True Crime Campfire

According to the newspaper The Guardian, there are at least 125 million twins and triplets living today. Twins come into the world together, and they can have an almost supernatural bond. Most of the time it’s a beautiful thing, but it can go sideways, too. Take, for example, the Eriksson twins, Sabina and Ursula, who in the spring of 2008, shocked the United Kingdom by dashing out into traffic, a...

Technology is amazing. It’s allowed humans to instantaneously transmit information over thousands of miles. Sometimes it’s a phone call to a sick relative in a different country, sometimes it’s a funny cat video sent to your friend at 4 am when you’re supposed to be asleep, and sometimes it connects two true crime nerds who live in different areas of the country who decide that they want to deglor...

Security expert Gavin de Becker wrote, “If we’re looking for some specific, expected danger, we’re less likely to see the unexpected danger.” It’s a trap we can easily fall into, especially the anxious ones among us—trying to plan and protect ourselves from every possible harm, only to find that the real danger comes when we least expect it, and from the last place we’d think to look. Join us for...

It’s all a lighthearted nightmare on the MORBID podcast. Hosted by Alaina Urquhart and Ash Kelley, Morbid is a full dose of true crime with a splash of comedy. Join us all month long as we celebrate 5 years of MORBID with a special anniversary series, a festive edition of listener tales, and more surprises to come. Listen to Morbid wherever you get your podcasts: https://wondery.com/links/morbid-a...

The great poet and painter William Blake wrote that, “It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.” And I think that makes sense to all of us. Few things cut so deep as betrayal from someone you trust and care for—the shock of it makes the treachery all the more painful, and makes you question whether your supposed friend ever gave a damn about you in the first place. And you’ll rare...

In March of 1996, a cat named Scarlett made national news when she ran into a burning building five separate times to rescue her kittens. She sustained severe burns to her paws, she was blinded by the heat and smoke, and her whiskers had burned, but that didn’t stop her. Again and again, she faced danger to save her babies and after her task was completed, she touched each kitten with her nose, co...

In his play Medea, Euripides wrote the story of a mother scorned. Her husband, Jason left her for another woman and in her fury, Medea murders their children in revenge. As she prepared to poison her sons, she was asked if she was sure, and she said, “Yes, for this is the best way to wound my husband.” A mother, so overtaken with jealousy and hatred that she took the lives of the children that she...

In case you haven’t noticed already, we tend to seek out the kind of stories that make your brain hurt. The kind of stuff you wouldn’t believe was real if you didn’t have our solemn word for it. This will be our fourth volume so far of “Stranger than Fiction” stories, cases that are probably gonna wreck your head for the rest of the week, and for this one we’ve chosen a theme: Romance. Love is kin...

The Generation Why Podcast released its first episode in 2012 and pioneered the true crime genre in the podcasting world. Now, in a special, 4-part series, The Generation Why podcast unravels the story of Kalief Browder. A young boy who was falsely accused of stealing a backpack and held without bail at Rikers Island for 3 years. He endured consistent abuse by prison staff and inmates, and was hel...

I don’t know about you, but when I was a kid, the movie “Jaws” scared me silly. Now part of that, obviously, is that it’s about a giant shark eating people, but the shark itself isn’t actually in the movie all that much. What makes it unsettling is the setting, a bright, sunny, all-American town, with a predator lurking unseen just below the surface. Our story this week might take place in the lan...

Nurses often take what they call the Florence Nightingale Pledge at graduation. It goes, in part, like this: “I solemnly pledge myself before God and in the presence of this assembly, to pass my life in purity and to practice my profession faithfully. I will abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous, and will not take or knowingly administer any harmful drug….With loyalty will I endeavo...

In his novel “1984,” George Orwell wrote, “If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.” The man at the center of this week’s case didn’t manage that—his secrets and troubles gnawed at him constantly—but he did manage to act like he had nothing at all to worry about, sailing serenely downstream while knowing full-well that just around the next bend there was a waterfall that...

There’s a lot about high-school life that is retrospectively ridiculous. Miss, nobody noticed that microscopic zit on the side of your nose. Sir, that’s not a mustache yet and you should stop trying to pretend it is. But the truth is, when you’re that young you really do feel things deeply, and a lot of things matter far more than they really should. Especially where love is concerned. Looking bac...

When we left you at the end of Part 1, angry man-child Elliot Rodger had dropped out of college to avoid contact with all the unattainable blondes on campus, and his plan to win the Mega Millions jackpot and lord it over everyone had failed. In his mind, he’d exhausted all possibilities for revenge against his “enemies,” except for the bloody ones. So he began planning what he called his “Day of R...

On May 23rd, 2014, the city of Isla Vista California was shocked by a vicious murder spree—six people dead, more than a dozen others injured. The killer was a 22 year old man named Elliot Rodger, whose on-paper resume would never have hinted at anything like this. Born into a well-to-do family with Hollywood connections, blessed with good looks and intelligence and parents who adored him—allowed i...

The Rolling Stones released “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” in 1965, when I’m pretty sure Mick Jagger could get all the satisfaction he wanted, but that’s neither here nor there. The song has been striking a chord with countless listeners for going on 60 years since because people recognize what it’s about either in themselves or others, that relentless unquenchable appetite for SOMETHING, whether i...

When we left you at the end of part 1, con man Christopher Hightower was coming unglued. His wife was threatening to leave him. His landlords were threatening to kick him out of his office. Creditors were swarming. And his old friend Ernie Brendel was pursuing a formal complaint against him with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Can you imagine? All he did was commit a little light financi...

In the late summer of 1991, the tranquil little town of Barrington, Rhode Island was stunned by the disappearance of an entire family: Ernie and Alice Brendel and their 8 year old daughter Emily. As the story unfolded, it just got weirder and weirder. Mafia hit squads, bizarre murder weapons, a mysterious figure called “The Lynx?” And the town was left to unravel a mystery that was truly stranger...

There’s a famous, if frequently misquoted, line from the 17th century play, The Mourning Bride: “Heaven has no rage, like love to hatred turned—Nor hell a fury, like a woman scorned.” It’s famous because people recognize the truth in it, that betrayal in love can create in a person an obsessive rage that can lead to some very dark places. It’s a tale as old as crime. A murder plot forged out of fu...

If there’s one group of folks we identify with here at True Crime Campfire, it’s nerds. Between Katie and me, we cover about six or seven different subspecies of nerd over here, from Dungeons and Dragons nerd to anime nerd. True crime nerd goes without saying. And as we’ve said before, most of the time our people are harmless, peaceful types. Just give us a special edition Blu-Ray box set of the L...

The fable of the wolf in sheep’s clothing has always been one of my favorites. You know the one—A hungry wolf can’t get close enough to grab a sheep for dinner because the shepherd is so vigilant. But one day he finds a sheepskin, and slips it on. Now he just looks like one of the flock. He can slip right in among ‘em. And when the shepherd’s back is turned, bam. Dinnertime. Now that is a perfect...

Hosted by Ash Kelley and Alaina Urquhart from the hit show Morbid. When 90-year-old Laurence Pilgeram drops dead on the sidewalk outside his condo, you might think that’s the end of his story. But, really, it’s just the beginning. Because Laurence and others like him have signed up to be frozen and brought back to life in the future. And that belief will pull multiple generations of the Pilgeram f...

Remember those Magic Eye posters from the 90s? The technical name is stereogram, an optical illusion where if you kinda unfocus your eyes and stare at it long enough, a colorful kaleidoscope-looking abstract will turn into something else. A rocket ship, maybe, or a tropical landscape. They’re fun, and everybody had one in their dorm room for a while. We’re always fascinated by illusion. It’s why m...

In 1991, the small town of Derry, New Hampshire suddenly found itself the center of a media event: The trial of Pamela Smart, the pretty blond media services director at the local high school. From the outside looking in, Pam had seemed to be firmly on track for the American Dream. She and her handsome husband Greg were just about to celebrate their first anniversary, and Pam had aspirations to be...

In game theory, there’s this thing called the Hawk-Dove game, better known to most of us as “chicken.” It’s when two players get themselves into a sort of standoff—a situation where it would be better for everybody if somebody would back down, but nobody wants to be the first to give up. So they both just keep going, with no regard for their personal safety, until finally—hopefully—somebody’ll say...