Tales From the Glovebox

A 1981 unsolved murder and child disappearance from a small mountain town in Northern California, retold for true crime and cold case fans who want a story without a clean ending. In the spring of 1981, a single mother named Sue was raising her kids in a cluster of cheap rental cabins tucked into the pines of a small mountain resort town, the kind of place where everybody knew everybody and nobody...

A true story from Phoenix, Arizona in 1980, retold for fans of uplifting true stories who like an origin story nobody saw coming. In the spring of 1980, a seven year old boy named Chris was living in Phoenix, Arizona, dying of leukemia. His doctors had run out of options. But Chris was not scared. He was busy planning. More than anything, he wanted to be a motorcycle cop, like the ones on the show...

A true story from the Vietnam War in 1968, retold for history fans and anyone who likes a story about doing the right thing even when it costs everything. In the spring of 1968, a twenty four year old Army helicopter pilot named Hugh flew scouting missions over Vietnam every morning, ahead of the ground troops. On March 16th, his crew headed toward villages called Pinkville, told to expect a fight...

A true story about the woman who helped invent modern crime scene investigation, retold for true crime fans and history lovers who like an unexpected hero. In a medical examiner's office in Baltimore, there are small rooms that look like dollhouses, but every one has a dead body inside, built down to the smallest detail. Even the calendars show the right dates. These were not toys. They were m...

A 1992 triple disappearance case from Springfield, Missouri, retold for true crime fans and unsolved mystery listeners who like a case that is still open. In June of 1992, two best friends named Stacy and Suzie graduated high school together. That night, Stacy went back to Suzie's house to sleep over, planning to meet up with friends at a water park the next morning. Suzie lived with her mom,...

1990s Indianapolis case about a missing persons pattern and a quiet family property, retold for true crime fans who like a slow reveal. In the early 1990s, just outside Indianapolis, a man named Herb seemed to have it all. He ran a couple of successful thrift stores, he had a wife named Julie and several kids, and the family lived on eighteen acres with a big house and a swimming pool. One afterno...

A 1946 unsolved serial attack case from the Texas-Arkansas border, retold for true crime fans and cold case listeners who like a strange ending instead of a clean one. In the spring of 1946, a masked man started attacking couples parked on lonely back roads outside Texarkana, Texas. He wore a white flour sack over his head with two holes torn out for the eyes, and over about ten weeks he attacked...

A 2009 family disappearance from rural Oklahoma, retold for true crime fans and unsolved mystery listeners who like a strange, unresolved ending. In the fall of 2009, a man named Bobby loaded up his wife Sherilynn and their six year old daughter Madyson and drove into the Sans Bois Mountains of eastern Oklahoma to look at a forty acre piece of land he wanted to buy. Eight days later, someone found...

The true story of Georgia Tann, who sold babies through a Tennessee adoption agency, told for fans of historical true crime and cases that exposed a hidden system. In Memphis, Tennessee in the 1920s, a woman named Georgia Tann took over the local branch of the Tennessee Children's Home Society and began placing children into adoptive homes faster than anyone in the country had done before. Social...

The true story of a Long Island hospital where a trusted caregiver turned out to be a killer, told for true crime fans who like a hidden-in-plain-sight medical case. In the fall of 1987, patients on a cardiac ward at Good Samaritan Hospital in West Islip, Long Island were going into sudden crisis with no warning. Staff rushed to each bedside as the emergencies came. Some patients survived. Some di...

The true story of a man convicted on flawed FBI evidence and the decades it took to undo it, told for true crime fans who follow wrongful convictions and justice cases. In 1978, a cab driver named John McCormick was shot outside his home in Washington DC. Police found a stocking near the scene with thirteen strands of hair inside. The FBI sent one of their top forensic hair examiners to compare th...

A 2001 disappearance case from Lower Manhattan, for true crime and cold case listeners who are drawn to stories that cross paths with American tragedy. On the evening of September 10th, 2001, a young emergency room doctor stepped out of her apartment near the World Trade Center to run a few errands. She dropped off her dry cleaning, walked into a department store, and tried on a dress and a few pa...

A true story from September 11, 2001, retold for history fans and anyone who likes a story about a man who saved thousands of lives and gave up his own. In the 1990s, a security chief for a major financial company worked twenty floors up in the World Trade Center. Everyone said when things fell apart, he was the calmest man in the room. In February of 1993, a truck bomb went off in the parking gar...

The 1930 English blazing car murder, about a man, his burned-out car, and a body that was not his, told for fans of historical true crime and classic whodunits. Just before dawn on November 6, 1930, two young men walking home on a dark road in Northamptonshire, England spotted a glow up ahead. They walked toward it. As they got closer, the heat came at them in waves. It was a car burning on the si...

A true 1960 survival story from Niagara Falls, told for fans of historical true stories, dramatic rescues, and endings nobody sees coming. It was a hot afternoon in the summer of 1960. A seven year old boy named Roger, his teenage sister Deanne, and a forty year old family friend named Jim were out on the upper Niagara River in a small boat. Up there the water is wide and slow and looks more like...

The 1972 New Jersey cold case of Jeannette DePalma, found on a ridge with rumors of the occult, told for true crime fans who like an unsolved case wrapped in legend. On August 7, 1972, sixteen-year-old Jeannette DePalma told her mother she was taking a train to see a friend. She walked out the front door and was never seen alive again. She lived in Springfield Township, New Jersey with her family...

The 1912 Bobby Dunbar case, about a missing boy, the child who came home, and a DNA test ninety years later, told for fans of historical true crime and identity mysteries. In August of 1912, a four-year-old boy named Bobby Dunbar disappeared at a fishing lake in Louisiana while on a trip with his family. His father Percy was a well-connected man in Opelousas who used every contact he had to find h...

In the spring of 1930, a 21-year-old woman named Elena walked into a hospital in Key West, Florida with a cough that would not stop. The chest X-ray showed tuberculosis in both lungs, advanced. The hospital could keep her comfortable. That was about all anyone could do. The man who ran the X-ray machine was a technician named Carl Van Cosel. He was in his fifties. The moment he saw Elena, he decid...

In November of 1971, police were called to a mansion in Westfield, New Jersey after a friend noticed nobody had come or gone in weeks. Newspapers had piled up on the porch. When officers entered Breeze Knoll, they found five members of the same family laid out on the floor inside sleeping bags, dead. The man of the house was gone. John List was 46 years old, a certified public accountant, and a de...

A British Army doctor spent forty-six years moving across the British Empire, reforming hospitals, fighting for prisoners and lepers no one else would help, and performing a surgery that almost never worked. When that doctor died alone in a rented London room in 1865, the British Army classified every record of a fifty-year career and sealed the file for nearly a hundred years. His name was James...

On May 1, 2023, a small plane carrying seven people went down over the Colombian Amazon. The engine failed, the plane came down hard, and the pilot and one other passenger died on impact. Magdalena, a mother of four, survived the crash but was badly injured and losing blood fast. She knew what that meant for her. So she told her oldest daughter what to do. Leave her behind. Take the others. Find h...

In July 1974, a twelve-year-old girl followed her barking dog into the sand dunes near Provincetown, Massachusetts, and found a woman lying face-down on a beach blanket. The woman had long red hair, pink-painted toenails, and she had been badly beaten. Both of her hands had been removed. Police arrived and worked the scene carefully. Two sets of footprints led to the body. None led away. The woman...

On the evening of February 24, 1978, five young men from Yuba City, California climbed into a car and drove south to watch a college basketball game. It should have been a routine night. None of them ever made it home. The five men, Gary Mathias, Ted Weiher, Jack Madruga, Billy Santos, and Mark Allen, were members of a community basketball program for adults with developmental disabilities. They w...

In February of 1920, a young woman jumped into a canal in Berlin and refused to tell anyone her name. She was pulled out by a police sergeant, taken to the nearest hospital, and listed on the admission form as Miss Unknown. For a full year, she said nothing. Then she told everyone she was Anastasia Romanov, the youngest daughter of the last Russian Emperor, and the only member of her family to sur...

In the mid-1980s, a small woman with big round glasses and short dark hair opened a boarding house in a tall blue Victorian on F Street in Sacramento, California. Her name was Dorothea Puente. She wore an apron, kept the yard spotless, and waved from the porch when neighbors walked by. Local men started calling her abuela. Social workers put her name at the top of their referral lists. She was goo...