A Trial by Podcast

On the afternoon of November 2nd, 2016, a thirty-four-year-old stay-at-home mother named Sherri Papini went for a jog near her home in Mountain Gate, a small community just outside of Redding, in Northern California’s Shasta County. She left her two young children at daycare, laced up her shoes, and headed out into a mild autumn afternoon. She did not come back. Her husband, Keith Papini, returned...

In November 1986, Helle Crafts was reported missing. Danish flight attendant and mother of three, Helle had been planning to leave her husband after discovering he'd been having an affair. What followed was one of the most gruesome and forensically groundbreaking murder investigations in American history. Because there was no body. There was no crime scene. There was, however, a rented woodchipper...

On June 6, 1992, 19-year-old Suzie Streeter and 18-year-old Stacy McCall proudly walked across the stage and received their diplomas from Springfield, Missouri’s Kickapoo high school. Like any other teen on graduation day, the girls had a long night of party hopping ahead of them before they ended up back at Suzie’s house to spend the night before going to a waterpark with friends the next morning...

On June 6, 1992, 19-year-old Suzie Streeter and 18-year-old Stacy McCall proudly walked across the stage and received their diplomas from Springfield, Missouri’s Kickapoo high school. Like any other teen on graduation day, the girls had a long night of party hopping ahead of them before they ended up back at Suzie’s house to spend the night before going to a waterpark with friends the next morning...

On August 4, 1981, twenty-year-old Cindy Anderson went to work as a legal secretary at a Toledo, Ohio law office. With just ten days left before she was set to leave for Bible college, vanished from work that day without a trace. When her bosses arrived that afternoon, her car was in the parking lot, but Cindy was gone. The romance novel Cindy had been reading was left open on her desk, as if she...

On the night of September 28th, 2000, former Indiana State Police trooper David Camm came home from a church basketball game to find his wife Kim and their two young children, Bradley and Jill, shot to death in the garage of their Georgetown, Indiana home.  Some believed it was the husband — a serial cheater, with life insurance policies on his family and his daughter's blood on his shirt. Ot...

On the night of September 28th, 2000, former Indiana State Police trooper David Camm came home from a church basketball game to find his wife Kim and their two young children, Bradley and Jill, shot to death in the garage of their Georgetown, Indiana home.  Some believed it was the husband — a serial cheater, with life insurance policies on his family and his daughter's blood on his shirt. Ot...

Before sunrise on April 18th, 2016, Missy Bevers pulled into the parking lot of Creekside Church of Christ in Midlothian, Texas. She was early — she was always early. She had a 5 AM workout class to set up for, equipment to haul in, a room to arrange. What she didn't know was that someone was already inside the building. Someone who had been there for over an hour. Someone dressed head to toe in f...

Listen ad-free on Patreon On April 16th, 1996, 48-year-old James Patterson Smith reported to his local police station that his 17-year-old girlfriend had drowned. Firmly maintaining that this was an accident, he admitted that he was the one who drowned her and, while he claimed that he attempted to resuscitate her, it had been too late. When the police arrived at the house, they were led to the nu...

Listen ad-free on Patreon Jodi Huisentruit was a TV news anchor at KIMT-TV in Mason City, Iowa, who disappeared in the early morning hours of June 27, 1995, after failing to show up for her morning broadcast. Police responded to her apartment building and found signs of a struggle around her car, which was still in the parking lot, leading investigators to believe she was attacked as she headed to...

Listen ad-free on Patreon Brazil has a word for the kind of person Flordelis dos Santos de Souza appeared to be: milagre. A miracle. Born into poverty in one of Rio de Janeiro's most dangerous favelas, she clawed her way out not through luck or privilege, but through her faith in God — and she made it her mission to bring as many people with her as she could. By 2019, she was a celebrated gospel s...

Listen ad-free on Patreon On the evening of February 23rd, 2005, a man named Mark Lunsford had a date with his girlfriend. Before leaving, he said goodnight to his 9-year-old daughter Jessie, and thanked his parents, Ruth and Archie for watching her that evening. The four lived together, but Mark planned to stay overnight at his girlfriend’s that evening. When he returned to the family’s mobile ho...

Listen ad-free on Patreon On the morning of February 24, 2023, police responded to 911 calls from the Banfield residence in Herndon, Fairfax County, Virginia, where they found Christine Banfield suffering from multiple stab wounds and Joseph Ryan dead from gunshot wounds inside an upstairs bedroom. Brendan Banfield — Christine's husband and a former IRS special agent — and the family's Brazilian a...

Listen ad-free on Patreon On the morning of February 24, 2023, police responded to 911 calls from the Banfield residence in Herndon, Fairfax County, Virginia, where they found Christine Banfield suffering from multiple stab wounds and Joseph Ryan dead from gunshot wounds inside an upstairs bedroom. Brendan Banfield — Christine's husband and a former IRS special agent — and the family's Brazilian a...

Listen ad-free on Patreon On October 7, 1944, inside the walls of Auschwitz-Birkenau, a group of prisoners condemned to help carry out mass murder decided they would no longer go quietly. Known as the Sonderkommando, these men were forced to work in the crematoria—handling the bodies of victims and witnessing the full horror of the Nazi killing machine. But when they realized they were next to be...

Listen ad-free on Patreon In 1992, a young woman named Candy arrived at a small-town hospital shaken after a fight with her boyfriend. Emotional and overwhelmed, she had hoped to find comfort from a close friend who worked there—but her friend wasn’t on shift. Concerned about her distress, hospital staff suggested she see a doctor to help calm her down before going home. Candy agreed. Soon, Dr. Jo...

Listen ad-free on Patreon This is the tale of “Mighty” Mike Malloy — a down-on-his-luck Bronx bar regular who became the world’s most inconvenient murder victim when a group of Prohibition-era "geniuses" formed what they proudly called… the Murder Trust. Their business plan? Take out a life insurance policy on Mike, get him blackout drunk, and quietly collect the payout. Easy. Efficient. Foolproof...

Listen ad-free on Patreon Joan Kawai, 26 Hassan Ouamou, 30 Charly Arbo, 30 Grégory Serviol, 31 Paul Grovogui, 31 Florian Rocca, 32 Adrien Longeron, 34 Quentin Hennebert, 34 Mahdi Daoudi, 36 Omar Douiri, 36 Saifeddine Ghabi, 36 Andy Rodriguez, 37 Boris Moulin, 37 Hugues Malago, 39 Fabien Sotto, 39 Ludovick Blemeur, 39 Karim Sebaoui, 40 Redouane Azougagh, 40 Nizar Hamida, 41 Nicolas François, 42 Hus...

Listen ad-free on Patreon Joan Kawai, 26 Hassan Ouamou, 30 Charly Arbo, 30 Grégory Serviol, 31 Paul Grovogui, 31 Florian Rocca, 32 Adrien Longeron, 34 Quentin Hennebert, 34 Mahdi Daoudi, 36 Omar Douiri, 36 Saifeddine Ghabi, 36 Andy Rodriguez, 37 Boris Moulin, 37 Hugues Malago, 39 Fabien Sotto, 39 Ludovick Blemeur, 39 Karim Sebaoui, 40 Redouane Azougagh, 40 Nizar Hamida, 41 Nicolas François, 42 Hus...

Story starts around 08:15. For nearly fifty years, Gisèle Pelicot believed she was living an ordinary life — a long marriage, grown children, grandchildren, and a quiet retirement in the south of France. But in 2020, a police investigation revealed a truth so unimaginable it would shock the world. For almost a decade, her husband had been secretly drugging her with powerful sedatives, leaving her...

Story starts at 9:49 For nearly fifty years, Gisèle Pelicot believed she was living an ordinary life — a long marriage, grown children, grandchildren, and a quiet retirement in the south of France. But in 2020, a police investigation revealed a truth so unimaginable it would shock the world. For almost a decade, her husband had been secretly drugging her with powerful sedatives, leaving her uncons...

Listen ad-free on Patreon In the summer of 2001, newly appointed Boston Globe editor Marty Baron spotted a buried allegation in a court filing: Cardinal Bernard Law had knowingly reassigned a priest, John J. Geoghan, despite prior allegations of child sexual abuse.  Baron didn’t hesitate. He handed the lead to the Globe’s elite investigative unit, the Spotlight Team , tasking them with a simp...

Listen ad-free on Patreon In the summer of 2001, newly appointed Boston Globe editor Marty Baron spotted a buried allegation in a court filing: Cardinal Bernard Law had knowingly reassigned a priest, John J. Geoghan, despite prior allegations of child sexual abuse.  Baron didn’t hesitate. He handed the lead to the Globe’s elite investigative unit, the Spotlight Team , tasking them with a simp...

Listen ad-free on Patreon On a freezing January night, a house on the French-Swiss border burned to the ground, leaving behind the bodies of two small children and their mother. Miles away, their grandparents were also found dead. Only one member of the family survived. Jean-Claude Romand—a respected doctor and World Health Organization researcher—was pulled from the flames barely alive, mourned a...

On this episode of Wife of Crime I'm telling Russ about a serial killer nurse named Kristen Gilbert! Kristen seemed like an amazing nurse, she had it all together at home and on the job. She was the nurse co workers counted on because she knew her stuff, but when the number of deaths in the ICU started rising every time Kristen worked a few coworkers started noticing a pattern. As her fellow nurse...