Scams, Money, & Murder

Richard Kuklinski grew up in the violent housing projects of Jersey City, New Jersey, where abuse at home and relentless bullying on the streets hardened him into a killer before he turned 15. By his mid-twenties, he had leveraged his capacity for cold-blooded violence into a career as a trusted hitman for the Gambino crime family under Brooklyn mob boss Roy DeMeo. This episode traces how Kuklinsk...

A rising athlete was shot in a friend’s home. Her achievements were overshadowed by violence. The case exposed how rivalry can escalate fatally. Follow Murder: True Crime Stories for Part 2 of this episode: https://pod.link/1745145932 For Ad-free listening to episodes, subscribe to Crime House+ on Apple Podcasts.  🎧 Need More to Binge?  Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of…, Cri...

Rod Ferrell led a group of teenagers who believed they were vampires, blending goth subculture with authoritarian devotion. In 1996, Ferrell and an accomplice murdered the parents of one member in a violent attempt to cement control. The case demonstrates how identity fantasy combined with cult hierarchy can culminate in real-world homicide. For more, follow Crimes Of wherever you listen to podcas...

On September 12, 1987, 50-year-old night watchman Dale Kerstetter clocked in at Corning Glass Works in Bradford, Pennsylvania and was never seen again. Surveillance footage captured him calmly walking off-camera beside a masked intruder, pausing only to look directly into the lens. When the masked man reappeared hours later, he dragged a large bag from the building and left with $220,000 worth of...

In 1954, the CIA orchestrated a covert coup that removed Guatemala's democratically elected president, Jacobo Árbenz, at the behest of Cold War anxieties and the United Fruit Company's political influence. What looked like a communist threat to Washington was, in reality, a land reform program that dared to challenge American corporate power in Central America. In this episode, Vanessa untangles h...

In the summer of 2008, two-year-old Caylee Anthony vanished, and her mother Casey didn't report her missing for thirty-one days. In that time, she got a tattoo, went to nightclubs, and stayed at her boyfriend's apartment. When Casey's car turned up at a tow yard, a former police officer recognized the smell coming from the trunk. He was Caylee's grandfather. He said nothing. In the first of three...

Vanessa and Dr. Engels are joined by Katie Ring, host of the Crime House Original America's Most Infamous Crimes to discuss the crimes of the "Ypsilanti Ripper." In the late 1960s, Eastern Michigan University students Mary Fleszar and Joan Schell were brutally murdered by someone hiding in plain sight: their charming, honor-roll neighbor John Norman Collins. Despite a witness placing Collins with...

In March 1998, 23-year-old Amy Bradley boarded a Royal Caribbean cruise ship in San Juan, Puerto Rico, with her family — and vanished without a trace three days into the voyage. When her father checked the balcony at dawn, her shoes and shirt were still in the cabin, but Amy was gone. In Part 1 of Murder: True Crime Stories, host Carter Roy traces Amy's life in Virginia, the night she disappeared,...

In 2005, a married factory worker reinvented himself online, and fell hard for a girl he’d never met. When “Tommy,” “Jessi,” and a coworker named Brian became tangled in a toxic digital love triangle, jealousy exploded into real-world violence. Sabrina and Corinne uncover the TalHotBlond case, where fantasy blurred into obsession… and one lie led to another until a man wound up dead. For more, fol...

In August 2021, 25-year-old Illinois State University graduate student Jelani Day was last seen leaving a dispensary in Bloomington-Normal, far from his apartment and with no clear reason to be there. His car was found abandoned miles away. Weeks later, his unclothed body was recovered from the Illinois River. The coroner ruled accidental drowning, but his mother refused to accept that answer. She...

In 1892, as tuberculosis ravaged the small town of Exeter, Rhode Island, a grieving family made a desperate decision: they exhumed the body of 19-year-old Mercy Brown, convinced the dead were feeding on the living. What followed became one of the most well-known cases of vampire hysteria in American history, a moment when fear and superstition filled the gaps that medicine could not. In this episo...

Three of the internet's most notorious lost media creepypastas take aim at SpongeBob SquarePants, The Simpsons, and classic Disney — spinning tales of hidden episodes so disturbing they were allegedly buried and erased forever. What makes these stories so unsettling isn't gore alone, but the way they corrupt the cartoons millions grew up trusting. This episode explores why lost media horror hits d...

Before Aileen Wuornos became one of America's most feared serial killers, she was a 13-year-old girl who was assaulted and impregnated by a stranger, gave birth completely alone, and came home to a family that blamed her. In the first of three episodes on Aileen Wuornos, Katie Ring traces the story of a woman the world expected to be a victim, and how a lifetime of abandonment, abuse, and betrayal...

Vanessa and Dr. Engels are joined by Dr. Harini Bhat from PAVE Studio's newest show "Hidden History" as they discuss the "Blood Countess" Elizabeth Bathory, a 16th and 17th-century noblewoman who used her vast wealth, noble status, and unchecked power to torture and murder hundreds of young girls within the walls of her castle. Raised amid war, public executions, and a family that weaponized cruel...

In October 1974, 19-year-old Arlis Perry stepped inside Stanford University's memorial church late one Saturday night to pray after an argument with her husband — and never came out. When a security guard found her body the next morning, detectives encountered one of the most disturbing crime scenes they had ever seen, with evidence suggesting the killing was deliberate, ritualistic, and deeply pe...

In this episode of Crimes Of... Sabrina and Corinne unpack the disturbing and deeply complex case of Susan Polk—a woman who married her own therapist and, decades later, killed him. What begins as a troubling story of blurred boundaries and unethical behavior evolves into a marriage defined by power imbalances, emotional control, and escalating instability. Rather than asking whether Susan killed...

In the summer of 2016, 20-year-old Kristal Anne Reisinger vanished from a remote Colorado gathering in the wilderness, leaving behind her young daughter. Those who knew her described a young mother navigating addiction and drawn to alternative spiritual communities. When her remains were eventually recovered years later in a remote canyon, they raised more questions than answers. Her case sits at...

In November 2022, four University of Idaho students, Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin, were stabbed to death in their off-campus home in Moscow, Idaho. The suspect, Bryan Kohberger, was a PhD criminology student who had been circling their house for months and who pled guilty without ever explaining why. In this episode of Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes, Van...

What if something was following you……and it never stopped? It doesn’t run. It doesn’t rush. It just keeps walking. This episode explores the real-world fears behind one of the most unsettling horror concepts in modern film, from the AIDS epidemic to economic collapse to the psychological terror of invisible threats. Because sometimes the scariest thing isn’t what you can see. It’s what you can’t e...

On a single night in 1982, seven people in the Chicago area died after taking Tylenol. They didn't know each other, they weren't targeted, and the killer never had to get close to a single one of them. In the first of three episodes on the Tylenol murders, Katie Ring takes you back to the night it began: the Janus family, struck down one by one in their own home; the twelve-year-old who took two p...

Ever since he was a child, Adolfo Constanzo was raised to believe he was special. And by his twenties, he'd built a cult in Mexico City fueled by black magic, psychic manipulation, and blind devotion. Join Vanessa and Dr. Engels as they trace Adolfo's path from childhood rituals and revenge spells to his terrifying alliance with Mexican drug cartels, where protection spells masked cold-blooded mur...

In 1897, 23-year-old Zona Heaster Shue was found dead in her rural West Virginia home, and the doctor quickly ruled it natural causes — but her new husband's suspicious behavior and a history of violence told a different story. In Part 1 of Murder: True Crime Stories, host Carter Roy traces Zona's life, her whirlwind marriage to the charming but dangerous Edward Shue, and the events of the cold Ja...

In one of the strangest and stickiest white-collar crimes ever committed, a group of Quebec thieves siphoned off nearly 3,000 tons of maple syrup—worth over $18 million—from the Global Strategic Maple Reserve, an actual government-run stockpile meant to stabilize syrup prices. For more, follow Crimes Of wherever you listen to podcasts: https://pod.link/1838511303 For Ad-free listening to episodes,...

In October 1981, 17-year-old Kurt Sova stepped outside a Halloween party in Cleveland to get some fresh air while his friend ran back in for their jackets. By the time that friend returned two minutes later, Kurt was gone. Five days later, his body was found in a nearby ravine, posed with his arms outstretched and both shoes missing, with no clear cause of death. Decades later, the police departme...

Dr. Harini Bhat is a clinical pharmacist and storyteller obsessed with the moments in history that still can't be fully explained. Every week she investigates real events that defy easy explanation. Mass hysterias. Vanished civilizations. Medical oddities. Strange signals. Unexplained phenomena that keep repeating across centuries, as if history is trying to tell us something. Hidden History doesn...