True Crime on the Brain

In July 1995, 15 year-old Elyse Pahler vanished from her home in Nipomo, California. For eight long months, her family searched for answers unaware that she had been lured into a dark eucalyptus grove by three local teenagers she trusted. ​Driven by a delusional obsession with death metal and dark occultism, the boys believed sacrificing an innocent girl would grant their band artistic power and f...

On a quiet Friday night in September 2006, 16-year-old Cassie Jo Stoddart was house-sitting in rural Pocatello, Idaho. What began as a peaceful evening turned into a real-life slasher film when two of her classmates executed a meticulously planned murder and recorded their intentions on camera.

On May 31, 2014, a 12 year-old girl crawled out of a Wisconsin forest with 19 stab wounds, leading police to a shocking realization: the attackers were her two best friends, acting on orders from a fictional internet monster. In this episode we break down the horrifying reality of the Slender Man stabbing, tracing the origins of a digital myth, the mechanics of shared delusion (folie à deux), and...

On August 28, 2003, in Erie, Pennsylvania, a quiet pizza delivery driver walked into a bank with a homemade cane-gun and a massive metal collar bomb locked around his neck. What followed was a live-television tragedy, an impossible scavenger hunt, and a frozen body in a garage freezer that exposed one of the most twisted criminal conspiracies in American history. Join Audrina as we break down the...

On May 24, 1987, 23-year-old Kenneth Parks walked into an Ontario police station with severed tendons in his right hand, covered in blood, and uttered six chilling words: "I think I’ve killed some people." Across town, his mother-in-law lay dead and his father-in-law was critically injured. Yet Parks maintained one impossible defense: he was sound asleep during the entire 14-mile drive and brutal...

When Court Officer Michael Hart arrived at 36 Brockley Drive for a routine welfare check, he walked into a scene that defied medical science. Peter Porco was dead in the front foyer, while his wife Joan lay upstairs, critically wounded from a brutal axe attack. Yet forensic evidence revealed a horrifying truth: Peter had been attacked in his sleep hours earlier and his body carried out an entire m...

Most serial killers leave behind a chaotic trail of passion, rage, or panic. But Israel Keyes operated entirely outside the grid, treating human life as a clinical logistics problem. In our extended season finale, True Crime on the Brain breaks down the terrifying geometry of the modern predator who mapped the United States like a chessboard. ​We dig deep into the chilling anatomy of his "kill cac...

Have you ever wanted to completely step off the ride of the modern world? ​In 1971, a brilliant but deeply lonely mathematics prodigy did exactly that. He built a tiny cabin in the Montana wilderness to live outside the grid and be left entirely alone. But as modern civilization encroached on his sanctuary, his desperate isolation curdled into a devastating, eighteen-year guerrilla war against pro...

In the early 1970s, the families of the Houston Heights completely trusted the polite neighbor who handed out free candy, a man the kids affectionately called the "Candy Man." But behind that friendly facade hid Dean Corll, a meticulous predator who orchestrated the deadliest serial killing syndicate in American history at the time. ​What makes this case a profound psychological anomaly isn't just...

On New Year’s Eve in 2000, a horrific discovery shattered the peace of a quiet Tokyo suburb. An entire family: Mikio Miyazawa, his wife Yasuko, and their two young children, Niina and Rei, were brutally slaughtered inside their own home. ​But what makes this cold case one of the most chilling mysteries in modern history isn't just the brutality of the crime, it’s what happened after. ​For 10 hours...

​Hospitals are supposed to be sanctuaries. We step through their doors and blindly hand over our loved ones, believing that the hands in scrubs are guided entirely by mercy and a sacred oath to do no harm. But in 1991, the sterile, echoing hallways of Ward Four at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital in Lincolnshire, England, became a clinical hunting ground. ​Behind the pleasant, unassuming smile of a...

What happens when the person who knows every pattern of domestic abuse becomes the target? ​In this episode of True Crime on the Brain, we break down the brilliant life and tragic death of Dr. Amie Harwick, a prominent Hollywood therapist and fierce advocate for women’s safety. Nearly a decade after escaping a volatile relationship with Gareth Pursehouse, a chance encounter at an industry gala re-...

It’s 4:00 AM on a freezing Minnesota winter night in 1978. An isolated farmhouse. A single mother fighting for her life in a dark kitchen, and an 11-year-old boy under the covers upstairs, forced to play dead as a killer fires into his bed. By sunrise, Alice Huling and three of her children are dead. Only young Billy survives. For over twenty years, the brutal massacre of the Huling family sits in...

When 41-year-old Ricky McCormick was found dead in a Missouri cornfield in 1999, it seemed like a tragic end for a vulnerable, functionally illiterate man. But twelve years later, the FBI shocked the world: tucked in Ricky’s pockets were two notes containing a highly sophisticated, uncrackable cipher. ​The feds claimed Ricky had been writing in secret code since childhood. But his mother, Frankie...

On November 13, 2022, a sleepy college town in northern Idaho was paralyzed by an act of staggering, cold-blooded brutality. Four vibrant young lives inside an off-campus home on King Road were extinguished in less than twenty minutes by a silent predator moving through the dark. ​This episode we dissect the deeply chilling forensic puzzle of the Idaho student murders. We walk through the terrifyi...

On a rain-slicked night in April 1981, the quiet resort town of Keddie, California, became the backdrop for one of the most baffling and brutal cold cases in American history. While the rest of the Sierra Nevada foothills slept, a nightmare was unfolding inside a modest wooden rental: Cabin 28.

In the autumn of 1982, a shadow fell over Chicago. It wasn't a monster under the bed or a ghost in the halls. It was sitting on the drugstore shelf, wrapped in a familiar red and white box. ​Seven people reached for relief. What they found was a dose of pure cellular suffocation. ​On Friday May 8th, we peel back the foil on the case that changed our world forever. We’re diving into the Tylenol Cya...

Hollywood lights. Black water. Too many unanswered questions. 🌒 In the first episode of True Crime on the Brain, we step into the shadows surrounding the death of Natalie Wood. A glamorous night that ended in tragedy. A yacht off Catalina Island. Conflicting stories between a boat captain, a husband, and a young Christopher Walken in a case that has never fully found peace. What really happened,...