The Murder Mindset

In this episode, we examine the 2004 Halloween murders of Adriane Insogna and Leslie Mazzara, two 26-year-old women stabbed to death in their beds in a quiet west Napa, California, neighborhood while their roommate, Lauren, survived by running into the backyard. Napa had gone more than two years without a single murder. For the next eleven months, investigators interviewed more than a thousand peo...

In this episode, we examine the crimes of Josef Fritzl, the Austrian father who imprisoned his own daughter in a hidden cellar beneath the family home, and the twenty-four-year deception that let him run two entirely separate lives under one roof. Beginning in 1984, Fritzl held his daughter captive in a space he spent years secretly building, fathering seven children with her while his wife lived...

In this episode, we examine the crimes of the Golden State Killer, the man behind the Visalia Ransacker burglaries, the East Area Rapist attacks, and the Original Night Stalker murders, and the forty-year investigation that slowly connected three names, three regions, and three decades of unsolved cases. Between 1974 and 1986, Joseph DeAngelo terrorized communities across California, and in 2020 h...

In this episode, we examine the 2021 murders of Bart and Krista Halderson in Windsor, Wisconsin, and the investigation that slowly exposed the double life their son, Chandler Halderson, had been maintaining for more than a year. At twenty-three, Chandler appeared to be building an impressive future: finishing college, working remotely for American Family Insurance, preparing for an $80,000-a-year...

In this pre-verdict update, The Murder Mindset revisits the Lindsay Clancy case now that weeks of trial testimony have revealed far more about her psychiatric history, medication timeline, alleged psychosis, and the forensic evidence surrounding the deaths of Cora, Dawson, and Callan. We break down what postpartum psychosis actually is, how it differs from postpartum depression, medication-induced...

In this episode, we examine the 1991 murders at the I Can't Believe It's Yogurt shop in Austin, Texas, and the thirty-four-year cascade of wrongful convictions that followed. Four men were imprisoned for this crime. None of them committed it. In 2025, DNA evidence identified the actual perpetrator, Robert Brashers, who confessed and was sentenced to life. The four men were exonerated in 2026. Rath...

In this episode, we examine the case of Taylor Parker and the murder of Reagan Simmons-Hancock through a lens that goes beyond the crime itself and into the psychology of the woman who committed it, the brain that built toward it, and the ten-month fiction she sustained so completely that an entire community believed her. Rather than focusing solely on what happened inside that house in New Boston...

In this episode, we examine the case of Margaret Mary Ray, the woman the tabloids called "David Letterman's stalker" through a lens that moves beyond the punchline and into the neuroscience of delusion, the systemic failures that left her without adequate care, and what her story actually tells us about how a brain loses its grip on reality. Because the way this case was covered at the time, it wa...

In this episode, we examine the case of John Emil List, known as the Boogeyman of Westfield, through a lens that goes beyond the crime itself and into the psychology of the man who committed it, the brain that built toward it, and the identity he constructed to escape it. Rather than focusing solely on what happened inside that nineteen room mansion in Westfield, New Jersey, this episode asks the...

In this episode, we examine the case of Harold Shipman through a lens that moves beyond headlines and into the structural failures that allowed one of the most prolific medical serial killers in modern history to operate undetected for years. Rather than focusing solely on the scale of his crimes, this episode asks more unsettling questions: how did a trusted physician manipulate systems...

In this episode, we examine the case of Kenneth Parks through a lens true crime rarely offers: the devastating intersection of a documented sleep disorder, a brain operating without its owner, and a legal system forced to confront a question it had never been asked before, can a person be criminally responsible for an act their conscious mind never experienced? Rather than centering the verdict or...

In this episode, we examine the case of Banita Jacks through a lens that true crime rarely offers: the devastating intersection of unprocessed grief, psychotic illness, religious delusion, and a system that failed to intervene before four children lost their lives. Rather than centering shock or spectacle, this episode asks the harder questions; about what happens to a mind consumed by loss, what...

In this episode, we examine the case of Pieper Lewis through a lens rarely centered in true crime: the complex intersection of sex trafficking, adolescent trauma, survival psychology, and a legal system that punished a victim for defending herself. Rather than focusing on shock or spectacle, this episode explores the psychological, medical, and behavioral questions at the center of a case that con...

In this episode, we examine the case of Lindsay Clancy, a labor and delivery nurse accused of killing her three children in January 2023, through a lens rarely centered in true crime: what happens when a postpartum brain, already undergoing massive neurological restructuring, is destabilized by rapid psychiatric medication changes. Rather than framing Clancy solely through the tragedy of three chi...

In this episode, we examine the case of  Blake Leibel and Iana Kasian  through a lens rarely centered in true crime:  the anatomy of narcissistic violence . Rather than focusing on shock or spectacle, this episode explores how pathological narcissism, entitlement, control, and emotional detachment can escalate into extreme interpersonal violence. Drawing on research in personality p...

In this episode, we examine the case of Aileen Wuornos through a lens rarely centered in true crime: what happens when a brain never learns safety. Rather than framing Wuornos solely through violence or notoriety, this episode explores how chronic trauma, neurological adaptation, and survival-based conditioning can shape perception, behavior, and decision-making over time. Drawing on research in n...

In this episode, we explore the infamous case of Richard Chase, known as the “Vampire of Sacramento,” whose crimes in the late 1970s shocked the nation. This episode is not a retelling for shock value. Instead, we focus on what many true-crime narratives leave out: the neuroscience, psychology, and environmental factors that may have influenced his behavior and mental state. Drawing on research in...

In this episode, we explore the mysterious and tragic case of Elisa Lam, a young woman whose death in 2013 sparked widespread speculation and media frenzy. This episode is not a retelling for shock value. Instead, we focus on what many true-crime narratives leave out: the neuroscience, psychology, and environmental factors that may have influenced her behavior and mental state. Drawing on res...

In this episode, we examine the disturbing case of  Daniel Marsh , a  15-year-old who brutally murdered an elderly couple  and later described the act as making him feel  “happy.” This episode is not a retelling for shock value. Instead, it explores what many true-crime narratives leave out: the  neuroscience, psychology, and developmental factors  behind extreme adol...

The Andrea Yates case is often remembered only for its horror, but the medical reality behind it has been largely misunderstood. In this episode of  The Murder Mindset , we examine what actually happens inside a brain in the midst of postpartum psychosis, one of the rarest and most severe psychiatric emergencies in perinatal mental health. We break down how hormone crashes, chronic sleep depr...

This is the official trailer for Episode One of  The Murder Mindset . A true-crime podcast that goes deeper, analyzing cases through neuroscience, development, trauma, and the environments that shape the brain. In this episode, host  Deardhra McGeough-Prendergast , a Johns Hopkins trained public health researcher, breaks down the misunderstood tragedy of Andrea Yates. Before the headline...