DEADLY INTENT

In November 1988, 17-year-old Junko Furuta was abducted on her way home from her part-time job. For 44 days, she endured unimaginable torture while multiple adults who could have saved her chose to look away. This is not just a story of four teenage criminals—it's the story of how an entire system failed one girl.   #DeadlyIntent #TrueCrime #JunkoFuruta #JapaneseCrime #SystemicFailure #Crimina...

Christian Longo had the picture-perfect family — the boyish good looks, the devoted wife, three beautiful children, the boat in the driveway. Almost none of it was real. For years, Longo built an elaborate false self out of fraud, forged checks, stolen cars, and lies he told his own father, his church, and the wife who never stopped believing in him. And in December 2001, when the lie was finally...

In May 1999, police opened the vault of a disused bank in the tiny South Australian town of Snowtown and found barrels — and bodies dissolving in acid inside them. It wasthe end of the worst series of killings in Australian history: at least eleven people murdered over seven years.   But almost nobody died in Snowtown. The town just owned the vault. The real horror happened in the suburbs of Adela...

Content Warning: Before we begin, a warning that's heavierthan usual. This episode deals with the murder of pregnant women, the death of infants, and the loss of pregnancy. If you are pregnant, recently postpartum, or grieving a pregnancy loss, please take care of yourself. This one can wait. It'll be here when you're ready.   Netflix's MATERNAL INSTINCT made Taylor Parker a namepe...

She arrived at the emergency room too calmly. A little blood on her arm, a story about a bushy-haired stranger on a dark Oregon road, and three shot children in the back seat. One of them — 7-year-old Cheryl — was already gone. The other twowould survive scarred: 8-year-old Christie fighting back from a stroke, 3-year-old Danny paralyzed for life.   There was no stranger.   Diane Downs shot her ow...

He was a police officer. A father. A neighbor who waved from his driveway and tended his yard like anyone else. For over a decade, Joseph James DeAngelo moved through California neighborhoods like a shadow — cutting phone lines, tying knots, and leaving behind a trail of trauma that spanned 11 counties, 13 murders, and more than 50 sexual assaults. He was the Visalia Ransacker. The East Area Rapis...

She was a devoted mother. A beauty queen. A woman who posted family vacations and birthday celebrations on social media. And then, somewhere along the way, she became something else entirely. Lori Vallow Daybell convinced herself — and those around her — that her own children were possessed by dark spirits. Zombies who needed to be eliminated. What followed was a calculated campaign of murder that...

In June 1967, 75-year-old widow Louisa Dunne was raped and murdered in her Bristol home. When her newspaper sat uncollected on her garden wall the next morning, neighbors knew something was terribly wrong. Police found a palm print on her window and biological evidence at the scene—but in 1967, forensic science couldn't identify the killer. The case went cold for fifty-eight years. Until 2024, whe...

After thirteen years of silence, the BTK Killer resurfaces in 2004—and his desperate need for recognition becomes his fatal mistake. In Part 2, we follow the investigation that finally brought Dennis Rader down: the taunting letters, the psychological chess match with police, and the floppy disk that ended a thirty-year reign of terror.  From the metadata that exposed him to the shocking conf...

January 15, 1974. Four members of the Otero family are found murdered in their Wichita, Kansas home. Three months later, police receive a letter from the killer, signing it "BTK" - Bind, Torture, Kill. For the next seventeen years, Dennis Rader will terrorize Wichita. He'll kill ten people, send taunting letters to police and media, and then simply... vanish. But he never really left. He was there...

After 42 episodes exploring the darkest corners of criminal psychology, we're closing Season 1 with the five cases that haunted you the most. This isn't just a replay. I've revisited each case with fresh analysis, new research, and 2026 updates on where these investigations stand today. In this episode: The Walker Family Murders (1959) - An unsolved Christmas killing that baffles investigators 67...

In August 2021, 22-year-old Gabby Petito vanished during a cross-country van life trip with her fiancé Brian Laundrie. What started as an Instagram-perfect adventure ended in tragedy when her body was found in Wyoming's Grand Teton National Park. Two weeks before Gabby was murdered, police in Moab, Utah pulled the couple over after witnesses reported a domestic dispute. Body camera footage capture...

The photographs don't lie. On June 4, 2008, a camera accidentally captured a murder in progress—twenty-seven stab wounds, a slashed throat, and a final gunshot. Travis Alexander was killed by his ex-girlfriend Jodi Arias, a woman who couldn't accept that their relationship was over. She drove 1,000 miles with gas cans to avoid detection, changed her appearance, and turned off her phone. Then she s...

On Christmas Eve 2002, 27-year-old Laci Peterson—eight months pregnant—disappeared from her Modesto, California home. When her body and that of her unborn son washed ashore in San Francisco Bay months later, her husband Scott was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to death for their murders.  The case seemed straightforward: Scott was having an affair, didn't want to be a father, and killed h...

Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka looked like the perfect couple—young, attractive, successful. But behind closed doors, they were responsible for the kidnapping, sexual assault, and murder of at least three young women between 1990 and 1992, including Karla's own 15-year-old sister. When police finally caught them, Karla claimed she was a battered wife forced to help. Then the videotapes surfaced....

On July 15, 2008, Cindy Anthony called 911 to report her granddaughter missing. Two-year-old Caylee had been gone for thirty-one days—and her mother Casey hadn't said a word. What followed was a media firestorm, a controversial trial, and an acquittal that left the nation divided. But beyond the courtroom drama lies a darker psychological portrait: a young mother who constructed elaborate fictiona...

In December 1987, Ronald Gene Simmons committed the deadliest family massacre in United States history, killing 16 people over the span of a week 14 of them his own family members. But this wasn't a crime of passion or a sudden snap. Simmons planned for two months, kept detailed lists, and lived with the bodies of his victims for four days before calmly going Christmas shopping at Sears. This epis...

The Monster of Florence terrorized Italy for seventeen years, claiming sixteen lives in a series of ritualistic murders that remain partially unsolved to this day. Between 1968 and 1985, young couples seeking privacy in the Tuscan countryside became targets of a predator whose methodical precision, forensic awareness, and psychological compulsion make him one of the most organized serial offenders...

For years, Israel Keyes operated in the shadows. He was methodical, patient, and terrifyingly organized. He buried “kill caches” across the United States, filled with weapons and supplies. He traveled thousands of miles to commit murders far from home. And he studied law enforcement tactics so carefully that investigators later said he seemed to be following the FBI playbook better than the FBI it...

He wasn't supposed to be catchable. For more than a decade, Israel Keyes traveled the United States, killed people, and flew home. Thirty-five documented trips. No victim type. No geographic pattern. No behavioral signature any database could detect. The FBI didn't know he existed until he was already in handcuffs. This is Part One of a two-part deep dive into one of the most methodical, most stud...

Stacey Castor: The Black Widow Who Poisoned Her Husbands She dialed 911 herself. That’s what makes the story of Stacey Castor so chilling. Every time someone in her life collapsed, convulsed, or stopped breathing, she was the one who called for help. Calm. Controlled. Convincing. First, her husband Michael Wallace died suddenly. The cause appeared to be antifreeze poisoning. Years later, her secon...

On April 19, 1989, a 28-year-old investment banker was brutally attacked while jogging in Central Park. Within hours, five Black and Latino teenagers from Harlem were in police custody. Within days, they had confessed. Within months, they were convicted. And for thirteen years, everyone believed justice had been served. In this episode of Deadly Intent , we examine one of the most consequential wr...

In the early morning hours of October 7, 2022, a four-year-old girl woke to find her mother unresponsive in their Forest, Virginia apartment. What first responders initially suspected was a drug overdose would soon reveal itself as something far more sinister: the murder of Katlyn Lyon Montgomery. In this episode of Deadly Intent , we examine the Katlyn Lyon Montgomery murder case and the ex-boyfr...

January 15, 1947. A young mother walking with her child through a vacant lot in Los Angeles made a discovery that would haunt the city for decades—the severed, mutilated body of 22-year-old Elizabeth Short, later dubbed "The Black Dahlia" by the press. Within days, LAPD investigators had identified a prime suspect with means, motive, and opportunity. That suspect would later be secretly recorded a...

In the affluent Tokyo suburb of Setagaya, the Miyazawa family was preparing for New Year's Eve 2000 when their home became the scene of one of Japan's most perplexing crimes. Mikio (44), Yasuko (41), eight-year-old Niina, and six-year-old Rei were brutally murdered by an unknown intruder who then did the unthinkable—he stayed. For up to 10 hours after the killings, the perpetrator made himself at...