Our True Crime Podcast

In 2003, Lori McLeod and her daughter, Kaysi, were living a modest, quiet life in rural Colorado. Lori occasionally visited a nearby casino to play her favorite card games—a small escape from her everyday routine. There, she met Scott Kimball. He was assisting his mother in a wheelchair when he struck up a friendly conversation with Lori. Scott’s warm demeanor, easy humor, and apparent devotion to...

On a cold fall morning in October 1978, near Rock Rapids, Iowa, a crew burying telephone cables made the grim discovery of a young woman's body hidden in an overgrown ditch off Highway 182. With no identification found at the scene, the woman was immediately classified as a Jane Doe. For 27 years, Jane Doe lay beneath a gravestone reading "Unknown Female" before she finally reclaimed her name: Wil...

It was a warm Wednesday morning in Sarasota, Florida, on June 12, 1991, when 36-year-old Jackie Galloway was supposed to meet a friend for lunch. The friend arrived at her home expecting an easy midday catch-up. Instead, the front door was unlocked, Galloway’s purse was sitting on the couch, and an unsettling silence filled the house. Jackie was gone. By the next afternoon, ten miles from downtown...

In this episode, Jen and Cam are joined by their friend Dawn from Method & Madness. Dawn, with her background in Criminal Justice and victim advocacy, brings a unique perspective to the tragic and still unsolved murder of Deverrie Schiller. Deverrie, a young woman of only 23, set out from her home in California City for a simple trip to Taco Bell. Tragically, she never returned. Her lifeless body...

It should have been a time of celebration. Melissa Lamesch, a 27-year-old EMT, was just two days away from giving birth to her baby boy. Instead, her home in Mt. Morris, Illinois, was engulfed in flames on Thanksgiving Eve. First responders treated the scene as a terrible accident, but the medical examiner soon delivered a shock: Melissa had died before the fire even began. That truth exposed a da...

Every Monday, poet and paranormal obsessive Heidi Wong unearths the chilling true stories behind the world’s most terrifying legends. From haunted dolls to cursed houses, each episode of Twisted Tales reveals the disturbing real-life events that inspired horror’s biggest blockbusters and the ones too twisted to make it to screen. Some stories are stranger than fiction. These are darker. New episod...

In the summer of 2016, Gaylin Rose had moved her 4 little girls to Flora, a small town of just over 2,000 residents, seeking a fresh start. The two-story duplex cost $500 a month to rent, and by autumn, they were settling into a routine. Rose had secured a job at a nearby gas station, while her daughters threw themselves into school, cheerleading, and making new friends. On the night of November 2...

It was Halloween night in 1973 in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Nine-year-old Lisa Ann French dressed up to go trick-or-treating, but she never came home. Lisa's disappearance terrified the town. The desperate search lasted for days, ending with a shocking discovery that changed how families everywhere thought about letting their kids trick-or-treat. The awful truth? The person who took Lisa was someone...

UPDATE: When we first covered Robert Eugene Brashers back in April 2025, we never imagined he’d be tied to one of Texas’s most infamous crimes: the 1991 Austin Yogurt Shop Murders. Now, advanced DNA testing has confirmed his link to the horrific killings that haunted Austin for more than three decades. On December 6, 1991, four teenage girls, Jennifer and Sarah Harbison, Eliza Thomas, and Amy Ayer...

The Knotek residence appeared unremarkable to outsiders. A modest home, needing a bit of work from years of rain, rested quietly on a tree-lined street. To neighbors, it was just another house, just another family. Behind its doors, however, was a living nightmare—meticulously orchestrated by Michelle Knotek, with the complicity of her husband, David. Outwardly, Michelle seemed maternal, warm, and...

Careful! This one is disturbing. In the early 2000s, women in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, lived in fear. Two different predators were stalking the city, leaving a trail of terror and death. While authorities were hunting for one killer, another, even more depraved murderer was operating completely under the radar. For ten years, Sean Vincent Gillis lived a chilling double life, murdering at least eigh...

The internet often feels like a harmless escape. A place where Facebook shows you picture-perfect families, where influencers promise miracles in a bottle, where friendships are born from nothing more than a shared “like.” But behind the glow of the monitor, reality can warp into something darker, something far more dangerous than anyone imagines. In one quiet town, a single online connection spir...

Altona, Manitoba, is a small town sitting in the middle of a windswept prairie about a fifteen-minute drive north of North Dakota. In the winter, the days are short, the snow falls frequently, and there’s very little to do except play hockey or other indoor activities. The town was founded by Mennonites, who, like the Amish, are known for their pacifist and peaceful ways. However, that did not mea...

Do you want to know what it is like to be one of  'Our True Crime Podcast' Patreons?  Here is a sneak peek. This episode was released in January on our Patreon platform. Due to circumstances, we were unable to produce an episode this week, so we thought it was a perfect time to revisit an episode that originally aired on Patreon. Join us! The Petit family lived in an idyllic, quiet, tree-lined nei...

Thank you to Amy M for requesting this episode! A rich and powerful man who thought he was above the law and a brave sheriff who refused to back down. This is the story of how one murder brought a corrupt "king" and his reign of terror crashing down. Join Jen & Cam as we explore the 1948 case that made history in the American South, "Fall of a Kingdom: Coweta County Murder" Thank you to our team L...

It was the evening of July 6, 2007, when the call came in to the Russell County Sheriff’s Department. A truck driver had spotted what he believed to be a body lying along a lonely stretch of road outside Phenix City, Alabama. At first, the deputies dismissed it as unlikely. This was a tight-knit community, a place where neighbors grew up together and tragedies of that magnitude felt unthinkable. B...

A big Thank You to Belinda for requesting this episode! On a remote stretch of highway in the Australian Outback, a young couple's road trip turned into a nightmare. Peter Falconio, a British backpacker, vanished without a trace, and his girlfriend, Joanne Lees, was found battered and distraught, having escaped a terrifying ordeal. But as police began to unravel the events of that night, people st...

***Make sure to listen for a special announcement about an informational meeting we will be having on August 19 to discuss our trip to Italy. Go to ⁠ourtruecrimepodcast.com⁠ to register for the zoom meeting.*** Thirteen-year-old Danny Joe Eberle didn’t want to get up that morning. It was far too early, and like any kid his age, he just wanted to stay curled beneath the covers. But duty called—just...

In December 2005, a beautiful young woman named Nona Dirksmeyer was brutally murdered in her Arkansas apartment. Her death was a shock, starting a mystery that still isn't solved. The hunt for Nona's killer was messy. Police botched the investigation, and there were multiple trials, but no one was ever found guilty. Nona's killer is still free, walking among us. Join Jen and Cam as they discuss "U...

How hard is it to disappear after killing someone? But what if the victims were your own family? The idea of vanishing after such a crime seems unfathomable—yet some manage it, at least for a while. Few cases illustrate this more chillingly than those of John List and Robert Fisher, two men accused of murdering their families and slipping into the shadows. So it has happened before and will undoub...

On a quiet, long weekend in May of 2011, 20-year-old Maddy Scott set out for a camping trip with friends at Hogsback Lake near Vanderhoof, British Columbia. The next morning, her truck and tent were found, but Maddy was nowhere to be seen. There were no signs of struggle or clues pointing to where she had gone, only questions. Join Jen and Cam as they discuss "Maddy Scott: The Girl Who Never Came...

26-year-old Emory Futo Jr., his father’s namesake, had a childhood that was anything but normal, but he was now a grown man determined to change for the better. To those on the outside, the Futos were settling into a picture-perfect life—a new stucco home on a quiet cul-de-sac in sunny California, a far cry from his upbringing in St. Louis, Missouri. Neighbors later told police the couple was quie...

In the 1970s, Nashville appeared to be a picture of safety, with quiet streets and friendly neighbors. It seemed the kind of place where nothing truly bad was supposed to happen. But within the first few months of 1975, two girls would be found murdered. First twenty-year-old Sally Des Prez, a college Freshman was raped and killed in her own apartment. Then, a nine-year-old Girl Scout, Marcia Trim...

The neighborhood of St. Louis Hills was quiet that evening in November 1980. The leaves were turning as winter was making its way in. John Dooling was suddenly jolted awake by a loud sound. Was it A scream? Or had he imagined it? He immediately thought of his 18-year-old daughter, Ellen. Ellen had gone on a date that night. She should have been home by now. John threw off the covers and moved to t...

It was a brisk autumn night in October 1977 when two best friends, Christine Eadie and Helen Scott, stepped into Edinburgh’s World’s End Pub for what should have been a carefree night of drinks and laughter. Just seventeen years old, they were out to blow off steam, pub-hop, and soak in the city’s energy. But as the night drew to a close, a chance encounter changed everything. On their way out, th...