Moms and Mysteries: A True Crime Podcast

When Sandra Birchmore was 12, she joined a Stoughton, Massachusetts police youth program because she hoped to become an officer herself. What began as trust in the adults around her became the basis for years of alleged exploitation by men connected to the program. In 2021, Sandra was found dead in her Canton apartment while pregnant with her first child. Her death was initially ruled a suicide. F...

In 1983, Sam and Judith Haney were preparing to install a swimming pool behind their home in the Newport subdivision of Crosby, Texas, when they uncovered two human graves. The discovery led them to the Black Hope Addition Graveyard, a largely forgotten African American cemetery whose boundaries and burial records had faded from public view. Court records later confirmed that Purcell Company, Inc....

This is a new follow up to last week’s episode on Ashley Flynn’s death. We cover the trial of her husband, Caleb Flynn. Prosecutors argued that Caleb staged a home invasion after killing Ashley, while the defense maintained the state had built a circumstantial case around an affair, with no recovered murder weapon, eyewitness, or gunshot residue evidence. Over eight days of proceedings, the jury h...

In late 2019, 69 year old Patricia Bennett suddenly stopped answering calls from her family. Messages continued coming from her phone, but her grandson John knew something was wrong. The wording did not sound like Patricia, and no matter how often he asked, he could not hear her voice. As police checked the shifting stories told by Patricia’s daughter, Carol Rey, the lies began to unravel. Patrici...

From the archive, we are revisiting the disappearance of former NBA player Bison Dele. In July 2002, Bison Dele, his girlfriend Serena Karlan, and boat captain Bertrand Saldo vanished while sailing through the South Pacific. Bison’s older brother, Miles Dabord, was the only person to return from the trip. When he arrived in Tahiti, Bison’s catamaran had been repainted and renamed. As investigators...

In June 1994, Vickie Beckham dropped her three children off for a visit with their father and was supposed to go to work. Hours later, she was found dead behind the wheel of her car in a ditch along a rural South Carolina road. Her vehicle had barely any damage, but Vickie had catastrophic injuries that could not be explained by a crash. Investigators quickly realized someone had tried to stage Vi...

In February 2026, Ashley Flynn was fatally shot inside her Tipp City, Ohio, home while her two young daughters slept nearby. Her husband, former worship pastor Caleb Flynn, called 911 and said an intruder had broken in, taken a gun from his truck, and shot Ashley. Investigators soon questioned whether the scene matched that account. Caleb was later charged with aggravated murder, murder, felonious...

Former plastic surgeon Tomasz Kosowski is currently on trial in Florida for the 2023 disappearance and alleged murder of attorney Steven Cozzi. Steven represented defendants in a civil lawsuit Tomasz had filed, and prosecutors allege Tomasz became increasingly angry with the case before planning the attack. Steven vanished from the Largo law office where he worked, leaving his wallet, keys, and ph...

On March 24, 2013, Aliza Sherman went to downtown Cleveland to meet with Gregory Moore, the attorney handling her contentious divorce. She arrived early, waited outside his locked office building, and exchanged messages with him. Minutes later, Aliza was attacked and fatally stabbed. For more than a decade, her murder remained unsolved. In 2025, a grand jury indicted Moore, Aliza's former divorce...

On September 21, 2023, Austin Kanuch and his wife closed on a new home where they planned to raise their family. Before they could move, someone entered their rental home in the early morning hours, attacked Austin in his bedroom, and left his wife Mary and their young son physically unharmed. Investigators believe Austin was targeted. Nothing was stolen, no one else in the house was injured, and...

On September 19, 2024, Letcher County District Judge Kevin Mullins and Sheriff Shawn “Mickey” Stines ate lunch together in Whitesburg, Kentucky, then walked back to the courthouse for a private conversation in the judge's chambers. Nearly 10 minutes later, surveillance video showed Stines pull out his gun and shoot Mullins. The video has no audio, leaving the central question unanswered: what was...

Between 2001 and 2017, at least 75 women were strangled or smothered in Chicago. Many were found in alleys, vacant buildings, garbage cans, and other places where it was easy for their deaths to become separate case files instead of a citywide emergency. The women were daughters, mothers, artists, business owners, caregivers, and friends. Their names included Angela Ford, Gwendolyn Williams, Nancy...

In June 2006, 24 year old Lori Ann Slesinski left an Auburn Walmart to pick up drink mixes before a night at her best friend’s house. She never arrived. Days later, her Yorkshire Terrier, Peanut, was found safe in her mobile home, but Lori was gone. Her kitchen rugs and telephone cord were missing, the answering machine messages had disappeared, and her Mazda was later found burned on a secluded A...

Today, we’re replaying our 2024 episode about Emma Compton Layne, a woman remembered by the people who loved her for her generous heart, her contagious joy, and the way she always showed up for her family. Emma disappeared in June 2017 after working at her store in Halifax County, Virginia. Months later, her remains were found, leaving her loved ones with years of grief and unanswered questions. S...

In the fall of 1988, Peggy Carr, her son Duane Dubberly, and her stepson Travis Carr became violently ill inside their rural Florida home. The symptoms were strange and terrifying: severe nerve pain, numbness, weakness, trouble walking, and eventually, hair loss. Doctors discovered they had been exposed to thallium, a rare and deadly heavy metal. The source was even more disturbing. Someone had ca...

When 32-year-old nurse Alex Pennig was found dead inside the bathroom of her St. Paul apartment, the man who called 911, Matthew Ecker, insisted she had taken her own life behind a locked door. Alex had struggled with depression and addiction in the past, and at first, there were details that seemed to support his story. But the scene inside the bathroom told a much more complicated story. Investi...

On September 14, 2007, 14-year-old Andrew Gosden left his home in Doncaster dressed for school. After his family left for the day, he returned home, changed out of his uniform, withdrew £200 from his bank account, and bought a one-way ticket to London. Andrew arrived at King’s Cross Station at 11:20 that morning. CCTV captured him walking out of the station alone five minutes later. That is the la...

For months, Harold Allen suffered from worsening illnesses that doctors could not fully explain. When he died in Freetown, Indiana, just days before Christmas 2022, his death was attributed to serious cardiac problems. His family believed they had lost him to a sudden decline in his health. Nine months later, a burglary at the home of Harold’s widow, Marsha Allen, gave investigators a reason to lo...

In March 2010, Holly Bartlett, a 31 year old blind public servant and graduate student, left a party in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and took a cab toward her condo. Seven hours later, ironworkers found her critically injured inside a fenced area beneath the MacKay Bridge, less than 1,000 feet from her home. Police concluded Holly became disoriented after leaving the cab, entered the restricted area, cli...

In September 1987, Vincent Sherry and his wife Margaret were found shot to death inside their Biloxi, Mississippi home. Vincent was a former Air Force colonel, a law professor, and a sitting circuit court judge. Margaret was a prominent local attorney and politician. Neither had any known enemies. The investigation would take years and lead directly into the heart of the Dixie Mafia, a loose netwo...

On November 24, 1971, a man calling himself Dan Cooper boarded a flight in Portland, handed a flight attendant a note saying he had a bomb, and walked away with $200,000 in ransom after jumping out of the plane somewhere over the Pacific Northwest. He was never identified. His body was never found. And to this day, most of the money has never turned up. To the public, it looked like he got away wi...

On the night of his 21st birthday, U.S. Army soldier Zarius Hildabrand came home drunk from the bars in Anchorage, Alaska. His wife Saria, also a soldier and also 21, spent the next hour going through his phone and finding proof he had been cheating. A neighbor heard a single gunshot at 2:46 AM.By the next morning, Zarius was texting her coworkers from her phone, telling her friends she had walked...

In the summer of 2023, police in the Bahamas were investigating a routine bar burglary when they stumbled onto something shocking . And that was WhatsApp messages on a suspect's phone containing a photo of Robert Shiver, a former Auburn football player and Georgia businessman, alongside a text that read: "Kill him." The messages were allegedly sent by his wife, Lindsay Shiver, a former beauty quee...

When successful Houston veterinarian Valerie McDaniel began dating Leon Jacob, they bonded over the problems they believed their former partners were causing them. Leon presented himself as a brilliant surgeon, but the reality was a trail of failed residencies, massive debt, and a history of stalking and abuse. Within weeks of their relationship starting, those private grievances escalated into a...

After the release of Netflix's A Toxic Love Story, we knew it was time to bring this one back. We originally covered the case of Michelle Hadley in 2019, but the story has changed dramatically since then, and this week we are telling the whole thing from start to finish. In 2016, Michelle Hadley was accused of terrorizing her ex-fiance's pregnant wife and sending strangers to her home to carry out...