Crossing the Line with M. William Phelps

When police officers respond to a frantic 911 call, they discover a man sitting on a couch, calmly cradling his ex-girlfriend's infant child alongside her eight-year-old daughter. Just feet away lay the bodies of two people , both fatally shot. As the investigation unfolds, detectives lock onto a witness and a surprising suspect emerges. For exclusive content, sign up for your free Patreon account...

A beloved schoolteacher is home one night alone, when a man enters her Texas townhouse and she is never seen alive again. His identity remains a tightly held secret for almost 25 years … until a pair of dogged genealogical investigators force him out of the shadows and law enforcement make a hard dash across the country to catch him. For exclusive content, sign up for your free Patreon account her...

Four decades after a young mother is shot dead in a dark stairwell on a brutally cold winter morning, a reopened cold case unearths a web of obsession and a chillingly patient killer who almost got away with the perfect crime. For exclusive content, sign up for your free Patreon account here. Leave a five-star review of this show, please. ;-) Order Phelps's latest book, THEY CAME FOR BLOOD , book...

In 2015, a mother, her son and housekeeper are at home one afternoon inside the Savopoulos mansion situated along a swanky street in suburban Washington DC. A man enters the home through a back door. Hours later, a call is made by the husband, Savvas, asking his assistant to deliver $40,000 dollars in cash. Then the house is set on fire. For exclusive content, sign up for your free Patreon account...

It's 1978. Five friends head out to a basketball game together—and disappear into the California night. As details and clues begin to emerge in the weeks and months that follow, four of the men are found—but the bizarre story behind it all makes no sense. Welcome to a bonus feature here on the Crossing the Line feed. I come across all sorts of stories while researching books, TV series, and my iHe...

A man is found unconscious, cold to touch, without a pulse, inside his home one early morning. His grieving widow writes a children's book to help their kids deal with the pain. But a year after his death, law enforcement has some rather shocking news to announce. For exclusive content, sign up for your free Patreon account  here. Leave a five-star review of this show, please. ;-) Order Phelps's l...

A man in Maine goes missing during a chilly day in December and his ex-wife seems to think she knows what happened to him. Or … maybe she's simply trying to deflect an investigation, which now includes … helicopters, search dogs, and blood in the snow. #PeterBathgate #PeterBathgateII #PaulAllenMurder #HallowellMurder #AugustaMaineCrime True Crime Murder True Crime Podcast true crime podcast / best...

A Colorado ski resort town. A rich heiress. A personal assistant. A doctor and his wife. All of their lives collide, one of them goes missing, and fingers are pointed at the others. What actually happens is straight out of a 1980s horror film. For exclusive content, sign up for your free Patreon account here. Leave a five-star review of this show, please. ;-) Order Phelps's latest book, THEY CAME...

When a 42-year-old Mississippi man vanishes from his home, his family in California begin receiving strange letters and phone calls claiming he has left the country to meet a woman in the Philippines. Then the story changes course as they are told he is in a Mexican jail. Behind the bizarre stories and reassuring updates, however, is a trip to a local building supply store and a chilling discovery...

How does one man escape from prison not once, but twice—stay out on the run, start a family and raise three kids … all while continuing to commit crimes—including … murder. Welcome to a bonus feature here on the Crossing the Line feed. I come across all sorts of stories while researching books, TV series, and my iHeartMedia podcast, Paper Ghosts, in addition to the ideas you send me. A lot of them...

You've made the decision to divorce your husband of 20 years. He's incensed and turns to witchdoctors on the dark web to put a hex on you. Your lover's wife just had a baby—and then you find out that you are also pregnant with his child. Then, without warning, you disappear. Maya Millete updates , Larry Millete verdict, Chula Vista missing mom, San Diego true crime, Millete family mystery, Premedi...

You're invited on a national television show under the pretense that someone you know has a crush on you. You get to the show and feel ambushed by the host revealing who it is. Three days later, your admirer has been murdered, and police are looking to you for the answers. For exclusive content, sign up for your free Patreon account here. Leave a five-star review of this show, please. ;-) Order Ph...

A young man is found bound and shot through the head inside his home. Police look to the streets of Broward County, Florida for the answer … a dozen years pass and they don't have a clue. Better yet … the notion that their killer has been … the entire time … right underneath their nose. For exclusive content, sign up for your free Patreon account here. Leave a five-star review of this show, please...

Paramedics respond to a pregnant woman's apartment in Nashville and find her unconscious, on her bed, near death.  The man inside the home, Blaise Taylor, who had called 911, seems confused and acting strange. Three lives are at stake. One connected to the NFL, the other a local chef the community adores—the third, a baby not yet born.   For exclusive content, sign up for your free Patreon account...

Episode Description | You are watching your local TV sports news one night when the screen suddenly goes fuzzy and this odd character comes onto the screen, says nothing, then disappears. The TV station you are watching has been hijacked. Later that same night, it happens again … but this time, the hacker has some rather interesting information to share and a strange fetish-like scenario to act ou...

A woman heads out one morning to do her work as a visiting home healthcare nurse. Later that afternoon, her employer cannot find her. Reported missing, police begin searching … and find the house where she was headed to empty. Then a break in the case … as an intuitive officer discovers her vehicle parked a mile away from her original destination. Host M. William Phelps finds the case the cause fo...

How does a rather straightforward murder case, in which there is no question who the perpetrator is, become a polarizing, high-profile media event, dividing a community and pitting neighbors against one another? Social media and the internet, of course! Here, in Frisco, Texas, a high school track meet starts out as innocent as any other youth-sports event. When it starts raining, the athletes head...

A random stop by a San Diego police officer in 2025 opens a murder investigation—which ultimately leads to a search underneath a local home once rented by a local man, Dwight William Rhone.  But that is only the beginning … as investigators begin to think they have uncovered the burial ground of a prolific serial killer.   For exclusive content, sign up for your free Patreon account here. Leave a...

A group of four head out for a camping trip and one of them winds up being tied to a tree and murdered by a serial killer. As that is happening, an attorney is sitting on information where two additional bodies are buried … but he tells no one. How these cases are connected and the psychopath in the middle of it all is the focus this week. For exclusive content, sign up for your free Patreon accou...

A teenage girl from Bronx, New York, leaves school one cold winter afternoon, on her way to meet her younger sister. But she never arrives and a search in a city of 10 million people begins. It takes decades, but law enforcement catch a break … this, mind you, after figuring out how the planet Jupiter and their main suspect, are connected. For exclusive content, sign up for your free Patreon accou...

On September 5th, 1982, 12-year-old paperboy Johnny Gosch vanished into the early morning darkness of West Des Moines, Iowa. His abandoned red Radio Flyer wagon, filled with undelivered newspapers, was the only trace left behind. The mystery deepened over the decades as bizarre theories, allegations of systemic conspiracies, and a shocking, unannounced midnight visit to his mother, Noreen Gosch, t...

A three-year-old is found wandering through a parking lot in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, one day. She is holding onto her favorite pillow–and her feet are covered in dried blood. Her mother … is missing. As the search gets underway, a suspect emerges.  For exclusive content, sign up for your free Patreon account here. Leave a five-star review of this show, please. ;-) Order Phelps's latest book, THEY...

It's the 80s. The bogeyman, a scumbag named Frank Walls, is roaming about the day and night, killing random people along the beachside in Okaloosa County, Florida—a serial killer displaying some of the vilest behaviors imaginable. As the bodies pile up, investigators are stumped—until, that is, one courageous man, who calls himself "The Animal," decides to place a phone call. For exclusive content...

A police commander's husband goes missing and law enforcement seems to think he might have taken off on his own. Then he is found murdered—and the case soon turns into a strange whodunit, with his wife at the center of the investigation. This, as another death ocurrs, leaving one man holding all the cards. For exclusive content, sign up for your free Patreon account here. Leave a five-star review...

A serial rapist, Mitchell Gaff, is caught and jailed. Thinking he's getting out of prison many years later, the court sentences him to McNeil Island, where the worst sexual predators are kept from society. After decades, he is finally released. 50 years after his first crimes, police are knocking on his door once again—but this time, it's murder they're looking to charge him with. For exclusive co...