Crime To Burn

Episode 134 In 1999, LaQuinta Smith was found dead inside her burning home in North Bend, Oregon. Investigators believed her estranged husband, Alby Smith, had murdered her and deliberately set the fire to cover his tracks. But did the evidence actually support that conclusion? In Part 2, we're heading into the courtroom, where competing expert testimony, questionable investigative methods, and a...

Episode 133 In the early morning hours of May 20, 1999, a police officer spotted smoke pouring from a home in North Bend, Oregon. Inside, he discovered LaQuinta Smith unconscious in her bed. Despite his efforts to save her, LaQuinta was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital. What initially appeared to be a tragic accidental fire quickly became something far more troubling. Investigators discovered...

Episode 132 Cheetos belong in a snack bowl. Nuclear submarines belong in the fleet. And your wedding venue should still be standing when you leave. This week, we return with More Bizarre Blazes: Arson’s Strangest Stories—four stories featuring spectacularly bad decisions and one pig with no apparent criminal intent. In Massachusetts, a man tries to burn his ex-girlfriend’s home using Cheetos. At a...

Episode 131 Sometimes arson investigations are tragic, complicated, and painstakingly difficult. And sometimes a suspect confesses to a television reporter while the house is still burning behind him. This week, we take a break from the heavier cases to explore three of the most bizarre stories of criminal combustion they could find: a Maryland house fire with an unusually cooperative suspect, a C...

Episode 130 In the finale of Fire in the French Quarter: The Upstairs Lounge, we follow the State Fire Marshal’s investigation to its end—and confront the question it could never answer with certainty: did Roger Nunez set the fire that killed 32 people? We examine the evidence investigators believed pointed to Roger, the troubling inconsistencies that kept the case from ever being resolved, and al...

Episode 129 In Part Four of Fire in the French Quarter: The Upstairs Lounge, we follow the State Fire Marshal’s investigation as investigators finally locate and question their prime suspect, Roger Nunez. We examine the evidence against Roger, the questionable voice-stress testing used during the investigation, and the alleged confessions that surfaced only after his death. But with no physical ev...

Episode 128 In Part 3 of Fire in the French Quarter: The Upstairs Lounge, we turn our attention to the investigation—and to the stark differences between the work of the New Orleans Police Department and the Louisiana Fire Marshal’s Office. We dig into the physical evidence recovered after the fire, including the Ronsonol lighter-fluid can, laboratory testing of the stairwell carpet, and a surpris...

Episode 127 In Part Two of Fire in the French Quarter: The Upstairs Lounge, we look at what happened after the flames were extinguished. Survivors faced the threat of being outed, victims and their families were met with cruelty and rejection, and investigators began trying to determine whether the fire had been deliberately set. As police chased conflicting leads, strange confessions, and a can o...

Episode 126 On June 24, 1973, a fire tore through the Up Stairs Lounge, a second-floor bar in New Orleans’s French Quarter that had become a place of community and acceptance for the city’s gay population. Thirty-two people died in what remains the deadliest fire in New Orleans history. In Part One of Fire in the French Quarter — The Up Stairs Lounge, we go back to New Orleans in 1973 to explore t...

Episode 125 After eight episodes unraveling the Whiskey Au Go Go fire, we're joined by Australian author and historian Geoff Plunkett, whose decades of research have helped uncover the complicated—and often contradictory—story behind one of Australia's deadliest fires. Geoff takes us behind the investigation, the people at the center of the case, and the evidence that has fueled questions about wh...

Episode 124 In the finale of Pulpit and the Pyre: The Murder of Dawn Hacheney, the carefully constructed world around Pastor Nick Hacheney finally begins to collapse. For years, Nick maintained control through secrecy, manipulation, spiritual authority, and a web of relationships with women who each knew only pieces of the truth. But when those women began comparing notes—and finding support outsi...

Episode 123 When Dawn Hacheney’s death was ruled an accident, investigators had little reason to look beyond the fire. But outside the official investigation, troubling questions were already circulating about Pastor Nick Hacheney, the women he counseled, and the increasingly blurred boundaries inside Christ Community Church. In Part 2 of Pulpit and the Pyre, we examine the church culture that gav...

Episode 122 Pulpit and the Pyre: The Murder of Dawn Hacheney – Part 1 When a house fire claims the life of Dawn Hacheney the day after Christmas 1997, investigators initially conclude it was a tragic accident. A bedroom filled with Christmas gifts, portable propane cylinders, a space heater, and an elevated level of Benadryl appear to support a devastating—but explainable—chain of events. But as a...

Episode 121 After eight episodes, Foretold: Australia’s Whiskey Au Go Go Fire comes to its dramatic conclusion. In this finale, we examine the extraordinary events that unfolded after James Finch's release from prison, including his televised confession, his immediate recantation, and the allegations that reignited questions about police corruption, fabricated confessions, and perjury. We also exp...

Episode 120 Were the right men convicted? In Part 7 of Foretold: Australia’s Whiskey Au Go Go Fire, we examine the decades of controversy that followed the convictions of John Andrew Stuart and James Finch. As allegations of police corruption, questionable confessions, and organized crime connections emerge, the case becomes far more complicated than it first appeared. From the landmark Fitzgerald...

Episode 119 John Stuart and James Finch finally stand trial for the Whiskey Au Go Go firebombing—but this is no ordinary murder trial. As prosecutors build their case around disputed confessions, jailhouse informants, and weeks of alleged extortion threats, Stuart repeatedly sabotages the proceedings by swallowing homemade spring-loaded wire devices that send him into emergency surgery. Eventually...

Episode 118 In Part 5 of our Whiskey Au Go Go series, the investigation takes a dramatic turn when John Stuart's own brother, Danny, decides to turn him in to police. Was it an attack of conscience, or was Australia's largest-ever reward too tempting to ignore? As detectives close in, a backyard barbecue descends into absolute chaos, a mysterious Englishman named "Doug" repeatedly vanishes as poli...

Episode 117 As the weeks leading up to the Whiskey Au Go Go fire unfold, John Stuart desperately tries to convince police, journalists, and nightclub owners that a deadly protection racket is about to erupt in Brisbane. But with his stories constantly changing, his refusal to name names, and increasingly erratic behavior, detectives are left wondering whether they're dealing with a genuine informa...

Episode 116 John Stuart spent years insisting he had been framed. Most people dismissed the claim as just another excuse from a career criminal with a long history of arrests, escapes, and bad decisions. But the attempted murder conviction that haunted Stuart's life may not have been as straightforward as it appeared. In Part 3 of our Whiskey Au Go Go series, we examine the 1965 shooting of Sydney...

Episode 115 In Part 2 of our Whiskey Au Go Go series, we leave the nightclub behind and turn our attention to the man who would become the central figure in the investigation: John Andrew Joshua Stuart. Long before the Whiskey Au Go Go fire claimed 15 lives, Stuart was already well known to police, journalists, and much of Brisbane's criminal underworld. Raised in a home marked by violence, povert...

Episode 114 In March 1973, a firebomb ripped through Brisbane's Whisky Au Go Go nightclub, killing 15 people and injuring many more in one of Australia's deadliest nightclub fires. But according to one man, the tragedy wasn't a surprise. Months before the fire, career criminal John Stuart had been warning police, reporters, and nightclub owners that organized crime was planning a series of nightcl...

Episode 113 For decades, the people of Cleveland watched their river catch fire—and barely seemed to care. In this special two-year anniversary episode of Crime to Burn, we dive into the astonishing history of the Cuyahoga River. Long before the Environmental Protection Agency existed, the Cuyahoga River became a dumping ground for oil, industrial waste, sewage, and chemical runoff. The result? A...

Episode 112 In the finale of Shockwaves: The 1947 Texas City Explosion, we examine the aftermath of one of the deadliest industrial disasters in American history—and the devastating questions that followed. Why didn’t the firefighters, longshoremen, and citizens of Texas City understand the danger they were facing? Who did understand the risks of ammonium nitrate? And how did knowledge of those da...

Episode 111 As Texas City struggles to respond to one of the deadliest industrial disasters in American history, chaos spreads across the burning waterfront. With the entire volunteer fire department wiped out in the first blast, civilians, medical workers, military personnel, and rescue crews are forced to improvise a disaster response in real time while rumors, chemical fires, and mass casualtie...

Episode 110 On April 16, 1947, a routine morning in Texas City, Texas turned catastrophic when a fire broke out aboard the French cargo ship Grandcamp, which was loaded with thousands of tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. As smoke poured from the vessel, onlookers gathered and firefighters responded—unaware of the danger posed by the volatile cargo. Efforts to contain the fire instead intensifie...