A True crime Podcast

On the night of November 13, 2015, coordinated terrorist attacks struck Paris, killing 130 people. Nine of the attackers died that night. One did not. In this episode of A True Crime Podcast , host Alexander Lawson examines the crimes of Salah Abdeslam — the logistics operative who helped prepare the attacks, the brother of a suicide bomber, and the man who became Europe’s most wanted for 125 days...

In 1982, two diplomats are gunned down on the streets of Paris. One American. One Israeli. A little-known Lebanese Marxist group claims the murders as retaliation for the war in Lebanon. Years later, a soft-spoken former schoolteacher walks into a police station in Lyon claiming he needs protection from Mossad. Instead, French authorities arrest Georges Ibrahim Abdallah — the man they say mastermi...

Independence Day 2012. Castle Rock, Colorado. Lonnie James Pebley turns a quiet neighborhood into a war zone, pinning down 27 officers with an AK-47 for 30 straight minutes. No one dies… but justice hits hard. Full story on the podcast. #TrueCrime #TrueCrimeTikTok #CrimeStory #CastleRock #July4th

In Mexico City, elderly women opened their doors to a helpful stranger… and never lived to close them. Police hunted a man. They were wrong. The killer was Juana Barraza—professional wrestler “La Dama del Silencio”—who strangled dozens of grandmothers between the late 1990s and 2006. Convicted of 16 murders and sentenced to 759 years, she became known as La Mataviejitas, the Old Lady Killer. Host...

On a Friday afternoon in June 1987, shoppers filled a Barcelona supermarket. In the underground parking garage, a stolen car sat loaded with explosives and an incendiary mixture. At 4:12 p.m., it detonated—killing 21 people, including four children, and injuring 45 more. This was the deadliest single attack in ETA’s history. Host Alexander Lawson examines the planning by the Barcelona Commando, th...

Imagine trusting an insurance company with your life savings—only to have nearly half a billion dollars drained away. In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, host Alexander Lawson tells the story of Sholam Weiss and the National Heritage Life Insurance Company collapse, one of the largest insurance frauds driven by criminal acts in U.S. history. Weiss and his partners looted hundreds of millions...

For fifteen years, a masked predator slipped into homes across Northern California, binding his victims and leaving a trail of fear that stretched from Rohnert Park to Sacramento. He was known only as the NorCal Rapist—until genetic genealogy and DNA evidence finally put a name and a face to the nightmare: Roy Charles Waller, a quiet UC Berkeley employee living a double life. In this episode of A...

A father drops his two young daughters at a babysitter’s apartment and casually says one of them is sick. Within hours, that little girl is dying from massive internal injuries caused by blunt-force trauma. Her name was Dominique. Her father was Raymond Rodriguez. In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, Alexander Lawson examines the chilling case of a man who hid his violence behind the role of p...

In March 1963, 19-year-old Carl Junior Hackathorn from Akron, Ohio, shot 20-year-old Dallas mother Bobbie Jewell Smith three times above the left ear, killing her instantly. He fled south, crashed near the Mexican border, and confessed within hours, claiming he “didn’t know what he was doing.” A Texas jury rejected his insanity defense and sentenced him to death. What followed was a years-long leg...

On a June night in 1973, a teenage gunman forced an engaged couple to the side of Interstate 57 and ordered them to “kiss your last kiss” before opening fire. Henry Brisbon’s murderous spree that night left three people dead for almost nothing—and it was only the beginning. In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, Alexander Lawson examines the brutal I-57 killings, Brisbon’s later murder of a fell...

In Chile, one man carries more than a thousand years of prison sentences for kidnapping, torture, and forced disappearance. His name is Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko—known as “El Ruso.” As a key operative in Pinochet’s secret police, the DINA, Krassnoff helped run the interrogation centers that swallowed political opponents whole. He led the hunt for MIR militants, operated inside Villa Grimaldi and...

December 30, 2006. A van packed with hundreds of kilos of explosives detonates in the parking garage of Madrid’s brand-new Terminal 4. Two Ecuadorian workers — Diego Armando Estacio and Carlos Alonso Palate — are killed. Dozens more are injured. Spain’s fragile ceasefire with ETA is shattered in an instant. In this episode, host Alexander Lawson examines the attack carried out by Igor Portu, Matti...

On a quiet July night in 1966, a stranger with a gun and a knife walked into a Chicago townhouse where nine student nurses lived. By morning, eight were dead. One survived by hiding under a bed—and her courage would bring a killer to justice. Host Alexander Lawson tells the full story of Richard Speck, the mass murderer whose brutal crime shocked America and became known as the “crime of the centu...

In April 2023, a Salvadoran court sentenced Cristian Alexander Vigil Campos—alias Petra, a homeboy of MS-13’s Los Ángeles clique—to 1,216 years in prison for his role in 27 aggravated murders, conspiracies, and attempted killings across Usulután and San Miguel. Host Alexander Lawson examines the Shulton program’s reign of terror in eastern El Salvador from 2002 to 2019, the network of gang members...

A man walks into a Colorado Springs bank with his face covered and a gun drawn. He does it again. And again. Eight times in three months. When police finally catch Daryl Lamont Keener, the judge doesn’t give him life—he gives him 1,256 years in prison. In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, host Alexander Lawson unpacks the aggressive takeover-style bank robberies that terrorized Colorado Spring...

Imagine a judge handing down a prison sentence longer than recorded human history. In December 2025, Marvin Abel Hernández Palacios — better known as Nocturno de Teclas — received 1,335 years behind bars as part of a massive trial that convicted 248 members of MS-13’s Teclas Locos Salvatruchos clique. The charges spanned more than eight years of terror in El Salvador’s La Libertad department: doze...

July 25, 2003. Craigsville, Virginia. 18-year-old Christopher Bennett enters a house, raises a gun, and leaves a man dead. He claims he caught his mother’s boyfriend molesting his 6-year-old sister. The state charged him with capital murder. He took a plea and received 1,800 years in prison. Host Alexander Lawson examines the killing, the extraordinary sentence, the family’s claim that Bennett is...

At just 18 years old, Lawrence Jacob Stephens walked into a York County, Virginia home with a gun. No one was killed. No one was seriously injured. The judge sentenced him to three consecutive life terms plus 23 years — a total of 1,823 years behind bars. Host Alexander Lawson unpacks the 2001 armed home invasion, the staggering disparity between Stephens’ sentence and those of his co-defendants,...

In the coffee fields and cane thickets of Colombia, children vanished. Boys no one was watching closely enough followed a stranger who offered a few pesos, a job, or a kind word—and never came home. Host Alexander Lawson examines the case of Luis Alfredo Garavito, known as La Bestia (“The Beast”), one of the most prolific serial killers and child sex offenders in modern history. Between 1992 and 1...

In 1988, an Oklahoma jury looked at a 47-year-old inmate already serving two life sentences and 2,000 years… and decided it still wasn’t enough. They added another 2,260 years. His name was Billie Glenn Woolsey. The latest victim was a 15-year-old girl. Host Alexander Lawson unpacks the little-known case of a man whose criminal record became pure arithmetic—centuries stacked on top of centuries—in...

In the dusty fields of Atteridgeville, Boksburg and Cleveland, the bodies of young women kept appearing—strangled with their own underwear after answering a promise of work that never existed. Between 1994 and 1995, Moses Sithole, a charming and well-spoken man posing as a charity recruiter, raped at least 40 women and murdered 38 people, including a two-year-old child. In this episode of A True C...

In the dead of night on December 11, 1987, a car bomb tore through a Guardia Civil barracks in Zaragoza, Spain, killing eleven people—including five children. The order came from Francisco Mujika Garmendia, better known as Pakito, one of ETA’s most powerful leaders during its bloodiest years. Host Alexander Lawson traces Pakito’s rise through the Basque terrorist organization, the high-casualty at...

On a quiet September afternoon in 1971, three armed men invaded a Dallas home. Within minutes, Jean Geron was dead. His wife, child, and the children’s teacher survived. One of the men later confessed, pled guilty, and received a sentence almost no one has ever heard of: three thousand years. Host Alexander Lawson examines the planned robbery-murder, the background of 21-year-old Terry Eugene Cull...

Between 1983 and 1988, a masked intruder terrorized women on Cleveland’s West Side. He broke into their homes, ordered them not to look at him, and left them with threats against their families. Ronnie Shelton—later dubbed the West Side Rapist—was linked to more than 30 attacks and ultimately convicted on 220 counts. Host Alexander Lawson recounts the years-long manhunt, the ATM footage that final...

July 14, 1986. A bomb tears through Plaza de la República Dominicana in Madrid. Twelve young Civil Guards are killed. Fifty-six more are wounded. Behind the attack—and a string of others that claimed more than twenty lives—was a woman known inside ETA as Pequeña. Inés del Río Prada helped build the infrastructure of the deadly Comando Madrid. Spain sentenced her to 3,828 years. Then the European C...