families alike: the precise locations of two victims' remains. Brand's investigation tore open sealed police reports, court transcripts, and witness accounts, and unearthed brutal and shocking new findings: undisclosed victims, forgotten evidence, and chilling new insights that resurrected this nightmare in unimaginable ways. God's Not Here, Only Devils is told through a powerful blend of narratives: the voices of Bittaker himself, his victims, traumatized witnesses, the tenacious lead detective, and the hardened District Attorney.. A visceral retelling of the horrors that unfolded and the legacy of terror the Toolbox Killers left behind.
GOD'S NOT HERE, ONLY DEVILS: Revelations From The Toolbox Killers—Laura Brand

Truth is supposed to be a journalist’s north star. But during the 2010s, the fourth estate lost its way, abandoning reporting for straight-up activism.
In Crimes of Omission, seasoned investigative journalist Rob Rosen will reveal the full story of the high-profile cases of law enforcement violence that rocked the world.
Through dozens of exclusive interviews, this book transports readers inside the nation’s most influential newsrooms at those crucial moments when the people we trust to inform us chose instead to mislead and inflame.
Crimes of omission aren’t about what is reported—they’re about what’s left out. Discover the disastrous decisions that ripped a nation apart and shattered the credibility of a once noble profession—and prepare to question everything you thought was true. CRIMES OF OMISSION: Distorted Justice—The Media's War on Truth—Rob Rosen

Why do certain women become icons of evil? This book offers the first comparative, non-sensationalist account of five of the most reviled women in the modern Anglophone world: Myra Hindley, Rosemary West, Aileen Wuornos, Karla Homolka, and Karla Faye Tucker. 
It examines their lives, crimes, and cultural reception in the United Kingdom, United States, and Canada, asking how violence committed by women is understood, judged, and remembered. 
Going beyond moral outrage or tabloid headlines, the book explores how concepts of “evil” are shaped by history, belief systems, and social context. Through historical and ethical reflections, it offers a deeper, more critical engagement with female violence and considers how society should respond to those who commit acts of unimaginable harm. FIVE EVIL WOMEN: Hindley, West, Wournos, Homolka, Tucker—Joanna Bourke

The infamy of Miami's cocaine wars of the 1970's and 80's is forever etched into the darkest chapters of U.S. history, and Lt. Raul Diaz was on the frontlines for all of it. The decorated and controversial law enforcement figure identified the shifting tide in the Magic City when law enforcement lost their grip on crime as a new breed of criminal flooded South Florida to ply their billion-dollar trade.
In a deadly exclamation mark, Colombian cocaine godmother Griselda Blanco and her assassins swept through the city with a bloody and ruthless ambition that left countless dead bodies along the way. Lt. Diaz organized and spearheaded the multi-agency task force CENTAC-26 to combat Blanco and the cartels.
Raul came to the US at age thirteen accompanied by only his younger brother and overcame insurmountable odds after finally finding law enforcement as his calling. He never did things the traditional way, and that wasn’t a popular position in the regulated world of police work.
His successes came at a costly price, both professionally and personally, putting him in the crosshairs of those with an axe to grind, shockingly on both sides of law enforcement. The man profiled in books, documentaries, and the Netflix series Griselda is here to share the story previously told by others—now, finally told by the one man who knows the truth behind every kilo, kidnapping, and corpse. KILLING THE LIEUTENANT: Fighting Miami's Cocaine Wars, Hunting Griselda Blanco, and My Fight To Stay Alive—Lt. Raul J. Diaz and Sean Oliver

An immersive account of a seemingly loving father's transformation into a "family annihilator."
In March 2023, Alex Murdaugh was found guilty of murdering his wife and younger son at Moselle, their home in South Carolina’s Lowcountry. By then, the story had become headline news across the country, with its revelations of corruption in high places, massive fraud, opioid abuse, fake suicides, suspicious accidents, and the generational recklessness of the wealthy legal dynasty at its center. Having covered the case for The New Yorker, where his article became the magazine’s most read story of the year, the acclaimed novelist James Lasdun brings his long-standing interest in the darker drives of the human psyche to an investigation into the serial embezzlements, fatal boat crash, and other events leading up to the slaughter at Moselle. “Justice may have been served,” Lasdun writes in the preface to The Family Man, "but the human element of the story didn’t seem to add up."
Having traveled extensively in the Lowcountry, Lasdun draws on original interviews (including with Murdaugh’s notorious "Cousin Eddie"), transcripts of phone calls Murdaugh made from prison, the literature of criminal psychology, and the murder trial itself. Deeply researched, sharply written, and with the page-turning intensity of a Southern gothic novel,The Family Man constructs a masterful portrait of Murdaugh and the mind-boggling crimes that wreaked havoc on his community. THE FAMILY MAN: Blood and Betrayal in the House of Murdaugh—James Lasdun

Was there more than one killer? Had the crime scene been cleaned and sanitized before the police arrived? Was furniture staged to throw off detectives? In one of the most extraordinary true crime stories ever published, Broken Plea questions what really happened in the house on King Road—and the results of that investigation will astound you.
In the early morning hours of November 13, 2022, four lives were lost in a brutal crime in Moscow, Idaho—and a nation demanded answers. When a suspect accepted a plea bargain, the story seemed settled. Justice, many believed, had been served.
Broken Plea challenges that assumption.Drawing on court records, investigative timelines, witness statements, and apparently overlooked inconsistencies, this meticulously researched exposé examines how a rush to judgment may have shaped one of the most closely watched murder cases in recent memory.
As the official narrative hardened, critical leads went unexplored, contradictory evidence was minimized, and alternative explanations faded from view. This book does not claim certainty where none exists. Instead, it asks the questions that were never fully pursued: What happens when pressure to close a case outweighs the search for truth? What evidence may have been sidelined, and why? And what are the consequences when a plea doesn’t end scrutiny but invites it? Clear-eyed, unsparing, and deeply unsettling, Broken Plea reopens the case—and invites people to look again at what justice demands when the truth remains unresolved. BROKEN PLEA: The Explosive Search for Truth Behind the Idaho Murders-Chris Whitcomb

In 1990, Monroe County’s daytime television viewing habits were disrupted by a TV first: the live broadcast of The People v. Arthur J. Shawcross. Never before had home viewers anywhere been given access to gavel-to-gavel coverage of a sordid murder trial. The show lasted eleven weeks, September to December. Viewers that normally followed daytime dramas or game shows were instead focused on the trial of a serial-killer who’d confessed to killing ten women in Monroe County, and one more in Wayne County, but whose lawyers claimed he was insane and not responsible for his actions. Fans of courtroom dramas like Perry Mason, now saw the real thing, sometimes lazy in its pacing, but raw and unfiltered in its subjects and language. The show ran on cable station WGRC (Greater Rochester Cable) and was set in teak-paneled Courtroom 206 of the Monroe County Public Safety Building, which had been equipped and wired as a TV studio.
A few watched the first day’s broadcast, were repulsed and changed the channel. Most viewers however were fascinated and watched for the rest of the fall.
The show’s villain obviously was Shawcross, yet he put no work into his role. . Throughout, he sat at the defense table motionless and silent, staring at his shoes.
The hero was Assistant District Attorney Charles Siragusa, who led the prosecution. By the trial’s third week, Siragusa was receiving fan mail and baked cookies from “groupies.”
Not every witness fared well under the lights. One defense witness, a forensic psychiatrist on the stand for many days, while trying to convince the jury of Shawcross’s insanity, drew unwanted laughter and was eventually satirized by morning radio shows because of her rambling answers and disorganized demeanor.
For several weeks, videotapes were shown in the courtroom (and on Channel 5) of the defendant supposedly under hypnosis, describing horrific acts that went well beyond what we’d ever heard discussed in our own homes: necrophilia, cannibalism, atrocities in Vietnam, cruel incestuous abuse. Shawcross claimed in falsetto that his mother took over his brain when he killed, much like Alfred Hitchcock’s twisted villain Norman Bates in the movie Psycho.
The prosecution’s star witness was forensic psychiatrist Dr. Park Dietz. He, too, had extensively examined Shawcross, but not under hypnosis. He concluded that Shawcross was faking his mental illness, that he was not psychotic but rather a malingering psychopathic, not crazy just extraordinarily mean.
“He is an anti-social. He lacks moral scruples and any sense of empathy,” Dr. Dietz testified.
Viewers were horrified to learn that Shawcross as a young man had killed two children near Watertown, N.Y., ten-year-old Jack Owen Blake, murdered on May 7, 1972, and eight-year-old Karen Ann Hill, killed May 7, 1972. For those crimes, Shawcross served only 15 years in prison and was released into Rochester in 1987 to kill again. THE TRIAL OF ARTHUR J. SHAWCROSS: And Other Stories of Rochester Murders—Michael Benson

The gripping inside story of Nathan Carman’s crimes from the maritime lawyer who solved his multimillionaire mother’s disappearance at sea and his even wealthier grandfather’s shooting death in bed.
When Nathan and Linda Carman were a week overdue on a fishing trip out of Point Judith, Rhode Island, few thought they would still be alive. Even the Coast Guard had called off its search. So it seemed miraculous when Nathan was spotted—on a life raft, 106 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard—by the Chinese freighter ORIENT LUCKY.
But was it more than luck? Nathan survived but his mother did not. Then news broke that Nathan was the primary suspect in his grandfather’s murder three years before, though the case chilled from a missing firearm. The last person to see both victims alive, twenty-two-year-old Nathan was now in line for a $10 million inheritance!
Or was Nathan, evidently on the Autism spectrum, plain unlucky to have lost the only two people close to him? As he claimed on national TV, was the focus on him as the “the lowest hanging fruit” just prejudice?
With no witnesses, no charges in his grandfather’s shooting, and no body for his mother lost at sea, both cases might have gone cold…except that Nathan made an insurance claim for his lost boat. Enter maritime attorney David J. Farrell, Jr. who ties together Nathan’s evil and greedy scheme.
Follow the author’s team dissect Nathan’s final voyage, extract exclusive testimony, and assemble evidence from around the world. In Dead in the Water, you’ll pull up a seat inside the federal court trial to see if Nathan’s dream of drifting away with millions of dollars comes true. DEAD IN THE WATER: The Real Story of Nathan Carman—David J. Ferrell Jr.

This story seems impossible. But every word is true.
Convergence is the account of a vicious double homicide in 1970s Chicago and a trial that almost didn't happen.
This is a different kind of true crime book. It isn't a mystery, because the killer was arrested right away. It's not a police story, although Convergence is there at every step of their investigation. It's not a defense lawyer's story. This is a story from the other side of the courtroom.
Convergence is the story of Gio Messina and Delphine Moore's murders and the trial that followed, but this time told from the perspective of the prosecution. You are there to witness how a case is built, how it's brought to court, and how it unfolds when the trial starts. You see what happens when power and money try to keep the trial from starting at all. You follow the prosecution from the courtrooms of Chicago to rural Tennessee looking for new evidence to replace the evidence that vanished.
You're introduced to the choreography of the courtroom: listening in on the careful strategizing, understanding the thought behind what a jury hears, and getting a close view of what's involved in how it's presented. Most importantly, you're introduced to Mike Goggin and Gregg Owen, the two prosecutors who fought to have the case heard. Goggin and Owen had set a record for convictions that still stands. They refused to let the Messina and Moore murders break it.
Convergence is a historical snapshot of a time when Chicago was changing, and a timeless picture of how justice is sought and found. CONVERGENCE—Gregg Owen

Chicago, 1982. Seven people swallowed Tylenol capsules meant to heal, then they died within minutes. America changed overnight, then the killer vanished into darkness, and that darkness lived in my home.
I was eleven, and my father was The Tylenol Killer that terrorized a nation.
He created chaos, and confessed with his last breath. I uncovered the truth, and the rot behind his badge. He built lies, and I built a case. I tore the mask from the madness and discovered that each clue led deeper into a labyrinth of deceit.
I stripped his name from mine, and I stripped his power too. He found me, and threatened my life, but I did not run. Instead, I shined a light into his darkness.
From the son who would not stay silent, THE TYLENOL MURDERS: A Father’s Confession to His Son reveals a confession buried under four decades of fear, complicity, and blue-walled denial. The truth is not a eulogy. It is an indictment. And it bears my name.THE TYLENOL MURDERS: A Father's Confession to His Son—Joseph Cibelli

Homicide historian David Kulczyk releases 1926—Murder in America—New and Expanded Edition for the 100th anniversary of the deadliest year in American history.
While researching his seven true crime books, Kulczyk noticed that there was an extraordinary number of oddball murders during the year 1926. The 1920's was a time of massive cultural and technological changes. The death and destruction of World War l dope -slapped the collective mindset of the youth of America and 1926 was the year that Americans all over the country said screw it. And screw it they did.......Mixing too much bootleg booze, marijuana, cocaine, and heroin, with fast cars, sex, and jazz music can only lead to trouble. The number of allegedly normal people committing ghastly murders in 1926 is astounding. It is like a switch got turned on and some people went mad unlike any other time in American history. 
Originally released in 2019, Kulczyk discovered even more murders that occurred in 1926, hence this anniversary edition of the most insane year in American history. 1926—MURDER IN AMERICA—David Kulczyk

A meticulously researched page-turner about one of the Philadelphia suburbs’ most shocking 20th-century crimes. A gunman broke into Jack and Peggy Abt’s house moments after the last family member left for the day. He took a seat next to the upright piano in the living room and waited silently for 11 hours. He didn’t eat. He didn’t sleep. He didn’t watch television.
People expect things to go bump in the night, but, in 1976, most adults never fretted a stranger would invade the sanctity of their home in the middle of the day. Six people walked through the kitchen door one by one that afternoon, all expecting nothing more than a Friday night fish fry. The killer leaped out from behind the living room wall over and over and over and over and over and over again. He fired at them at a distance of less than 18 inches, the width of a dining room chair. After each murder, he dragged the body to the basement. Then, to maintain the element of surprise, he sped back upstairs to tidy up for his next unsuspecting victim.
This first-person story from a news reporter who was on the scene 90 minutes after the killer slipped away is built from autopsy reports, prison records, IQ tests, trial transcripts, the killer’s own eidetic confession, interviews with witnesses in 1976 and in the 2020s, and the author’s experiences covering the case from the first night to the stunning courtroom moment when the announcement of six death penalties was met with loud cheers.
With that research, it was possible to reconstruct the six murders, minute by minute. Tension builds as the six innocent victims turn the kitchen doorknob at 3:30, 4:15, 4:40, 5:15, 6:10 and at 6:30. Readers know their fates, but they didn’t. KILLER IN THE HOUSE: Ten Days of Terror in a Pennsylvania Suburb—Kathryn Canavan

On December 22, 1984, in a graffiti-covered New York City subway car, passengers looked on in horror as a white loner named Bernhard Goetz shot four Black teens, Darrell Cabey, Barry Allen, Troy Canty, and James Ramseur, at point-blank range. He then disappeared into a dark tunnel. After an intense manhunt, and his eventual surrender in New Hampshire, the man the tabloid media had dubbed the “Death Wish Vigilante” would become a celebrity and a hero to countless ordinary Americans who had been frustrated with the economic fallout of the Reagan 80s. Overnight, Goetz’s young victims would become villains.
Out of this dramatic moment would emerge an angry nation, in which Rupert Murdoch's New York Post and later Fox News Network stoked the fear and the fury of a stunning number of Americans.
Drawing from never-before-seen archival materials, legal files, and more, Heather Ann Thompson narrates the Bernie Goetz Subway shootings and their decades-long reverberations, while deftly recovering the lives of the boys whom too many decided didn't matter. Fear and Fury is the remarkable account and a searing indictment of a crucial turning point in American history. FEAR AND FURY: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage—Heather Ann Thompson

September 1990. In Shaker Heights, Ohio, teenage honors student Lisa Lee Pruett vanishes into the night. A boy calls 911 when she does not arrive for a secret late-night meet-up. Police soon find her nearby, stabbed to death and left exposed.
Lisa had just passed an important test and earned her driver’s license. She was a Girl Scout, athlete, musician, and lover of poetry. Then her life was cut short.
Investigators quickly focused on a troubled young man who lived a few blocks away. His name leaked, the media swarmed, and the case became a spectacle. Two years later, he was indicted on controversial testimony, tried under national attention, and ultimately acquitted. His life never recovered.
Decades later, the murder remains unsolved.
Now a former police officer, Michael Kelly, reopens the trail, determined to separate rumor from evidence and find the truth, if it is still there to be found. IN PUBLIC RECORD: A Journey to the Truth of a Murder and Trial—Michael Kelly

The latter part of the Victorian era bore witness to a series of unexplained female dismemberment cases that plagued London for a period of thirty years. All the cases remain unsolved and only two women were ever identified. Today, the circumstances surrounding these deaths have largely become a footnote in history, dwarfed in attention by their much larger cousin, Jack the Ripper.
In this, Suzanne Huntington’s groundbreaking exploration of the subject, we see the first in-depth analysis into all the cases, where 150 years of assumption and misinformation is stripped back and the evidence re-examined, allowing the reader to comprehend not only the complexity of the cases themselves but also the background and context of the investigations. THE THAMES TORSO MURDERS: Fact or Fiction—Suzanne Huntington

Edna's world turned upside down when her close cousin, Ted Bundy, was linked to the gruesome murders that had plagued her hometown of Seattle. Both devastating and dangerous, she reveals her journey of discovering the truth about her cousin who was more like a sibling, a man she loved, admired, and thought she knew so well. Edna delves into the unbelievable and chilling episodes she experienced, from confronting Ted and discovering a side of him she never suspected to waking to the FBI at her door after he escaped jail.
Whether searching memories for signs she’d missed or detailing scenes of life under the radar in a world still fixated on her cousin, Edna’s account tells the Ted Bundy story from a critical, new perspective: someone who called him family.
Including never-before-seen photos and handwritten letters from Bundy, Dark Tide’s message is as gut-wrenching as it is clear, asking the question: how well do we know those we trust most? DARK TIDE: Growing Up With Ted Bundy-Edna Cowell Martin and Megan Atkinson

Empire City Under Siege shares true stories of an FBI Special Agent spanning three tumultuous decades in New York City, beginning in the gritty 1970s when law enforcement refused to let their city be consumed by corruption and violence. Starting as an undercover operative investigating Mafia hijackers in Red Hook, Anthony John Nelson offers a gripping insider’s look at the bureau’s largest field office during one of its most transformative eras.
From international manhunts, celebrity kidnappings, and late-night surveillance of Mafia hotspots with NYPD legend Kenneth “Kenny” McCabe, Nelson recounts his involvement in some of the most impactful and infamous cases of the pre-Internet age—pulling back the curtain on the dangers, strategies, and sacrifices behind the headlines.
Featuring first-hand accounts from agents, officers, and prosecutors, this book honors the courage and commitment of all those like Anthony John Nelson who fought to restore order, protect the innocent, and reclaim a city once on the brink. EMPIRE CITY UNDER SIEGE Three Decades of New York FBI Field Office Manhunts, Murders, and Mafia Wars—Craig McGuire

Good-hearted country boy Petie Miller vanishes without a trace two days before his wedding in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley in 1983. Some speculate it’s a case of cold feet, but investigators suspect cold-blooded murder. The bride’s stepfather, a violent career criminal named Charlie Almond, is the prime suspect. Circumstantial evidence suggests that Almond killed Miller and successfully disposed of the body. But with no witnesses, no forensic evidence, and no body, Almond is allowed to walk free. Meanwhile, Miller’s father never stops seeking answers about what happened to his son. For three decades, he tirelessly pushes the investigation forward, imploring the authorities to keep his son’s case file open. Finally, thirty-two years later in 2015, new witnesses emerge and Almond, now an octogenarian, is charged with first-degree murder. Chances of a guilty verdict seem slim, but special prosecutor Phil Figura, known in courtrooms as the “Dragonslayer,” is determined to bring justice. Can Figura win a conviction in the oldest, coldest “no body” murder trial in United States history?
Bestselling true crime author Ron Peterson, Jr. was provided exclusive access to the police case file to research this compelling story, interviewing over fifty sources, including family members of both Petie Miller and Charlie Almond, and working closely with prosecutor Phil Figura and lead investigator Aaron LeVeck.
In a case where justice seems impossible, could the truth finally prevail—or will a killer once again slip away? RUNAWAY GROOM: Cold Feet—or Cold-Blooded Murder?—Ron Peterson Jr. 

From two-time best-selling author and three-time Emmy-winning investigative reporter Mark Pettit comes the haunting true story of Nebraska serial killer John Joubert—a case that shocked a nation and still echoes across the true-crime world.
It was one of the most terrifying times in Nebraska's history. The year a young Air Force Airman went on a killing spree, leaving two young boys dead and a community gripped by fear. 
TV news anchorman and investigative reporter Mark Pettit managed to interview John Joubert on Death Row. In a series of exclusive, face-to-face interviews with Pettit, Joubert admits to a string of violent crimes and another killing—that sends investigators into a frenzy ending with Joubert being convicted for a third murder and ultimately executed in Nebraska’s electric chair.
Pettit had also been told by Joubert about 'death row drawings' he had created, and that were to be given to Pettit. After a contentious legal battle, a confidential source came forward providing the final piece in the twisted puzzle and a rare glimpse into the mind of a sexual sadist—still fantasizing about murder as he waited to die in the electric chair.
Now 43 years after the murders, Pettit returns with this final, updated edition—A NEED TO KILL: The Life and Crimes of John Joubert, Nebraska's Most Notorious Serial Child Killer—Mark Pettit

The film NUREMBERG, to be released November 7th, 2025 is an American drama written, co-produced and edited by James Vanderbilt. It is based on the 2013 book, THE NAZI AND THE PSYCHIATRIST by Jack El Hai..
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. Joining Göring in the detention center were the elite of the captured Nazi regime. Grand Admiral Dönitz; armed forces commander Wilhelm Keitel and his deputy Alfred Jodl; the mentally unstable Robert Ley; the suicidal Hans Frank; the pornographic propagandist Julius Streicher. Fifty-two senior Nazis in all, of whom the dominant figure was Göring.
To ensure that the villainous captives were fit for trial at Nuremberg, the US army sent an ambitious army psychiatrist, Captain Douglas M. Kelley, to supervise their mental well-being during their detention. Kelley realized he was being offered the professional opportunity of a lifetime: to discover a distinguishing trait among these arch-criminals that would mark them as psychologically different from the rest of humanity. So began a remarkable relationship between Kelley and his captors, told here for the first time with unique access to Kelley's long-hidden papers and medical records.
Kelley's was a hazardous quest, dangerous because against all his expectations he began to appreciate and understand some of the Nazi captives, none more so than the former Reichsmarshall, Hermann Göring. Evil had its charms.
Joining me to discuss, NUREMBERG and the book the film is based on THE NAZI AND THE PSYCHIATRIST: Hermann Goring, Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, and a Fatal Meeting of Minds at the End of WWll—Jack El-Hai

In the 1980s, the tiny town of Arcadia, Florida, was “fifty miles and fifty years from Sarasota.” With its cowboy roots, low-wage agricultural industries, and violent frontier history, Arcadia was a curious mix of the desolate ranchlands of West Texas and the stately homes and bitter race relations of the South. In A Town without Pity, award-winning author Jason Vuic recounts two heartbreaking stories from Arcadia that rose to national prominence at the end of the Reagan era and forced the town to reckon with not only AIDS hysteria but also the legacies of a racist past. 
This book delves into the case of James Richardson, a Black migrant worker accused in 1967 of poisoning his seven children. Richardson spent twenty years in prison due to suppressed evidence for a crime he didn’t commit. Vuic also tells the story of the public mistreatment of the three Ray brothers, white school-age children with hemophilia who contracted the HIV virus from a tainted medicine called factor VIII. The Rays were barred from attending their local church and school, and when their house burned down in a mysterious arson, reporters dubbed Arcadia the “town without pity.”
Through extensive use of newspapers, court records, and interviews, Vuic shows how the actions of authorities and residents left little room for the voices that spoke up against bias, harassment, and coercion. At the same time, this cautionary tale places Arcadia as a microcosm of many small towns in the late twentieth-century United States, reminding readers of the staying power of social divisions and prejudice even after the achievements of the civil rights movement. A TOWN WITHOUT PITY: AIDS, Race, and Resistance in Florida's Deep South—Jason Vuic

Mike Gatto was an up-and-coming young lawmaker when his father was brutally murdered.
The act sucked him into the world of noir: wild theories, intransigent detectives, and unimaginable violence.
This true crime story reads like a thriller, offering insight into the world of politics and the seedy underbelly of crime investigation in modern Los Angeles.
Gatto shares his experiences with incredible candor and raw emotion, detailing every clue, and how he came to learn every tragic detail of his father's murder. With the case still unsolved, see if you can piece together the clues to solve this mystery. NOIR BY NECESSITY: How My Father's Unsolved Murder Took Me to Dark Places—Mike Gatto

They blended in. They raised families, held steady jobs, and hid in plain sight. But behind the mask of normalcy, they were monsters—responsible for decades of terror, pain, and death.
Every Killer Leaves A Trace is a chilling narrative nonfiction thriller that exposes moments that led to the shocking unmasking and ultimate capture of twenty-six of America’s most elusive killers. From accidental slips to cutting-edge forensic breakthroughs, each chapter reveals how justice caught up with murderers who thought they’d never be found.
Meticulously researched and drawn from court records, autopsy reports, FBI case files, and firsthand interviews with investigators and victims’ families, this book is a haunting journey through deception, violence, and the relentless pursuit of truth.
These are not just stories of murder. They are blueprints of how justice, though often delayed, is never truly denied.
They got away with murder—until they didn’t. EVERY KILLER LEAVES A TRACE: The Fatal Mistakes That Finally Exposed the Most Elusive Killers-Dennis Carson

Goodfellow, capo, killer, thief. A man so diabolically evil that he ordered his eldest son to murder his closest associate, and his youngest son to murder his best friend.
When Greg Scarpa was in his early twenties he became a goodfellow in the Profaci family by swearing a blood oath to the Mafia, at the time the country’s largest organized-crime syndicate. And for 25 years he betrayed that oath and the men closest to him by acting as a paid informant for the FBI. He fed America’s premier law enforcement agency a steady stream of self-serving information accusing the men who trusted him with their lives of every crime he was himself committing. During those 25 years of treachery, Scarpa was a one-man crime wave who spent only 30 days behind bars thanks to his status as the FBI’s ultimate Mafia insider. His standing as a prized informant freed him to engage in mayhem and murder knowing he had a virtual license to kill with reckless abandon.
Greg Scarpa, Legendary Evil is a deep dive that provides fresh insight into Scarpa’s malignant personality. Dyer peels back the layers of myth and misdirection to paint as complete and accurate a picture as possible of a man who murdered his enemies and betrayed his friends, of a bigamist who loved only money, of a feared and reviled man whose destructive appetites knew no bounds. GREG SCARPA, LEGENDARY EVIL: The Many Faces of a Mafia Killer—Jonathan Dyer

The murder that still haunts a Pennsylvania city.
On the morning of August 8, 1975, sixteen-year-old Debbie Gama disappeared after leaving her home in Erie, only to be found raped and strangled days later in a creek nearly thirty miles from her home. What followed was an investigation that lacked suspects or even evidence pointing to a viable suspect. That is, until a private investigator named Dan Barber uncovered evidence leading directly to her killer: her English teacher, Raymond Payne. After Payne’s arrest, Debbie’s mother, Betty Ferguson, embarked on her own quest for justice, which unexpectedly led her on an incredible journey of forgiveness.
Utilizing newspaper articles, court documents and investigative files never before revealed, Justin Dombrowski presents a gripping narrative of one investigator’s pursuit of justice and a mother’s search for the truth. THE MURDER OF DEBBIE GAMA: Justice and Abolition in Erie—Justin Dumbrowski

Many decades before Ted Bundy roamed the country there was serial killer Earle Nelson. During the 1920s, this geographically mobile killer went from city to city. His modus operandi involved getting into a house by pretending to be a person looking for a room to rent or inspecting a house that was for sale, and then strangling the landlady, often followed by having sex with the dead body. Robbery was frequently a secondary motive.
After Nelson was captured in Canada in 1927, it was commonly reported that he had killed 21 women and a baby during the 1926-27 period. But were these the only cases linked to him? The author examines an additional nine unsolved murders of landladies, two of which have never been dealt with in previous literature. Based on decades of archival research, the author examines all 31 murders, relying on primary sources when available and a wide variety of secondary sources. For each murder, the book provides biographical sketches of the victim, outlines the police investigation and the various suspects, and covers any subsequent attempts to link Nelson to the crime by identification evidence of witnesses or by fingerprints. 31 MURDERS: Following the Trail of Serial Sex Killer Earle Nelson-Alvin A.J. Esau










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The Serial Killer Travel Guide Across America isn’t your typical road trip companion. This darkly fascinating guide is quirky and unconventional and takes readers on a dark journey through the United States, exploring notorious locations linked to infamous and not-so infamous serial killers. From the shadowy forests of the Pacific Northwest to the sun-bleached basements of suburbia, each stop offers true crime devotees an unsettling glimpse into the macabre.
Designed like a 1960s-style travel guide, this book offers a coast-to-coast tour, showcasing select spots and delving into the twisted histories of the perpetrators. Blending history, psychology, and a hint of gallows humor, this book is part travel guide and part true crime encyclopedia.
Whether you’re planning a dark tourism pilgrimage or just indulging your morbid curiosity from the safety of your home, The Serial Killer Travel Guide Across America will take you closer to the truth—and the horror—than you ever thought possible. THE SERIAL KILLER TRAVEL GUIDE ACROSS AMERICA: Your Coast-To-Coast Tour of Terror-Johnny Trevisani

In the quiet town of Mount Pleasant, Iowa, the idyllic calm of 1978 was shattered by a series of brutal murders. Karol Beavers, a vivacious high school junior, and her mother, Clementine, became the unsuspecting victims of a heinous act of violence that left the community reeling. For six months, the case went cold, fear gripping a town unaccustomed to locking its doors. Then, another shocking murder occurred, tying the threads of horror together.
A Monster in Mount Pleasant delves into the unraveling of this dark chapter. Drawing from years of meticulous research, the story reveals not just the pursuit of justice, but the profound emotional scars left behind. From the shattered dreams of a bright young girl to the lifelong grief of families torn apart, this book captures the deep humanity behind the headlines.
This compelling narrative is told through the eyes of a classmate of Karol—and the murderer. Now a federal judge, the author unearthed the societal cracks that shaped both the victims and the perpetrator. It’s a haunting journey into a community forever changed by tragedy, where resilience and the quest for truth stand as testaments to those lost too soon. A MONSTER IN MOUNT PLEASANT: A Story of Murders and Justice-CJ Williams

Baby-faced teen Giovanni Macedo is desperate to find belonging in one of LA’s most predatory gangs, the Columbia Lil Cycos—so desperate that he agrees to kill an undocumented Mexican street vendor. The vendor, Francisco Clemente, had been refusing to give in to the gang’s shakedown demands. But Giovanni botches the hit, accidentally killing a newborn instead. The overlords who rule the Lil Cycos from a Supermax prison 1,000 miles away must be placated and Giovanni is lured across the border where, in turn, the gang botches his killing. And so, incredibly, Giovanni rises from the dead, determined to both seek redemption for his unforgivable crime and take down the gang who drove him to do it.
With The Rent Collectors, Jesse Katz has built a teeth clenching and breathless narrative that explicates the difficult and proud lives of undocumented black market workers who are being extorted by the gangs and fined by the city of LA—in other words, exploited by two sets of rent collectors. THE RENT COLLECTORS: Exploitation, Murder and Redemption in Immigrant LA—Jesse Katz

For Yves Trudeau, the blood was all business. An assassin for the Hells Angels in the ’70s and ’80s, Trudeau was known as Apache, the Mad Bumper, and the Mad Bomber. As a contract killer, he did his job so well that the bikers sometimes lent him out to other organized-crime empires in Montreal, including the east-end French gangs led by the deadly Dubois brothers and the upstart Irish Mafia in the west end.Yves Trudeau remains one of Canada’s most prolific serial killers. When he narrowly missed being assassinated because he was in drug rehab, he turned government informant and confessed to his crimes, which included killing forty-three people. But as a witness, Trudeau was a disaster. And the sweetheart deal he got with little jail time for his murders caused outrage.Award-winning writers Julian Sher and Lisa Fitterman tell the incredible story of how this assassin escaped the police and the justice system for over a decade.A compelling and revealing account of corruption, incompetence, and murder, Hitman is based on extensive research and exclusive new interviews with police, lawyers, and bikers who knew Yves “Apache” Trudeau. HITMAN: The Untold Story of Canada's Deadliest Assassin-Julian Sher and Lisa Fitterman

The latest collection from true crime master Michael Benson looks at some of the ghastliest murders in Rochester, N.Y., history. One of them takes place in Genesee County, but it's a good one. Stories include: The Davis Street Fiend: The Murder of Tessie Keating; Shallow Grave at Holy Sepulchre: The Murder of Anna Schumacher; The Linden Lunatic: The Murders of "Ruth", Frances Kimball, George and Hattie Whaley, and Benjamin Phillips; Of Bondage and Bullets: The Murder of Gertrude Smith; Trail of Blood: The Murder of George Hickey; and The Jay Street Ax Man: The Murders of Millie Marcucci and Francesca Cotogno. Plus updates on three cases Benson has written about in the past, cold cases that are cold no more: Cathleen Krauseneck, Wendy Jerome, and Victoria Jobson. SHALLOW GRAVES: Ghastly Murders, Rochester NY-Michael Benson

Caroline Fraser grew up in the shadow of Ted Bundy, the most notorious serial murderer of women in American history, surrounded by his hunting grounds and mountain body dumps, in the brooding landscape of the Pacific Northwest. But in the 1970s and ’80s, Bundy was just one perpetrator amid an uncanny explosion of serial rape and murder across the region. Why so many? Why so weirdly and nightmarishly gruesome? Why the senseless rise and then sudden fall of an epidemic of serial killing?
As Murderland indelibly maps the lives and careers of Bundy and his infamous peers in mayhem—the Green River Killer, the I-5 Killer, the Night Stalker, the Hillside Strangler, even Charles Manson—Fraser’s Northwestern death trip begins to uncover a deeper mystery and an overlapping pattern of environmental destruction. At ground zero in Ted Bundy’s Tacoma stood one of the most poisonous lead, copper, and arsenic smelters in the world, but it was hardly unique in the West. As Fraser’s investigation inexorably proceeds, evidence mounts that the plumes of these smelters not only sickened and blighted millions of lives but also warped young minds, including some who grew up to become serial killers.
Murderland transcends true-crime voyeurism and noir mythology, taking readers on a profound quest into the dark heart of the real American berserk. MURDERLAND: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers-Caroline Fraser

The inside story of the CIA’s secret mind control project, MKULTRA, using never-before-seen testimony from the perpetrators themselves.
Sidney Gottlieb was the CIA’s most cunning chemist. As head of the infamous MKULTRA project, he oversaw an assortment of dangerous―even deadly―experiments. Among them: dosing unwitting strangers with mind-bending drugs, torturing mental patients through sensory deprivation, and steering the movements of animals via electrodes implanted into their brains. His goal was to develop methods of mind control that could turn someone into a real-life “Manchurian candidate.”
In conjunction with MKULTRA, Gottlieb also plotted the assassination of foreign leaders and created spy gear for undercover agents. The details of his career, however, have long been shrouded in mystery. Upon retiring from the CIA in 1973, he tossed his files into an incinerator. As a result, much of what happened under MKULTRA was thought to be lost―until now.
Historian John Lisle has uncovered dozens of depositions containing new information about MKULTRA, straight from the mouths of its perpetrators. For the first time, Gottlieb and his underlings divulge what they did, why they did it, how they got away with it, and much more. Additionally, Lisle highlights the dramatic story of MKULTRA’s victims, from their terrible treatment to their dogged pursuit of justice.
The consequences of MKULTRA still reverberate throughout American society. Project Mind Control is the definitive account of this most disturbing of chapters in CIA history. Joining me to discuss, PROJECT MIND CONTROL: Sidney Gotlieb, the CIA, and the Tragedy of MKULTRA-John Lisle

On September 6, 1982, convicted murderer Leroy James Chasson made a daring break for freedom from the Massachusetts Correctional Institute-Walpole—one of the most infamous, escape-proof prisons in the country. But this wasn't just any prison break. It was a meticulously planned, five-year effort, made possible by an unlikely accomplice—Kathleen MacDonald, Chasson's former pen-pal turned wife.
True crime author Daniel Zimmerman (SHOTS IN THE DARK) brings the shocking escape to life, detailing how Chasson, wounded and bleeding from self-inflicted wounds was first transferred to a hospital for treatment. Then, using a .45 automatic smuggled to him by his wife who was disguised as a nurse, took hospital guards and staff hostage, before fleeing under a hail of gunfire.
Dubbed the "Bonnie and Clyde" of Massachusetts, the couple’s daring run across the country captivated the nation and they would evade capture for years. Living under assumed identities, they nearly made it—until a tip from America's Most Wanted led to their eventual capture in 1989. Joining me to discuss, CHASSON’S RUN: The Prison Break That Captivated America and the Love Story That Fueled It—Daniel Zimmerman

In 1971, Montgomery County Deputy Sheriff James Tappen Hall was gunned down outside a Maryland country club. The case went cold—no suspect, no answers, no closure. But his daughter never gave up trying to find her father's killer.Fifty years later, cold case detectives finally reopened the investigation and identified a suspect whose shocking confession revealed a detail never released to the public: Hall was shot twice. A Second Shot by Dr. Michael Weisberg is a gripping true crime story of justice delayed but not denied—and a deeply personal tale of second chances for both a grieving family and the author himself. Joining me to discuss, A SECOND SHOT: The Pursuit of Justice in Maryland's Oldest Cold Case Murder—Michael F. Weisberg Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

"It was the most horrific crime ever to come before this Court,” said the Judge. A renowned forensic pathologist shouted from the witness stand, “Torture!” when describing the beating three-year-old Kyson Rice took at the hands of a 6-foot 3-inch, 240-pound monster. Read the account of an ambulance team desperately trying to keep a badly beaten boy alive and a high-risk arrest by a well-equipped professionally trained police force to take down a murderer. Follow in the footsteps of four investigators who reached as far as Arizona to gather information. Relive the courtroom drama as a seasoned District Attorney and a skilled Assistant District Attorney forge a compelling case in which there were no witnesses, no weapons, and a questionable motive. Follow the longest trial in Monroe County Court history, with the most witnesses ever to testify, often leaving the jury in tears. Read the heartbreaking account of a mother and community losing a loving, intelligent, and happy youngster to a painful and excruciating death at the hands of a cowardly psychopath who refused to accept responsibility for torturing Kyson to death. Author Larry Scheckel joins me to discuss, MURDER IN A SMALL TOWN: The Kyson Rice Case—Larry Scheckel  Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

Anne JaegerFrom her small-town Michigan roots to becoming a New York Times bestselling author, Ann Rule’s life journey is as fascinating as the cases she covered. Discover how she revolutionized crime writing, influenced FBI profiling, and Rule's fateful encounter with a murderer at just nine years old.Go behind the scenes of Rule’s most infamous cases—including Ted Bundy (The Stranger Beside Me), Randy Woodfield (The I-5 Killer), and Diane Downs (Small Sacrifices)—and explore her personal insights into the murderers Rule and Jaeger both studied.Featuring never-before-revealed true crime cases, jaw-dropping interviews, and the little known story of Rule’s time as a sex decoy for the Seattle Vice Squad, this book also delves into the extraordinary three-decade friendship between Rule and Jaeger. With exclusive letters from notorious killers and an inside look at Diane Downs' chilling correspondence with Manson murderer Susan Atkins and I-5 Killer Randy Woodfield.Anne Jaeger and I discuss Ann Rule's fateful journey to become the undisputed "Queen of True Crime"—her families' law enforcement background that shaped her own perceptions of crime and punishment, and her transformative role in true crime writing, and true crime history. THE RULE OF CRIME AND ME: An Intimate View of Ann Rule Shared by her Friend of 30 Years—Anne Jaeger Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

London, 1953. Police discover the bodies of three young women hidden in a wall at 10 Rillington Place, a dingy terrace house in Notting Hill. On searching the building, they find another body beneath the floorboards, then an array of human bones in the garden. But they have already investigated a double murder at 10 Rillington Place, three years ago, and the killer was hanged. Did they get the wrong man?
A nationwide manhunt is launched for the tenant of the ground-floor flat, a softly spoken former policeman named Reg Christie. Star reporter Harry Procter chases after the scoop. Celebrated crime writer Fryn Tennyson Jesse begs to be assigned to the case. The story becomes an instant sensation, and with the relentless rise of the tabloid press the public watches on like never before. Who is Christie? Why did he choose to kill the women, and to keep their bodies near him? As Harry and Fryn start to learn the full horror of what went on at Rillington Place, they realize that Christie might also have engineered a terrible miscarriage of justice—in plain sight.
In this riveting true story, Kate Summerscale mines the archives to uncover the lives of Christie's victims, the tabloid frenzy that their deaths inspired, and the truth about what really happened inside that house. Joining me to discuss, THE PEEPSHOW: The Murders at Rillington Place— Kate Summerscale
  Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

What drove the inconspicuous sociopath to become a ruthless killer? During his nearly fifteen-year reign of terror, Ronald Lloyd Bailey’s depraved obsession with sexual sadism held communities across southeast Michigan in a shroud of fear. From the early 1970’s to the mid-1980’s, the former patient at one of Michigan’s foremost psychiatric hospitals, abducted as many as fifteen teens and over time became a sadistic serial killer.In this shocking, fast-paced account, retired police officer and true crime author Rod Sadler examines law enforcement's dedicated efforts in connecting the dots to stop an unknown killer, and he poignantly chronicles the determination of the victims' families to triumph over tragedy.Sadler also examines Bailey’s insanity defense that centered on the alleged abuse he endured at the hands of his psychiatrist. In doing so, the bestselling author of KILLING WOMEN asks and answers the question: What drove the inconspicuous sociopath to become a ruthless killer? Joining me to discuss, DEPRAVED OBSESSION: The Gripping True Story of Law Enforcement's Hunt for a Sadistic Serial Killer—Rod Sadler   Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

L.A. Coroner is a gripping true crime biography of Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the controversial “Coroner to the Stars,” who performed the autopsies of Marilyn Monroe, Robert F. Kennedy, Sharon Tate, Natalie Wood, and hundreds of other notable personalities. Choi, an award-winning historian and professor, deftly blends Los Angeles history, death investigation and forensic science, and Asian American history in a feat of exquisite storytelling. Anne Soon Choi discusses the incredible role Nogucci played in these famous death investigations and historic murder trials.L.A. Coroner is the first-ever biography of Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the Chief Medical Examiner–Coroner of Los Angeles County from 1967 to 1982. Throughout his illustrious career, Dr. Noguchi conducted the official autopsies of some of the most high-profile figures of his time. His elaborate press conferences, which often generated more controversy than they did answers, catapulted him into the public eye.Noguchi was also the inspiration for the popular 1970s–80s television drama Quincy, M.E., starring Jack Klugman. Featuring never-before-published details about Noguchi’s most controversial cases, L.A. Coroner is a meticulously researched biography of a complex man, set against the backdrop of the social and racial politics of the 1960s and 1970s and Hollywood celebrity culture. Joining me to discuss L.A. Coroner: Thomas Noguchi and Death in Hollywood—Anne Soon Choi Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

Irma Grese “The Hyena of Auschwitz” entered Adolph Hitler’s concentration camps at the age of 18 as one of the most feared females in Nazi Germany. Before she was 20 years old, Grese became legendary for her insatiable cruelty and salacious liaisons, an alleged predator and sadist. Even Nazi supervisors were forced to curtail her brutal behavior. Irma Grese hailed from a small farming village. Her life’s goal was to become a nurse. Instead, she was a female guard in the most notorious concentration camps of the Third Reich. As WWII raged, so did Irma Grese’s behavior. When arrested and imprisoned she continued to be defiant to the last seconds of her life at age 22. No media has captured the complete TRUE STORY of Irma Grese. Too many documents contain regurgitated, unreferenced information. Numerous myths and fallacies exist about the fascinating and terrifying Irma Grese—Until now. IRMA GRESE: Becoming "The Hyena of Auschwitz"—Judith A. Yates Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

For all Tom Marquardt knew, Capital Gazette just had an unhappy reader. What he didn’t know was that the unhappy reader was about to become a mass murderer.
Marquardt, the former editor of Capital Gazette newspapers in Annapolis, MD, was a target of a 38-year-old loner who sought to avenge a 2011 article that reported the reader’s conviction of sexually harassing a former high school classmate. For years the man sued the editor, the reporter and the newspaper for defamation, then took to Twitter (now X) to lash out against the editor and reporter. Representing himself in court, his lawsuit rambled and failed to persuade a judge who easily dismissed it. He spent the next three years silently plotting his attack.
On June 28, 2018, he blasted his way through the locked doors of Capital Gazette offices and killed five employees. He called 911 to confess, then hid under a desk while waiting to surrender to approaching police.
Marquardt spent two years reviewing police and court files, eyewitness accounts, the killer’s interview with a state psychiatrist and video footage to chronicle in stunning detail what lead up to the crime and how the killer escaped detection.
“Pressed to Kill: Inside Newspapers’ Worst Mass Murder” is a chilling account of the worst mass murder at an American newspaper, but more so it is about the lives of those who died, their heroism on that day, and the remarkable response from a community who rushed to its side. PRESSED TO KILL: Inside Newspapers' Worst Mass Murder—Tom Marquardt Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

The true story of how one dedicated forensic scientist restored the long-lost identities of the teenaged victims of the “Candy Man,” one of America’s most prolific serial killers.
Houston, Texas, in the early 1970s was an exciting place—the home of NASA, the city of the future. But a string of more than two dozen missing teenage boys hinted at a dark undercurrent that would go ignored for too long. While their siblings and friends wondered where they had gone, the Houston police department dismissed them as runaways, fleeing the Vietnam draft or conservative parents, likely looking to get high and join the counterculture.
It was only after their killer, Dean Corll, was murdered by an accomplice that many of those boys’ bodies were discovered in mass graves. Corll, known as the “Candy Man,” was a local sweet-shop owner who had enlisted two teens to lure their friends to parties, where they would be tortured and killed.
All of Corll’s victims’ bodies were badly decomposed; some were only skeletal. Known collectively as the Lost Boys, many were never identified and some remained undiscovered. Decades later, when forensic anthropologist Sharon Derrick discovered a box of remains marked “1973 Murders” in the Harris County Medical Examiner’s office, she recalled the horrifying crime from her own childhood, and knew she had to act. It would take prison interviews with Corll’s accomplices, advanced scientific techniques, and years of tireless effort to identify these young men.
Investigative journalist Lise Olsen brings to life the teens who were hunted by a killer hiding in plain sight and the extraordinary woman who would finally give his unknown victims back their names and their dignity. With newly uncovered information about the case, The Scientist and the Serial Killer immerses listeners in an astonishing story and reveals why these horrific events remain relevant decades later. Joining me to discuss, THE SCIENTIST AND THE SERIAL KILLER: The Search for Houston's Lost Boys—Lise Olsen Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

Acclaimed journalist, author, and creator of the True Crime This Week podcast, and former Boy Scout James Renner, explores the dark side of an American institution, its pervasive culture of sexual abuse, and the traumatic—even deadly—repercussions of its long-buried secrets.
In the summer of 1995, at the largest Boy Scout camp in Ohio, a night of sexual violence ended with one counselor dead and another hospitalized. The death was ruled “accidental.” But it wouldn’t be the last death associated with Seven Ranges Reservation.
James Renner, too, was a counselor at Seven Ranges that year. He was always sure there must be more to the story of Mike Klingler’s death, because Renner also knew firsthand that the 900-acre camp was not the safe getaway it was portrayed to be. On Friday nights the boys were ushered into the woods for a frightening ceremony in which they learned the rules for becoming good young men—and, above all, that keeping secrets was a scout’s duty. No matter how dark the secrets were.
Determined to face his demons, Renner embarks on a journey back to that tumultuous summer and exposes a clandestine society that left indelible scars on the scouts and the staff who were there. For Renner himself, it meant opening up about his twisted upbringing, his issues with trust and sexuality, and a lifetime of self-medication. The result is a deeply personal, no-holds-barred, and vitally important true crime memoir. Joining me to discuss, SCOUT CAMP: Sex, Death, and Secret Societies Inside The Boy Scouts of America-James Renner Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

THE CRACK CITY STRANGLER: The Homicides of Serial Killer Benjamin Atkins offers a chilling, in-depth account of the horrifying crimes committed by one of America’s most notorious serial killers.
Award-winning journalist B.R. Bates delves into the twisted life of Benjamin “Tony” Atkins, whose reign of terror in Detroit spanned less than a year in the early 1990s. Known for targeting vulnerable women in Detroit’s most dangerous neighborhoods, Atkins attacked at least 12 women, killing 11 along a mile-and-a-half stretch of Woodward Avenue, one of the city’s most iconic streets.
Atkins' crimes were brutal and relentless, leaving victims abandoned in the dark corners of the Cass Corridor and Highland Park. Only when the lone survivor of his horrific spree came forward did law enforcement begin to connect the dots and ultimately capture the monster behind the killings.
Through meticulous research in this second book in her Murders In The Motor City series, Bates uncovers the complex web of motivation, abuse, and desperation that led Atkins to target sex workers, while also exploring the societal pressures and systemic neglect that shaped his dark path. A poignant look at a killer’s psychology, Bates explains how this troubled life could give rise to such monstrous behavior. THE CRACK CITY STRANGLER: The Homicides of Serial Killer Benjamin Atkins-B.R. Bates Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

Smitty: My Marriage to Serial Killer Charles Schmid, the Pied Piper of Tucson unveils an unforgettable tale of love, betrayal, and survival. Diane Schmid thought she had found her Prince Charming when she met Charles Schmid, a charismatic and mysterious man who swept her off her feet as a teenager in the mid-1960s. But her fairytale quickly unraveled when her husband was arrested for multiple shocking murders that captured national attention.
Set against the backdrop of a rapidly changing America, this deeply personal memoir recounts Diane’s journey from a young girl in love to a woman facing unimaginable revelations of murder. Through vivid memories and unflinching honesty, Diane reveals how she navigated a life overshadowed by her husband’s heinous crimes while striving to protect her family and find peace.
Written with co-author Marshall Terrill, this book offers a unique perspective on one of the most infamous cases in American history, shedding light on the devastating human cost of living with such a dark secret. Blending gripping storytelling with heartfelt reflection, Smitty captures the strength of a survivor who chose to share her voice after decades of silence.
Smitty is a compelling and haunting story for those who seek a deeper understanding of resilience in the face of unthinkable events. SMITTY: My Marriage to Serial Killer Charles Schmid, the Pied Piper of Tucson—Marshall Terrill Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

Detective Rick Jackson, a decorated LAPD detective and a key inspiration in the development of Harry Bosch, delivers a shocking and immersive look into the one case he could never let go. In June 1990, Ronald Baker, a straight-A UCLA student, was found repeatedly stabbed to death in a tunnel near Spahn Ranch, where Charles Manson and his followers once lived. Shortly thereafter, Detective Rick Jackson and his partner, Frank Garcia, were assigned the case. Yet the facts made no sense. Who would have a motive to kill Ron Baker in such a grisly manner? Was the proximity to the Manson ranch related to the murder? And what about the pentagram pendant Ron wore around his neck? Jackson and Garcia soon focused their investigation on Baker’s two male roommates, one black, and one white. What emerges is at once a story of confounding betrayal and cold-hearted intentions, as well as a larger portrait of an embattled Los Angeles, a city in the grip of the Satanic Panic and grappling with questions of racial injustice and police brutality in the wake of Rodney King. Rick Jackson, the now-retired police detective who helped inspire Michael Connelly’s beloved Harry Bosch, along with co-writer, Matthew McGough, take us through the events as he and his partner experienced them, piecing together the truth with each emerging clue. Black Tunnel White Magic is the true story of a murder in cold blood, deception and betrayal, and a city at the brink, set forth by the only man who could tell it. BLACK TUNNEL, WHITE MAGIC: A Murder, a Detective's Obsession, and 90's Los Angeles on the Brink-Rick Jackson and Matthew McGoughFollow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510 Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

When Wayne Adam Ford walked into the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office in November 1998 with a woman's body part in his jacket pocket, the 36-year-old truck driver wasn’t a suspect in any crime. After a lengthy investigation spanning four California counties and a sensational trial, he was convicted of the torture and murder of four women. His first victim, whom he dismembered, would remain unidentified for 25 years. While serving honorably in the Marine Corps, Ford had learned life-saving techniques that gave him structure and purpose. But a severe head injury worsened pre-existing emotional problems, rendering him unable to suppress his dark sexual impulses. Knowing he would kill again, he enlisted his brother’s help to turn himself in. Award-winning investigative journalist Caitlin Rother drew on previously sealed testimony and interviewed key players in the case, including Ford's brother and father, to write this intimate and psychologically resonant narrative. Extensively updated with the inside details of how Ford’s first victim, Kerry Anne Cummings was recently identified through DNA testing and forensic genealogy, this classic true crime story continues to haunt us. Joining me to discuss the updated edition of her book, BODY PARTS: A Serial Killer's Deadly Compulsions-—Caitlin Rother Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510 Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

At just 21 years of age, friends Todd Wilson and Scott McCarthy were virtually inseparable. The pair reported for duty at United Bank of Denver at 6:00 a.m. on Father's Day 1991-McCarthy's first day on the job. They joined two more experienced guards and began making their rounds. By 9:30 a.m., all four were dead. The killer then descended upon the cash vault where he held six petrified tellers at gunpoint before absconding with nearly $200,000.Eighteen days later, the Denver Police Department arrested one of its own. Not only had retired sergeant James W. King served on the force for 25 years, he'd recently been a guard at United Bank-often complaining about the abysmal security, including a decision to disarm its guards. But would he slaughter four of his unarmed successors to prove his point and risk a date with the execution chamber?DEADLY HEIST is the captivating story of one of Colorado's most notorious crimes and of a courtroom slugfest that would take a jury nine grueling days to resolve. Its verdict-delivered a year and a day after the bloody massacre-reverberates across the Rocky Mountains to this day.Joining me to discuss his book,DEADLY HEIST: The True Story of the Mile High Bank Massacre—Steven B. Epstein Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

On a Sunday morning in the spring of 1921, a small boy made a grim discovery as he played on a riverbank in the cotton country of rural Georgia: the bodies of two drowned men, bound together with wire and chain and weighted with a hundred-pound sack of rocks. Within days a third body turned up in another nearby river, and in the weeks that followed, eight others. And with them a deeper horror: all eleven had been kept in virtual slavery before their deaths. In fact, as America was shocked to learn, the dead were among thousands of Black men enslaved throughout the South in conditions nearly as dire as those before the Civil War.Hell Put to Shame tells the forgotten story of that mass killing and of the revelations about peonage, or debt slavery, that it placed before a public self-satisfied that involuntary servitude had ended at Appomattox more than fifty years before.By turns police procedural, courtroom drama, and political exposé, Hell Put to Shame also reintroduces three Americans who spearheaded the prosecution of John S. Williams, the wealthy plantation owner behind the murders, at a time when white people rarely faced punishment for violence against their Black neighbors. The remarkable polymath James Weldon Johnson, newly appointed the first Black leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, marshaled the organization into a full-on war against peonage. Johnson’s lieutenant, Walter F. White, a light-skinned, fair-haired, blue-eyed Black man, conducted undercover work at the scene of lynchings and other Jim Crow atrocities, helping to throw a light on such violence and to hasten its end. And Georgia governor Hugh M. Dorsey won the statehouse as a hero of white supremacists—then redeemed himself in spectacular fashion with the “Murder Farm” affair.This is a story that remains fresh and relevant a century later, as the nation continues to wrestle with seemingly intractable challenges in matters of race and justice. And the 1921 case at its heart argues that the forces that so roil society today have been with us for generations.  Joining me to discuss his book, HELL PUT TO SHAME: The 1921 Murder Farm Massacre and the Horror of America's Second Slavery—Earl Swift. Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

For the first time in forty years, former New York Times editor Michael Cannell has unearthed the full story behind two ruthless New York cops who acted as double agents for the Mafia.No episode in NYPD history surpasses the depravities of Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, two decorated detectives who covertly acted as mafia informants and paid assassins in the Scorsese world of 1980s Brooklyn.
For more than ten years, Eppolito and Caracappa moonlighted as the mob’s early warning alert system, leaking names of mobsters secretly cooperating with the government and crippling investigations by sharing details of surveillance, phone taps and impending arrests. The Lucchese boss called the two detectives his crystal ball: Whatever detectives knew, the mafia soon learned. Most grievously, Eppolito and Caracappa earned bonuses by staging eight mob hits, pulling the trigger themselves at least once.Incredibly, when evidence of their wrongdoing arose in 1994, FBI officials failed to muster an indictment. The allegations lay dormant for a decade and were only revisited due to relentless follow up by Tommy Dades, a cop determined to break the cold case before his retirement. Eppolito and Caracappa were finally tried and then sentenced to life in prison in 2009, nearly thirty years after their crimes took place.Cannell’s Blood and the Badge is based on entirely new research and never-before-released interviews with mobsters themselves, including Sammy “the Bull” Gravano. Joining me to discuss his new book, BLOOD AND THE BADGE: The Mafia, Two Killer Cops, and a Scandal that shocked the Nation—N.Y. Times editor and author Michael Cannell Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

On April 15, 1973, two high school students discovered Virginia Marie Olson’s body near the campus of the University of North Carolina at Asheville. Olson’s murder was horrifically violent—she had been bound, raped, and stabbed to death, leaving the Asheville community in shock. The cold case that followed would span over 50 years, involving three generations of detectives and the Asheville Police Department and the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation as they worked tirelessly to uncover the truth. Authors Brian and Cameron Santana and I discuss law enforcement’s dramatic efforts to find Olson’s killer, facing numerous obstacles along the way, from the abduction of another UNCA student in 1974 to a rape and murder victim's body discovered near Olson’s crime scene in 1978. Whispers about the killer's identity have circulated for decades, with theories ranging from an escaped mental health patient to one of North Carolina’s most notorious serial killers—until now.Their book, A MURDER ON CAMPUS is the first to tell the gripping story of this unsolved crime and the surprising twists that led to the authors' startling revelation of the killer’s identity. This is the fascinating story of how two brothers—Brian, an English professor, the other a cop—tag team as authors to solve North Carolina’s most notorious cold case ....A MURDER ON CAMPUS: The Professor, The Cop, and North Carolina's Most Notorious Cold Case-Brian and Cameron Santana  Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

An eight part miniseries, The John Wayne Gacy Murders: Life and Death in Chicago (2024) is the first ever historical, comprehensive and chronological miniseries to study the life and crimes of the infamous serial killer. From his birth to the ongoing investigation of identifying unknown victims, this is the groundbreaking documentary project that filmmaker John Borowski has dedicatedly worked on for five years—uncovering extraordinary new facts and dispelling certain myths about the case. Borowski features important and exclusive interviews he conducted with leading psychologists, childhood friends, arresting officers, prosecutors, Gacy's death row attorney, employees, and victim's family members—in order to create the definitive documentary regarding John Wayne Gacy. 
THE JOHN WAYNE GACY MURDERS: Life and Death in Chicago-John Borowski Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

In the tranquil towns of New England during the 1970s, a sinister mystery unfolded when several boys vanished without a trace and the community’s peace was shattered. With law enforcement stymied in its search for answers, whispers of a possible serial killer surfaced, especially after one boy’s body was found years after his disappearance. But what happened to the others remained a heart-wrenching puzzle.
In 2013, author David McGrath, a former host on the Law Enforcement Today Network and an investigator with a relentless drive for justice, watched a documentary about the cold case investigation regarding the missing boys. Himself a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and active in his local community with a sex abuse therapy group, McGrath was struck by the number of unanswered questions in the documentary.
What followed, beginning in January 2014, was a five-year quest to find the answers to this child abduction and murder mystery. Traveling all over the United States, he uncovered a labyrinth of dark secrets just beneath the surface and unknown to most residents of the bucolic communities from which the boys disappeared. Haunted by his own past, he had to navigate these dark waters if he wanted to bring truth and justice to the victims and their families. OBSESSED: A Survivor's Quest To Find The Lost Boys of New England-David McGrath Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

Acclaimed journalist, podcaster, and true-crime historian Kate Winkler Dawson tells the true story of the scandalous murder investigation that became the inspiration for both Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and the first true-crime book published in America.
On a cold winter day in 1832, Sarah Maria Cornell was found dead in a quiet farmyard in a small New England town. When her troubled past and a secret correspondence with charismatic Methodist minister Reverend Ephraim Avery was uncovered, more questions emerged. Was Sarah’s death a suicide...or something much darker? Determined to uncover the real story, Victorian writer Catharine Read Arnold Williams threw herself into the investigation as the trial was unfolding and wrote what many claim to be the first American true-crime narrative, Fall River. The murder divided the country and inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter—but the reverend was not convicted, and questions linger to this day about what really led to Sarah Cornell’s death. Until now.
In The Sinners All Bow, acclaimed true-crime historian Kate Winkler Dawson travels back in time to nineteenth-century small-town America, emboldened to finish the work Williams started nearly two centuries before. Using modern investigative advancements—including “forensic knot analysis” and criminal profiling (which was invented fifty-five years later with Jack the Ripper)—Dawson fills in the gaps of Williams’s research to find the truth and bring justice to an unsettling mystery that speaks to our past as well as our present, anchored by three women who subverted the script they were given. THE SINNERS ALL BOW: Two Authors, One Murder and the Real Hester Prynne-Kate Winkler Dawson Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

M'Linda Kula is very familiar with this SECRET SANTA and the many links that tie him to JonBenet Ramsey. Each link is carefully explained within this book, to lead from one connection to the next between JonBenet and the SECRET SANTA. Find out who this SECRET SANTA is and how this chameleon was able to evade the authorities. This same individual also used a term of endearment common to the Ramsey family for JonBenet, in front of his peers and classmates at a karate school. When asked if he was "related to that girl found in a basement" he responded with "I don't know no Johnny B!" No one knew this term of endearment until it was used in the book The Death of Innocence by John Ramsey. The planned murder indicates that the killer knew the victim's schedule. Overkill is usually a message intended for someone else, other than the victim. Who was the overkill message intended for and why? The true name of this SECRET SANTA is listed on Detective Lou Smit's suspect list. JONBENET RAMSEY'S SECRET SANTA- M'Linda Kula Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

On Christmas Night 1996, six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey was murdered in her family’s home in Boulder, Colorado. A ransom note was found in the home, but it was hours before her father, John, found her body in the basement. She had been strangled with a garrote and her skull was fractured. The media sensationalized the tragic death of the “child beauty queen” and public speculation and rumors ran rampant. What followed was one of the most notorious unsolved murder investigations in American history. Boulder police fixated on JonBenet’s parents as suspects. Needing investigative help, the Boulder DA brought in legendary homicide detective Lou Smit. However, he was soon disenchanted with law enforcement’s obsession with the Ramsey family as the primary suspects, excluding other possibilities. Smit resigned but continued to work on his own time, and at his own expense, determined to find justice for JonBenet. He determined the Ramsey family was not involved in her death but died in 2010 before he could identify the killer. Thousands of people attended his funeral service, including John Ramsey, and the detective’s lifelong friend and colleague, John Anderson. Along with a handful of retired detectives, Anderson and Smit’s family continue to pursue justice based on Smit’s work. Now, for the first time in LOU AND JONBENET, Anderson tells the story of Smit’s investigation and why the Smit family team now believes that the killer can be identified. JONBENET RAMSEY AND LOU SMIT: A Legendary Lawman's Quest To Solve A Beauty Queen's Murder-John Wesley Anderson Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

On a December night in 1978, Courtney Lund O’Neil’s mother, teenaged Kim Byers, saw her friend Rob Piest alive for the last time. At the end of his shift at the pharmacy where they both worked, fifteen-year-old Rob went outside to speak to a contractor named John Wayne Gacy about a possible job.
That night Rob became Gacy’s final victim; his body was later found in the Des Plaines River. Kim’s testimony, along with a receipt belonging to her found in Gacy’s house, proving that Rob had been there, would be pivotal in convicting the serial killer who assaulted and killed over thirty young men and boys.
Though she grew up far from Des Plaines, Courtney has lived in the shadow of that nightmare, keenly aware of its impact on her mother. In search of deeper understanding and closure, Courtney and Kim travel back to Illinois. Postmortemtransforms their personal journey into a powerful exploration of the ever-widening ripples generated by Gacy’s crimes. From the 1970s to the present day, his shadow extends beyond the victims’ families and friends—it encompasses the Des Plaines neighborhood forever marked by his horrific murders, generations of the victims’ families and friends, those who helped arrest and convict him, fandom communities, and many others.
Layered and thought-provoking, Postmortemis a complex story of loss and violence, grief and guilt, and the legacy that remains long after a killer is caught. POSTMORTEM: What Survives the John Wayne Gacy Murders-Courtney Lund O'Neil Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

The untold story behind the hit true crime podcast The Clearing, this unforgettable memoir traces one daughter’s moving quest to understand her larger-than-life childhood as she searches for the truth about her father, the serial killer Edward Wayne Edwards.
One evening in 2009, April Balascio was searching online, as she had been every night, for unsolved murders in the towns her family had lived growing up, when she stumbled across the latest investigations into the “Sweetheart Murders” cold case. All at once, the buried memories of her father’s dark history were awakened, and she knew she had to take action. She picked up the phone to call a detective and the rest is infamous true crime history.
Balascio bravely reveals an astonishing tale of a lifetime of manipulation, unexplained upheavals, and silent fear. Some part of her had always known what her father was capable of, but the full truth of how she came to these revelations is as riveting as it is quietly terrifying. RAISED BY A SERIAL KILLER : Discovering the Truth About My Father-April Balascio
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Long before Brooklyn was known as the world’s hippest neighborhood, it was the deadliest - the seedy, dangerous underbelly of New York City, where mobsters and gangs could commit murder and dump dead bodies without getting caught.
For more than a hundred years, the Red Hook section of Brooklyn was Ground Zero for organized crime. Whoever controlled the piers controlled everything. From the infamous Irish gang known as The White Hand at the turn of the century, to the notorious Italian Gallo brothers who ran President Street—and everything else—generations later, the blood-soaked history of Red Hook is the story of American crime at its most powerful, corrupt, and coldly efficient.
It's all here: the brutal mob hits, bullet storms, and backstabbings of the most colorful cutthroats to ever terrorize the streets. A rogue’s gallery of killers with nicknames like “The Mad Hatter,” “The Executioner,” “Wild Bill,” and “Peg Leg.” The Brooklyn bar fight that gave Al “Scarface” Capone his legendary scars. The godfather of America’s first Sicilian crime family whose gruesomely mangled hand could scare men half to death. And, to bring it all home, the author’s own eyewitness account of multiple shootings growing up as the son of a Mafia bodyguard.
Filled with jaw-dropping stories of public violence and personal vengeance, vivid insights into the Mafia’s way of life, and shocking portraits of America’s most wanted crime families. RED HOOK: Brooklyn Mafia,  Ground Zero-Frank Dimatteo and Michael Benson. 
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After three years in Europe, former journalist Carla Conti just wanted to settle her family into the suburbs of Philadelphia. But her high school friend Scott Powell, a lawyer handling a brutal prison stabbing case, needed a favor. Before she knew it, Carla became part of the defense team and mired in the terrifying world of federal prison gangs, penal abuse, and corruption.Then, when she agreed to write a tell-all book on the violent machinations behind the court case — with Scott’s client as an inside source — the stakes turned deadly. Two different prison gangs issued “hit orders” against the prisoner she and Scott now considered a friend, and the journalist and defense attorney were imperiled by association.CHAINED BIRDS is a true crime memoir of Carla’s 10-year journey to advocate for federal inmate Kevin Sanders and help him re-enter society after prison. But the mission came at a cost as Carla struggled to balance her own, Scott’s, and Kevin’s safety while writing an exposé on the horrific conditions that led to the shutdown of an experimental prison program in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. CHAINED BIRDS: A True Crime Memoir-Carla Conti Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

He was unassuming, sweet, and friendly. “Saved” in church as a teen, he never caused trouble. In the Navy, they called him Opie. Though he was a big guy, he had a soft, boyish demeanor. “The boy next door,” said those who worked with and knew him.But John Eric Armstrong had a dark secret—hidden even from those closest to him.Prowling Detroit's well-known pocket of prostitution on historic Michigan Ave, this young husband and father picked up unsuspecting women who thought they were simply meeting a john. He seemed innocent, even driving a Jeep with a front plate reading "Baby Doll." But they soon discovered, he could turn on a dime and fly into a rage. Some of his victims survived to tell the tale of their near death encounter, and when police finally elicited the serial killer's confession —details emerged regarding necrophilia.In THE 'BABY DOLL’ SERIAL KILLER: The John Eric Armstrong Homicides,journalist B.R. Bates lays out the gripping story of this chameleon of a serial killer—through his horrific crimes, with a compassionate look at the life of each one of his victims – and the heroic efforts of law enforcement to catch him. THE 'BABY DOLL’ SERIAL KILLER: The John Eric Armstrong Homicides-B.R. Bates and Jerry Cliff.  Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

Including never-before-seen photos and handwritten letters from Ted Bundy, Dark Tide’s message is as gut-wrenching as it is clear, asking the question: how well do we know those we trust most?
Edna’s world turned upside down when her close cousin, Ted Bundy, was linked to the gruesome murders that had plagued her hometown of Seattle. Both devastating and dangerous, she reveals her journey of discovering the truth about her cousin who was more like a sibling, a man she loved, admired, and thought she knew so well. Edna delves into the unbelievable and chilling episodes she experienced, from confronting Ted and discovering a side of him she never suspected to waking to the FBI at her door after he escaped jail.
Whether searching memories for signs she’d missed or detailing scenes of life under the radar in a world still fixated on her cousin, Edna’s account tells the Ted Bundy story from a critical, new perspective: someone who called him family. DARK TIDE: Growing Up With Ted Bundy-Edna Cowell Martin and Megan Atkinson
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After retiring from twenty-five years on the bench, former chief judge, Belvin Perry Jr., reveals a rare and disturbingly vivid first-hand perspective of the most gruesome death penalty cases in which he played a key role, including the infamous Casey Marie Anthony, who was dubbed “America’s Most Hated Mom” after her shocking acquittal.
The Velvet Hammer is the gripping, true crime memoir of former Chief Judge Belvin Perry Jr., who sentenced some of Florida’s most evil and notorious murderers to death, fulfilling his oath to uphold justice. Perry provides a clear, accurate description of America’s criminal justice system and explains why the death penalty can, and should, work and how it was applied to certain capital murder cases he either prosecuted or presided over.
Perry discusses his journey as an African American growing up in the segregated South, his life as a prosecutor and chief judge, and how he ended up presiding over one of the world’s most intriguing capital murder trials of the century: State of Florida v. Casey Marie Anthony.
From the widow who slowly poisoned her lovers; to the lust murderer who mutilated his victim while she was still alive; to the serial killer who slayed a family of four, including his own child; as well as several other violent and frightening murders, Perry spares none of the gory details when bringing each case back to life in his debut, true crime memoir. THE VELVET HAMMER: Judge Belvin Perry Jr,'s Capital Murder Cases-Amy Mitchell and Judge Belvin Perry Jr. Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

In the depths of the dark net, tech journalist Carl Miller makes a disturbing discovery: a secret Kill List targeting hundreds of innocent people on a murder for hire website. When the police decide not to investigate, Carl is thrown into a race against time to warn those in danger and uncover the truth about the people who want them dead. From Wondery and Novel, comes a true story about obsession, control and the price of life and death. Listen to Kill List on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts: Wondery.fmKillList_TMYou can listen to Kill List and more Exhibit C true crime shows like Morbid early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+. Check out Exhibit C in the Wondery App for all your true crime listening. Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

Listen to Robert Rand, the investigative journalist and author of the definitive book on the Menendez case—and the disquieting true story behind Netflix’s  Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.
A successful entertainment executive making $2 million a year. His former beauty queen wife. Their two sons on the fast track to success. But it was all a façade.
The Menendez saga has captivated the American public since 1989. The killing of José and Kitty Menendez on a quiet Sunday evening in Beverly Hills didn’t make the cover of People magazine until the arrest of their sons seven months later, when the case developed an intense cult following. By the time the first Menendez trial began in July 1993, the public was convinced that Lyle and Erik were a pair of greedy rich kids who had killed loving, devoted parents.
The real story remained buried beneath years of dark secrets.
A culmination of more than 30 years of journalist Robert Rand’s relentless reporting, this updated edition of The Menendez Murders shares these intimate, breakthrough findings, including a deeply disturbing history of child abuse and sexual molestation in the Menendez family going back generations, as well as exclusive new revelations linking the 1980s boy band Menudo and the Menendez family, a first-hand account of the emotional reunion between Erik and Lyle Menendez, and surprising insights into how the Menendez brothers remain resilient and live with purpose despite a life sentence without parole.
Journalist and author Robert Rand has followed the Menendez murders from the beginning and is the only reporter who covered the original investigation as well as both trials. With a unique vantage and unparalleled access to the Menendez family and their history, including interviews with both brothers before and after their arrest, and to this day.In 2023, Rand uncovered extraordinary material evidence that would certainly have changed the fate of the brothers’ first-degree murder conviction in 1996. He and the Menendez family hoped his discoveries would give the brothers new hope for reopening the case.
The Netflix film series MONSTERS was released September 19th-with over 20 million viewers, and much controversy-with Netflix also releasing their documentary The Menendez Brothers, featuring Robert Rand, to be released October 7. On October 3rd, Los Angeles D.A. George Gascon made an announcement that his office is reviewing the convictions of the Menendez brothers to determine whether they should be resentenced and potentially released. A hearing has been scheduled for November 26th. Robert Rand joins me to discuss The Menendez Murders Updated Edition,Netflix's Monster and The Menendez Brothersdocumentary—and his incredible role in the latest developments in the  historic Menendez murder case. THE MENENDEZ MURDERS UPDATED EDITION-Robert Rand.  Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

At the height of the Great Depression, Los Angeles oil mogul George Allan Hancock and his crew of Smithsonian scientists came upon a gruesome scene: two bodies, mummified by the searing heat, on the shore of a remote Galápagos island. For the past four years Hancock and other American elites had traveled the South Seas to collect specimens for scientific research. On one trip to the Galápagos, Hancock was surprised to discover an equally exotic group of humans: European exiles who had fled political and economic unrest, hoping to create a utopian paradise. One was so devoted to a life of isolation that he’d had his teeth extracted and replaced with a set of steel dentures.
As Hancock and his fellow American explorers would witness, paradise had turned into chaos. The three sets of exiles—a Berlin doctor and his lover, a traumatized World War I veteran and his young family, and an Austrian baroness with two adoring paramours—were riven by conflict. Petty slights led to angry confrontations. The baroness, wielding a riding crop and pearl-handled revolver, staged physical fights between her two lovers and unabashedly seduced American tourists. The conclusion was deadly: with two exiles missing and two others dead, the survivors hurled accusations of murder.
Using never-before-published archives, Abbott Kahler weaves a chilling, stranger-than-fiction tale worthy of Agatha Christie. Set against the backdrop of the Great Depression and the march to World War II, with a mystery as alluring and curious as the Galápagos itself, Eden Undone explores the universal and timeless desire to seek utopia—and lays bare the human fallibility that, inevitably, renders such a quest doomed. EDEN UNDONE: A True Story of Sex, Murder, and Utopia at the Dawn of Word War ll-Abbott Kahler Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

In Obsessed: My Relentless Pursuit of the Zodiac Killer, Dr. Mark Hewitt invites readers into his gripping journey of unraveling one of America's most enduring mysteries. Dr. Hewitt, an expert on the Zodiac case, and author of the acclaimed Zodiac Serial Killer Trilogy, shares his transformation from a pastor to a dedicated true crime investigator.
This memoir details Dr. Hewitt's meticulous research, personal encounters, and the profound impact of the Zodiac case on his life. Moving to California reignited his passion, leading him to explore crime scenes and connect with other enthusiasts. His relentless pursuit is not only about the Zodiac but also about understanding the complexities of human nature and the quest for truth.
Obsessed: My Relentless Pursuit of the Zodiac Killer provides a unique blend of personal narrative and investigative insight, offering readers a compelling look at the determination and challenges faced by those who seek to solve cold cases. Join Dr. Hewitt as he navigates the twists and turns of this enigmatic case, shedding light on his life's work and his unwavering commitment to uncovering the truth. OBSESSED: My Relentless Pursuit of the Zodiac Killer-Mark Hewitt
  Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com