Just The Tip-Sters: True Crime Podcast

In this special Memorial Day Weekend MURDERTIZER (an appetizer of murder!), Melissa takes a look at a case not even a month old.  One that is seemingly solved...or is it?  On May 15, 2019 sheriff's deputies in Merced County (in California's San Joaquin Valley) were alerted to a big rig parked on the side of a major Interstate highway.  Unlocked.  With its motor running.  With the driver's wallet a...

This week, in a tip-of-the-cap to her growing band of Tip-Sters in Australia, Melissa focuses on one of the most agonizingly maddening murder mysteries our brethren Down Under still have no answers for - the 1980-1981 killings of six women in the southeastern suburbs of Melbourne.  Known simply as the Tynong North and Frankston Murders (based on the two locations where the bodies of the victims we...

Say True-Crimers, here's a couple of brain teasers for the next time you want to stump a fellow Murder Maven: What was the investigation covered in the very first episode of "Forensic Files"?  Or how about this: What was the first "no body" murder trial to result in a conviction in the State of Connecticut?  Well surprise!  The answer to both questions is the same - it's the gruesome-yet-freakishl...

The brutal strangulation death of Karina Vetrano in the Howard Beach neighborhood of Queens New York in August 2016 seemed like a slam-dunk, easy-to-solve crime at first blush.  The 30 year-old beauty had been killed while jogging in the late afternoon, her body dumped just a few yards off the running path in Spring Creek Park.  But then things got not so slam-dunk.  And fast.  Police followed emp...

On June 21, 2014 Jeff Joseph - a Southern California cannabis entrepreneur who had opened a marijuana growing operation some 700 miles to the north, was on his way back to his farm when he disappeared seemingly off the face of the planet and hasn't been seen or heard from since.  Sadly, Jeff's story is just one of literally hundreds of missing persons in Humboldt County, where - as detailed in the...

How about an update on the prosecution of one of our most fascinating topics - the Golden State Killer?  One year after the arrest of Joseph James DeAngelo, Melissa has the latest on the (possibly politically-motivated) legal strategies happening in this continually mind-bending saga.  Plus: It's been a crazy week at Tip-Ster Central, with updates on three (3) (count 'em!) additional previously-co...

On June 24, 1986 one of the most sensational and brutal attempted jewelry store robberies in US history took place at the storied Van Cleef and Arpels Jewelers on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.  It was there that a 22 year-old would-be thief named Steven Livaditis quickly and without much explanation at all turned himself into a cold-blooded murderer when the robbery he thought he could pull off we...

Imagine living what would be every woman's worst nightmare:  You're driving down the road with your favorite cousin in the passenger seat, not a care in the world, when suddenly a truck pulls up beside you and the guy inside fires a shotgun directly at you.  And shoots.  Blowing your elbow into shattered bone and blood.  When you pull over, that same driver tries to pull your cousin out of your ca...

A rare MURDERTIZER (an appetizer of murder) in our regular weekly time slot - but as this week's podcast reveals, Melissa and Producer Mark have a lot on their plate - but Melissa wanted to make sure you, dear listener, had a zesty treat until the next full episode.  And this one is straight out of the "it's so strange it MUST be true" department... in 2010 a bank robbery took place in Gallatin Te...

In 2009 Mitrice Richardson, a young and beautiful twentysomething taking a year off between her graduate and postgraduate studies, showed up one night far from home at a ritzy Malibu, California restaurant - behaving weirdly.  When she told the wait staff she couldn't pay the bill, the LA County Sheriff's Department was called and Richardson was hauled away to jail  What happened next is the stuff...

What kind of a sick monster would be so crass as to commit a burglary that he really didn't need to commit, then set out to murder anyone who not only betrayed him by telling on him, but also taking out anyone he THOUGHT MIGHT betray him...and recruiting others to do it for you?  Our boy Clarence Ray Allen, that's who.  Take a walk to the darkest side of Darkness Avenue with Melissa as she recount...

Are you addicted to true crime?  Love a really scary ghost story?  Seen all the "Freddy" movies 15 times each?  Good for you!  You are NOT a freak bunky - in fact, you may be healthier than most people.  As Melissa explains in this intriguing MURDERTIZER (an appetizer of murder), exposing yourself to scary tales may just make you feel safer and more secure! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company...

In part 2 of Melissa's exploration of the conviction of Kevin Cooper in the bloody slaughter of the Ryen family of Chino Hills California in 1983, your host gets into the nitty (and truly) gritty details of the positively botched investigation conducted by law enforcement at the time of the murders, and Cooper's decades-long path to having new DNA testing conducted on items that were overlooked or...

In June 1983, two separate stories met at a ranch house in Chino Hills, California.  The first story is the brutal stabbing/axing/icepicking mass murder of Doug Ryen, his wife Peggy, their daughter Jessica and Christopher Hughes, the 11 year-old best friend of the Ryans' son, Josh - Josh himself was near death, but eventually survived.  The second story is that of one Kevin Cooper. a full-time con...

When Kentucky teenager Randy Lee Sellers got into a drunken brawl at the Kenton County Fair in 1980, the police who arrived decided not to arrest the young man, and instead put him in their patrol car to take him home.  And that's the last time his friends or his loved ones ever saw or heard of him again.  The patrol officers stated that Sellers asked to be dropped off prior to getting to his hous...

Greed is bad - evil greed is worse - and psychopathic evil greed is just downright bloody awful.  And Dana Ewell and his best bud Joel Radovcich were about the greediest, psycho-nut-job evil rat bastards ever to crawl into the world.  Melissa's retelling of this gruesome 1992 multiple murder of Ewell's parents and only sibling on Easter Sunday is as chilling as it is disgusting.  As usual though,...

Melissa's first MURDERTIZER (an appetizer of murder!) of 2019 catches us up on some important developments in the Will Cierzan and Thomas Brown cases.  PLUS a preview of an upcoming interview with one of the world's top DNA experts - AND a report on Melissa's personal taste test on that Trader Joe's garlic dip she's heard so much about from Tip-Ster Charlotte.  Oh and so very much more! Hosted by...

Melissa visits with true crime podcast aficionado and budding criminologist Tanya Todd, who visits the Homestead Studios all the way from Toronto, Canada to share some of her insights, theories and general worldview as she embarks on a path toward her criminology degree.  A delightful, funny, informative conversation between two lovers of the macabre, the mysterious and true crime solving. Hosted...

Melissa takes us through the deeply creepy disappearance of 18 year-old Thomas Brown on Thanksgiving Eve 2016, just moments after being videotaped pumping gas in the small town of Canadian, Texas.  Can it really be true that law enforcement botched this case so badly that the victim's mother had to hire a private investigation team to try to get to the truth?  Evidently so.  Because due to the har...

The very case that first inspired Melissa to host her own podcast - the case of the 2017 disappearance in Santa Clarita, California of Will Cierzan, beloved husband, brother and friend of just about everyone he met.  On the two-year anniversary of his vanishing, Melissa takes another look, determined to keep the case alive until Will is found.  The facts of Cierzan's disappearance (he has not been...

Jasmine and Jeremy and Jayme and Jake.  Two young girls and their boyfriends with cute and alliterative names.  Fun!  Right?  Um.   No.  In 2006, 12 year-old Jasmine Richardson disappeared from her home in Medicine Hat, Alberta after her parents and young brother were found brutally slain in their home.  At first, authorities believed that Jasmine was kidnapped by the killer and was being held hos...

It takes a lot for Melissa to go wild over a podcast - there are plenty she LIKES but only a handful that turn her into a true fan.  The "Big Feelings" Podcast with Lorraine Schweikhard and Ginger Warren shares that rare air.  And for good reason - Lorraine and Ginger are hilarious, engaging, thought provoking and a true joy to listen to.  Half chat-fest between two moms raising young children in...

Season 2 opens with a case that's haunted Melissa for 2 decades - the untimely deaths of John F. Kennedy, Jr., his wife Carolyn Bessette and Carolyn's sister Lauren.  Amid the obvious story lines of the Kennedy family's tragic history, its place in U.S. culture as the closest thing to an American royal family - and the sadness surrounding the demise of the young 38 year-old John-John, his bride an...

In the Season One Finale of JUST THE TIP-STERS, Melissa is joined on the phone by Michelle Kramer Joe - whose son - Cody Turner - disappeared without a trace in July 2015 after going out for the night and never returning to his grandparents' home in Yakima, Washington.  Michelle has spent the last three years struggling to keep Cody's name in the forefront of police and the press, both of which sh...

Getting ready to gorge on all those holiday appetizers?  Before you start digging in to the fruitcake pops, how about a tangy-but-hearty MURDERTIZER?  Melissa fills us in on the latest in the hideous swirling vortex of awful that is Joseph James DeAngelo - the latest being a surprising DNA  test that may present more questions than it answers.  Plus a court hearing sets the stage for a long (and e...