RedHanded

They said she'd mastered a Chinese sex technique that could "make a matchstick feel like a Havana cigar". Top Nazi Joachim Von Ribbentrop allegedly sent her 17 carnations for each night they slept together. After three botched facelifts, she became a bed-bound recluse scammed by her evil French lawyer. Wallis Simpson – the woman King Edward VIII famously abdicated the crown for in 1936 – was no st...

“The Kinsey Reports” – Alfred Kinsey’s 1950s studies into how people like to have sex, and with who – did a lot more than ruffle a few feathers. Even acknowledging that some of us like a bit of light biting or partner-swapping was enough to make headlines. The rest was enough to blow conservative America’s minds… -- Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus Episodes YouTube - Full-length Video Episodes TikTok...

In 2017, British glamour model Chloe Ayling went through a terrifying ordeal: abducted from a fake modelling shoot in Italy, held hostage for days by an obsessed stalker, and told she’d been put up for sale into sex slavery on the dark web… Against all the odds, Chloe escaped – and lived to tell the tale. The only problem? No one believed her . With headlines declaring her story a hoax and dismiss...

As long as a walking stick. A billiards cue. Thin as a nub of wax at the base, thick as a man’s fist at the tip. These are just some of the eye-watering descriptions of what King Ferdinand VII – Spain’s worst ever king – was allegedly hiding beneath his britches... This week, H&S are lifting the sheets of the royal bedroom to meet a king who wrecked an empire, traumatised his young brides, and...

With great esoteric power, comes great esoteric responsibility. Aleister Crowley was considered many things, a poet, an artist, a master of the dark arts, and a prophet of Thelma. But who was the man behind the mask? And how did he go from being a leading figure and social commentator to dying in relative obscurity? -- Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus Episodes YouTube - Full-length Video Episodes Tik...

Bodies unearthed in the desert seemed like the final piece in the puzzle for McStay Family Murders. However, the four years that had passed left more questions than answers, and a whole lot of people with a whole lot in their pockets. Despite all the mystery, Chase Merrit found himself firmly on the stand. Rightly or wrongly? Listen to find out. -- Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus Episodes YouTube -...

In October 1993, River Phoenix crashed out of Johnny Depp’s exclusive club, fell onto the pavement, and died. An hour earlier, the 23-year-old rising star had snorted a lethal combination of cocaine and heroin known as a ‘speedball’ in the toilets. As he staggered around the club, no one offered Phoenix anything more than a valium to "take the edge off”.  How did Johnny Depp’s club become such a d...

The year was 1917, and revolution was in the air in Russia. After sustaining heavy losses in WW1, the fall of the House of Romanov seemed inevitable. And one night the Tsar, his wife, and their five children, were shot, stabbed, burned with acid, set on fire, blown up with grenades and buried deep in Koptyaki forest.  But then, rumours began to circulate that there had been survivors of the massac...

How does a family completely vanish? That was the question that plagued investigators after Michael McStay reported his brother Joe McStay missing on the 15th of February 2010, along with Joe’s wife Summer, and their two children, Joe Jr and Gianni.  It took four years to discover the fate of the McStay family: a fate that cast a lens across their entire lives. Everyone from Joe’s business associa...

Turning lead into gold and living forever: that’s about the summation of our modern understanding of Alchemy. Informed by high-fantasy films and pop history, it now brings to mind dark, arcane ceremonies in castle ruins, playing God in the pursuit of limitless riches and immortality.  However, the reality is that Alchemy spanned thousands of years and countless cultures. It was the precursor to mo...

Alien autopsies, flying saucers, and top secret government programs: three things alleged to be hiding in ‘Area 51’. Officially known as Homey Airport or Groom Lake, this secret government testing facility in Nevada has been the epicentre of UFO folklore for over a century – yet the CIA only admitted its existence in 2013. So what’s really going on behind those big metal gates? Listen to this week...

Amid the chaos now unfolding in Mexico after the February 2026 assassination of drug cartel boss El Mencho , we’re throwing it back to the 1985 torture and murder of American DEA agent Enrique ‘Kiki’ Camarena at the hands of the ruthless Guadalajara Cartel… and how Kiki's death triggered the chain reaction that led to the drug wars raging in Mexico today. With whispers of a Cold War CIA conspiracy...

In the darkest hour of WWII, as bombs threatened Europe’s historic cities, a small unit was sent to the front lines – not to fight, but to save art history itself. The 'Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives' section of the US Army, known as the Monuments Men, was tasked with protecting Europe's centuries of culture from destruction. And then, when Hitler was cornered, the Monuments Men had a new miss...

“On that day, there were no flies on the dead. The flies were dead too.”  On the 21st of August 1986, 1746 people and 3500 livestock died in the Cameroonian village of Nyos, died suddenly, and all at once.   Ancient folklore had long cautioned the inhabitants of Nyos about evil spirits that lurked deep within their crater lake, but the grim reality far exceeded the unsettling myths. What took plac...

In December 2006, the town of Ipswich was rocked by a spree of brutal murders targeting sex workers in its notorious red light area. But the story didn’t end with the capture of the so-called ‘Suffolk Strangler’, Steve Wright…  The murders of Tania Nicol, Gemma Adams, Anneli Alderton, Annette Nicholls and Paula Clennell would go on to transform policing strategies for prostitution in the UK (and e...

EmptyHanded is back! We’re joined by comedian Abi Clarke to discuss all things racy, risky and romantic – and read out some of the most scandalous listener-provided stories we’ve ever heard.  – Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus Episodes YouTube - Full-length Video Episodes TikTok / Instagram Sources and more available on redhandedpodcast.com

Valentine's Day is the perfect time to dive into the surprising, and at times horrifying, history of contraception through the ages; from crocodile-dung pessaries and mercury-tadpole concoctions to penis sheaths made of turtle shells, humanity has come a long way in its efforts to outsmart the stork. This is the ShortHand. -- Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus Episodes YouTube - Full-length Video Episo...

When Brendan Banfield frantically called 911 in February 2023 to report a double murder at his million-dollar suburban home in Virginia, it seemed like an extramarital sex game gone wrong. But as police dug deeper, the deaths of Christine Banfield and Joe Ryan – the stranger found beside her – proved even weirder than they once appeared. And all the evidence pointed to a dastardly plot between Bre...

For all the centuries of slavery throughout human history, you might think one group came through mostly unscathed: white Europeans. But for more than a thousand years, Barbary pirates from North Africa (funded by the Ottoman Empire) prowled European coastlines, snatching unsuspecting Christian folk and taking them to be slaves in the Islamic world. At their height, huge fleets of privateers were...

The ever-changing story of neonatal nurse Lucy Letby, and the Countess of Chester baby deaths, has been given the Netflix treatment – and We. Have. Thoughts. For our coverage of the full story, check out our previous deep-dive just before this one in the feed. But in this week’s second-ShortHand, we talk about missed evidence, digital anonymisation, and decide whether or not it changed our minds....

In light of the new Netflix documentary about Lucy Letby, we're dipping into the RedHanded archives to revisit our own coverage of this controversial case – following an expert panel's findings in February 2025... Want even more up-to-date analysis? Listen to our new ShortHand episode now: ' ShortHand: Lucy Letby – What Netflix Left Out'. -- An independent panel of experts has concluded that NO mu...

In January 2016, a coffee date between three glamorous Indonesian gal pals turned deadly – when Mirna Salihin, a wealthy and beautiful newlywed, took a sip of a Vietnamese iced coffee that had been laced with a lethal dose of cyanide. The culprit? Her ex-bestie Jessica Wongso. The motive? A toxic case of the green eyed monster: with revenge served ice cold. At least, that’s how the Indonesian cour...

From faking insanity to go undercover in an asylum, racing around the world in 72 days, and reporting from the front lines of deadly war zones, this fearless investigative reporter risked everything to expose the truth… and she did it all in a corset. The unstoppable Nellie Bly rewrote all the rules to smash her way into the boys’ club of Victorian journalism, and blazed a trail for all the ladies...

Behind the façade of the white-picket-fence dream and adventurous childhoods of suburban, late-70s Michigan, lay a web of depravity that law enforcement was not remotely prepared for. Over the course of just one tragic year, the town of Oakland was terrorised: four children vanished, only to turn up dead. Chillingly, one had even been fed his favourite food, just before his murder. Was this the wo...

Not many of us need convincing that Sesame Street is good; the Muppets have been chaotic TV icons for more than 50 years. But what not many people know is just how much good it  did . Not just unmissable TV, but a revolutionary, massive-scale outreach program. One that used ad-land tactics and groundbreaking psychological research, to reset the balance of educational privilege – and teach disadvan...