Small Town Mysteries

Send us Fan Mail On November 28, 1969, 22-year-old Penn State graduate student Betsy Aardsma was killed by a single stab wound inside the university's Pattee Library. Despite the busy campus setting and witnesses spotting a suspect fleeing the scene, the crime was never officially solved. Decades later, this tragic case—often called "Murder in the Stacks"—remains an infamous cold ca...

Send us Fan Mail On April 1, 2006, 27-year-old medical student Brian Shaffer walked into an Ohio bar with friends and vanished off the face of the earth. Surveillance cameras famously captured Brian entering the crowded venue, but never showed him leaving, leaving investigators with an impossible mystery: how does a grown man completely disappear from a single-exit building surrounded by cameras?...

Send us Fan Mail Over the past couple of years, there has been a lot of discourse regarding the ethics of AI. It seems that in just the few years that AI has become available to the public, it has infiltrated our lives. It’s almost impossible to avoid. It’s being used in the workplace, on social media, to send emails or deal with complicated social situations…the list goes on and on. And those are...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we talk about it all! What our favorites were, how we research for cases, and what cases we would recommend for those of you who are new to Small Town Mysteries! We close out the episode with a case update.  Support the show

Send us Fan Mail When beloved schoolteacher Genai Coleman was shot while reading her Bible in her car, detectives thought they had an open-and-shut case after finding a cigarette butt in the stolen vehicle that matched suspect Donald Smith’s DNA. However, the investigation hit a wall when Donald revealed he had an identical twin brother, Ronald, sharing his exact genetic code... In our second case...

Send us Fan Mail What starts as a series of strange, ghost-like pranks against a local family escalates into one of Massachusetts' most shocking crimes. We examine the 1987 murders of Priscilla, Abigail, and William Gustafson, and the terrifying intruder who lived hidden inside their home for months. Sources:  1) https://law.justia.com/cases/massachusetts/supreme-court/volumes/416/416mass433....

Send us Fan Mail Kassandra Cantrell was 10 weeks pregnant when she went missing from Tacoma, Washington, in August 2020. Security footage showed a mysterious man in a hat hovering around Kassandra's car, along with other suspicious movements. Who was this man, and what was his motive? Sources:   1) https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kassanndra-cantrell-murder-colin-patrick-dudley-digital-evidence-m...

Send us Fan Mail In 1993, Gary Gauger woke up to find his parents brutally murdered on their Illinois farm, only to quickly find himself targeted as the prime suspect. After a grueling, 19-hour interrogation filled with psychological pressure and police deception, an exhausted Gary was coerced into confessing to a crime he didn't commit, landing him on death row for years.  Support the show

Send us Fan Mail Today we are traveling to Minneapolis to talk about the 1993 murder of Jeanne Childs, more frequently known as “Jeanie.” Jeanie was a sex worker who was brutally stabbed in her apartment at the age of 35 years. Sadly, it took 27 years for Jeanie to get the justice she deserved. Sources:  1) https://www.oxygen.com/crime-news/jerry-westrom-guilty-jeanne-childs-1993-cold-case-murder...

Send us Fan Mail In 1977, Yale students Terri Jentz and Avra Goldman were cycling across the United States when they stopped to camp at a park in Oregon. While they slept, a man drove his truck over their tent and proceeded to attack both women with an axe. Though both women miraculously survived the brutal assault, the attacker was never identified, and the case remains unsolved.  Sources:  1) ht...

Send us Fan Mail The case of Girly Chew Hossencofft  is a study in how “weirdness” can become a weapon. And I truly mean weird. Con men, fashion designers, UFO’s, and conspiracy theories about otherworldly aliens that secretly rule the Earth are just a few things that surround this case. Unfortunately, the case was so saturated with sci-fi lies and cult-like conspiracies, that the world almost los...

Send us Fan Mail In July 2005, 41-year-old Barbara Keim was killed in her own home in an act of violence orchestrated by her daughter. Investigators eventually uncovered a planned conspiracy involving the daughter, her boyfriend, and an accomplice.  Sources: 1) https://www.oxygen.com/snapped/crime-time/hannah-stone-sentenced-100-years-murder 2) https://law.justia.com/cases/indiana/court-of-appeals...

Send us Fan Mail We've all heard the expression "fake it till you make it", right? Well, Jean-Claude Romand did just that for 18 years, but never truly made it. Instead, he chose to murder his entire family rather than face his own shame and lies head on. Sources:  1) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48790276 2) https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2001/jan/13/weekend7.weeke...

Send us Fan Mail It was November 1961. The waters in the Bahamas were as blue and beautiful as ever. But for Nicolaos Spachidakis, a second officer on a Greek freighter called Captain Theo, something seemed off. As he looked into the distance, he could make out a tiny white speck, bobbing alongside the waves. It was too large to be trash, but much too small to be a boat.  As they pulled alongside...

Send us Fan Mail Today we are talking about Virginia Hall, an American Spy who was able to completely evade the Gestapo during WWII. The Gestapo labeled her as “The enemy’s most dangerous spy.” During WWII, Virginia organized agent networks, helped those who managed to escape being prisoners of war, and recruited both French men and women to run safe houses.  Sources:  1) https://www.cia.gov/stori...

Send us Fan Mail Today we’re talking about Josephine Baker, the remarkable entertainer who took France by storm and used her unsuspecting identity for subterfuge in World War II - truly a badass woman! Sources:  1) https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/15/josephine-baker-was-the-star-france-wanted-and-the-spy-it-needed-damien-lewis-agent-josephine 2) https://nmaahc.si.edu/josephine-baker 3) h...

Send us Fan Mail In honor of Women's History Month, this week we are talking about Elizebeth Smith Friedman, a woman who turned her love for decrypting Shakespeare’s plays into cracking codes and ciphers during major moments in American history, all while using only pencil and paper. Elizebeth set the standard for modern codebreaking - and then watched as powerful men took all the credit. Ahh...

Send us Fan Mail In 1992, a Wyoming man opened a padlocked military footlocker left in his shed by a neighbor six years earlier. Inside, he found the skeletal remains of a man shot in the head, wrapped in a grocery bag. It would take decades to pass and a DNA breakthrough to reveal that the 'man in the box' was Joseph Mulvaney—a father who had been murdered. Sources:  1) https://www.kulr...

Send us Fan Mail In 1999, Paul Warner Powell, a 20-year-old white supremacist, murdered 16-year-old Stacie Reed and brutally assaulted her 14-year-old sister, Kristie, in a racially motivated attack after learning Stacie had a Black boyfriend. After his initial death sentence was vacated due to a legal technicality regarding capital murder requirements, Powell taunted prosecutors in a letter, beli...

Send us Fan Mail On the morning of March 26, 1997, Deborah was at home, getting ready for school. Her eleven-year-old cousin stopped by to walk her to class, but she wasn’t quite ready yet. The last words ever known to be spoken by Deborah were: “I’ll be right there. Go on ahead”. She never made it to school that day, and for the next twenty-nine years, her small hometown has been haunted by the q...

Send us Fan Mail Take a listen to Part 1 from last week if you want all the background info on this case! Before Cindy died, she reported about 100 incidents of various kinds of harassment/stalking to police...but police could never find any evidence of it. Cindy first reported instances of harassment/stalking in 1982. In the 7 years leading up to her death, Cindy reported about 100 incidents whic...

Send us Fan Mail Before Cindy died, she reported about 100 incidents of various kinds of harassment/stalking to police...but police could never find any evidence of it. Cindy first reported instances of harassment/stalking in 1982. In the 7 years leading up to her death, Cindy reported about 100 incidents which consisted of harassment, stalking, vandalism, home invasions, and physical attacks. Cin...

Send us Fan Mail When Bobby Jo Manley arrived at her sister’s home on April 22, 2016 in Sunfish Township, Ohio, she expected to go in, feed the pets, give them some love, and then leave – probably see her sister, as well. Socialize a bit. What Bobby Jo found would change the trajectory of her life forever – and the lives of dozens of others. Bobby Jo first found two bodies inside the home, immedia...

Send us Fan Mail When a 92-year-old with dementia disappears, all clues point to her granddaughter and her granddaughter's husband. Without a body though, the case grows cold. Until, that is, an unlikely detective waddles by... Sources:  1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candler,_North_Carolina 2) https://disability-memorial.org/nellie-sullivan  3) https://people.com/crime/pet-duck-helps-polic...

Send us Fan Mail When one man bullies an entire town into turning a blind eye to his numerous crimes over several decades, what else can a town do but finally enact some good old vigilante justice? Sources:  1) https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/us/16bully.html 2) https://www.nwmissourinews.com/news/article_ff2ddc1c-b317-11ef-ac2c-d706c09832af.html 3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_McElroy 4) h...