A Trial by Podcast

On a Wednesday evening in November 1974, a twenty-three-year-old man pushed open the door of a bar on Long Island's South Shore and begged the room for help. He had found his parents shot and killed in the family's home. Within the hour, the men who followed him back to the house had found six people in their beds: a mother, a father, two daughters, and two sons. Every single one was dead, and the...

On a Wednesday evening in November 1974, a twenty-three-year-old man pushed open the door of a bar on Long Island's South Shore and begged the room for help. He had found his parents shot and killed in the family's home. Within the hour, the men who followed him back to the house had found six people in their beds: a mother, a father, two daughters, and two sons. Every single one was dead, and the...

In March 1989, four friends from a small Texas town drove through the fog to South Padre Island for what they joked might be their last spring break together. On their second night, they walked across the bridge into Matamoros , Mexico, where the beer cost a dollar, the music shook the sidewalks, and fifteen thousand college kids drifted down one neon-lit street like a slow river. Near two in the...

On the evening of November 5, 2006, an NBC camera crew sat parked outside a house in Terrell, Texas, waiting for a SWAT team to bring out 56-year-old assistant DA Louis "Bill" Conradt Jr. He never came out. Moments after officers entered, Conradt shot himself in a hallway and the cameras kept rolling. It was the most honest moment To Catch a Predator ever produced: the instant its premise stopped...

On May 25, 1996, nineteen-year-old Cal Poly San Luis Obispo freshman Kristin Smart vanished after walking back from an off-campus party with fellow student Paul Flores: the last person ever confirmed to have seen her alive. Despite cadaver dogs alerting to Flores's emptied dorm room within weeks of her disappearance, campus police had already fumbled the early investigation badly, failing to prese...

On May 25, 1996, nineteen-year-old Cal Poly San Luis Obispo freshman Kristin Smart vanished after walking back from an off-campus party with fellow student Paul Flores: the last person ever confirmed to have seen her alive. Despite cadaver dogs alerting to Flores's emptied dorm room within weeks of her disappearance, campus police had already fumbled the early investigation badly, failing to prese...

On May 25, 1996, nineteen-year-old Cal Poly San Luis Obispo freshman Kristin Smart vanished after walking back from an off-campus party with fellow student Paul Flores: the last person ever confirmed to have seen her alive. Despite cadaver dogs alerting to Flores's emptied dorm room within weeks of her disappearance, campus police had already fumbled the early investigation badly, failing to prese...

On May 25, 1996, nineteen-year-old Cal Poly San Luis Obispo freshman Kristin Smart vanished after walking back from an off-campus party with fellow student Paul Flores: the last person ever confirmed to have seen her alive. Despite cadaver dogs alerting to Flores's emptied dorm room within weeks of her disappearance, campus police had already fumbled the early investigation badly, failing to prese...

On February 2nd, 2008, twenty-four-year-old real estate agent Lindsay Buziak was murdered inside a vacant home she was showing to a couple posing as prospective buyers. Days earlier, a woman with an unplaceable accent had called her out of the blue, claiming she and her husband urgently needed a million-dollar home and could close within days. Lindsay was uneasy enough to ask her boyfriend, J...

On February 2nd, 2008, twenty-four-year-old real estate agent Lindsay Buziak  was murdered inside a vacant home she was showing to a couple posing as prospective buyers. Days earlier, a woman with an unplaceable accent had called her out of the blue, claiming she and her husband urgently needed a million-dollar home and could close within days. Lindsay was uneasy enough to ask her boyfriend,...

On the morning of February 23, 1861, a train pulled quietly into Washington, D.C., hours ahead of schedule and without the fanfare that should have accompanied the arrival of a president-elect. Abraham Lincoln, dressed not in his customary black suit but in a soft felt hat and an overcoat draped like a shawl across his shoulders, stepped off the car and into the capital unannounced. There was no b...

 In 2007, in the quiet town of Thetford, Vermont, a nurse and a mother of two named Carmen Tarlton was doing what she'd always done, showing up for her daughters, her patients, and her community. She was the kind of person people described as resilience before they ever knew how much resilience she would need. That same year, a man she had once loved, broke into her home and attacked her with indu...

In March of 1977, Tucson escrow agent Charles Morgan dropped his daughters at school and vanished. Three days later he stumbled through his front door, hands zip-tied, unable to speak. He wrote to his wife that his throat had been doused with a hallucinogenic drug that would kill him if he talked, and begging her not to call police. Morgan ran Statewide Escrow Service, a business rumored to have t...

On the night of May 27th, 1991, a fourteen-year-old boy named Konerak Sinthasomphone stumbled out of the Oxford Apartments in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was naked, drugged, and bleeding. Three women found him on the sidewalk and called 911. When police arrived, they had everything they needed: a visibly injured victim, three eyewitnesses insisting he was a child, and the man who'd drugged him standi...

On the afternoon of November 2nd, 2016, a thirty-four-year-old stay-at-home mother named Sherri Papini went for a jog near her home in Mountain Gate, a small community just outside of Redding, in Northern California’s Shasta County. She left her two young children at daycare, laced up her shoes, and headed out into a mild autumn afternoon. She did not come back. Her husband, Keith Papini, returned...

On the afternoon of November 2nd, 2016, a thirty-four-year-old stay-at-home mother named Sherri Papini went for a jog near her home in Mountain Gate, a small community just outside of Redding, in Northern California’s Shasta County. She left her two young children at daycare, laced up her shoes, and headed out into a mild autumn afternoon. She did not come back. Her husband, Keith Papini, returned...

In November 1986, Helle Crafts was reported missing. Danish flight attendant and mother of three, Helle had been planning to leave her husband after discovering he'd been having an affair. What followed was one of the most gruesome and forensically groundbreaking murder investigations in American history. Because there was no body. There was no crime scene. There was, however, a rented woodchipper...

On June 6, 1992, 19-year-old Suzie Streeter and 18-year-old Stacy McCall proudly walked across the stage and received their diplomas from Springfield, Missouri’s Kickapoo high school. Like any other teen on graduation day, the girls had a long night of party hopping ahead of them before they ended up back at Suzie’s house to spend the night before going to a waterpark with friends the next morning...

On June 6, 1992, 19-year-old Suzie Streeter and 18-year-old Stacy McCall proudly walked across the stage and received their diplomas from Springfield, Missouri’s Kickapoo high school. Like any other teen on graduation day, the girls had a long night of party hopping ahead of them before they ended up back at Suzie’s house to spend the night before going to a waterpark with friends the next morning...

On August 4, 1981, twenty-year-old Cindy Anderson went to work as a legal secretary at a Toledo, Ohio law office. With just ten days left before she was set to leave for Bible college, vanished from work that day without a trace. When her bosses arrived that afternoon, her car was in the parking lot, but Cindy was gone. The romance novel Cindy had been reading was left open on her desk, as if she...

On the night of September 28th, 2000, former Indiana State Police trooper David Camm came home from a church basketball game to find his wife Kim and their two young children, Bradley and Jill, shot to death in the garage of their Georgetown, Indiana home.  Some believed it was the husband — a serial cheater, with life insurance policies on his family and his daughter's blood on his shirt. Ot...

On the night of September 28th, 2000, former Indiana State Police trooper David Camm came home from a church basketball game to find his wife Kim and their two young children, Bradley and Jill, shot to death in the garage of their Georgetown, Indiana home.  Some believed it was the husband — a serial cheater, with life insurance policies on his family and his daughter's blood on his shirt. Ot...

Before sunrise on April 18th, 2016, Missy Bevers pulled into the parking lot of Creekside Church of Christ in Midlothian, Texas. She was early — she was always early. She had a 5 AM workout class to set up for, equipment to haul in, a room to arrange. What she didn't know was that someone was already inside the building. Someone who had been there for over an hour. Someone dressed head to toe in f...

Listen ad-free on Patreon On April 16th, 1996, 48-year-old James Patterson Smith reported to his local police station that his 17-year-old girlfriend had drowned. Firmly maintaining that this was an accident, he admitted that he was the one who drowned her and, while he claimed that he attempted to resuscitate her, it had been too late. When the police arrived at the house, they were led to the nu...

Listen ad-free on Patreon Jodi Huisentruit was a TV news anchor at KIMT-TV in Mason City, Iowa, who disappeared in the early morning hours of June 27, 1995, after failing to show up for her morning broadcast. Police responded to her apartment building and found signs of a struggle around her car, which was still in the parking lot, leading investigators to believe she was attacked as she headed to...