A True crime Podcast

In December 1972, a 22-year-old Dallas newlywed was forced into a car at gunpoint, blindfolded, and held for ransom. Three days later, after $250,000 was paid, the kidnappers were caught counting the money. A Texas jury responded with one of the most extreme sentences in American history: 5,005 years for each brother. Host Alexander Lawson recounts the abduction of Amanda Mayhew Dealey, the FBI ma...

In December 1982, elite Guatemalan Kaibil soldiers descended on the remote jungle settlement of Dos Erres. Over three days they slaughtered more than 200 men, women, and children, dumping bodies into a dry well until it overflowed. Host Alexander Lawson examines one of the most brutal massacres of Guatemala’s civil war — the scorched-earth strategy that made it possible, the survivors who carried...

Just after 2 a.m. on June 20, 2012, a crowded Houston nightclub parking lot erupted in gunfire. Fifteen to twenty shots. Bodies dropped. Three people dead. Two more wounded—including local rapper Trae Tha Truth. Investigators zeroed in on 24-year-old Feanyichi Ezekwesi Uvukansi, a man already out on bail and allegedly tied to a gang rivalry that turned deadly. What followed was a capital murder tr...

It’s 4:48 a.m. outside a Dallas nightclub. A pregnant woman is closing up. An argument turns violent. Then a man steps into the parking lot with a gun—and three people are dead in under a minute. The entire sequence is captured on surveillance camera. Host Alexander Lawson recounts the 2013 capital murders committed by Rigoberto Vazquez Hernandez outside the San Francisco Night Club in Oak Lawn. C...

He preached creationism on national television while surrounding himself with young women he called his “kittens.” Behind the cameras, Turkish authorities say Adnan Oktar ran a criminal empire built on sexual abuse, blackmail, and control. In this episode, Alexander Lawson examines the rise of the self-styled Islamic televangelist, the world of total domination described by former members, and the...

In the early hours of January 4, 1993, Penny Sue Stuckey was kidnapped, robbed, and repeatedly assaulted in Oklahoma. One of the men convicted for the crimes was Darron Bennalford Anderson. After a trial, an appeal, and a retrial, he received one of the most extreme prison sentences in American history—thousands of years that once projected a release date of 12,744. Host Alexander Lawson examines...

A Thai court once sentenced a man to more than thirteen thousand years in prison. Not for murder. Not for terrorism. For running a ruthless Ponzi scheme that wiped out the savings of tens of thousands of ordinary people. In this episode, Alexander Lawson unravels the rise and spectacular fall of Pudit Kittithradilok — the 34-year-old mastermind behind one of Thailand’s most staggering investment f...

On the morning of March 11, 2004, ten bombs tore through Madrid’s commuter trains, killing 192 people and wounding nearly 2,000. Host Alexander Lawson examines the three men handed the longest sentences for the attacks: Jamal Zougam, who placed a bomb on one of the trains; Othman el Gnaoui, who helped transport and prepare the explosives; and Emilio Suárez Trashorras, the Spanish miner who supplie...

Imagine investing your life savings in a digital farm where virtual cows and chickens promised real money. Tens of thousands of people did exactly that—until the payments stopped and the founders vanished. In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, host Alexander Lawson unravels the rise and collapse of Çiftlik Bank (Farm Bank), the massive online Ponzi scheme that took in more than $130 million fro...

One woman. Over 16,000 victims. A sentence longer than recorded human history. In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, Alexander Lawson unravels the astonishing rise and fall of Chamoy Thipyaso—the Petroleum Authority employee and air-force wife who turned a simple chit fund into one of Thailand’s most devastating pyramid schemes. Promising oil-share returns of 78% a year, she drew in military of...

A woman’s body is found in the trunk of her car outside a Florida Walgreens. The man who left her there was already a killer, already a fugitive, and already featured on America’s Most Wanted. Host Alexander Lawson traces the crimes of Demorris Andy Hunter—from a 1985 shooting in Oakland that left one man dead and another paralyzed, to the 2002 murders of Ivora Huntley in California and Theresa An...

A woman in Phoenix discovers a hidden camera pointed into her apartment. That single find unravels a disturbing case involving a young former Marine, secret recordings of sexual encounters—including with a minor—and child sexual abuse material recovered from his computers. In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, host Alexander Lawson recounts how the 2012 investigation into Donald Lee Linville le...

Imagine the phone rings one ordinary morning. A panicked whisper claims to be your husband, your daughter, or your closest friend—arrested, in danger, desperate for help. Then a calm “lawyer” comes on the line with a solution… that ends in rape. This is the story of Richard Allen Minsky, the former used-car salesman who turned ordinary telephone calls into a decades-long weapon of coercion, sexual...

On a cold December evening in 1993, eighty commuters boarded a Long Island Rail Road train just trying to get home. Three minutes later, six were dead and nineteen were wounded. The man responsible walked the aisle with a 9mm handgun, firing methodically… and left handwritten notes explaining exactly why. Host Matthew Antonio Zarkzewski takes you inside the life of Colin Ferguson—from a privileged...

On a quiet Friday afternoon in Carlsbad, California, 230 children played at recess. Then a man climbed the fence with a loaded .357 Magnum, a gas can, and matches. Within minutes, two little girls were shot and an entire school was terrorized. In this episode, Matthew Antonio Zarkzewski examines the 2010 Kelly Elementary School shooting — the paranoid delusions that drove Brendan Liam O’Rourke, th...

Chauncey Scott Price promised protection and care. What his victims got instead was control, violence, and the demand to sell their bodies—sometimes to eight men a day. In this episode, host Matthew Antonio Zarkzewski examines the Colorado case of the Park Hill Bloods-affiliated trafficker who ran a sex-trafficking and counterfeiting operation out of Denver-area hotels and truck stops. From the fo...

On the evening of December 7, 1993, a routine Long Island Rail Road commute turned into three minutes of pure terror. Colin Ferguson rose from his seat, drew a 9mm Ruger, and methodically opened fire on his fellow passengers. Six people were killed. Nineteen more were wounded. Host Alexander Lawson reconstructs the chilling attack, the handwritten notes of rage found in Ferguson’s pockets, the pas...

In March 2014, police officers arrived at a quiet Lancashire cottage to take a domestic abuse statement. Minutes later a man forced his way in with a hammer, attacked the officers, chased the victim into the street and stabbed her to death in broad daylight. That man was Paul O’Hara — a convicted murderer already serving a life sentence for killing a previous girlfriend in almost identical circums...

On a quiet July afternoon in 2013, a 66-year-old Good Samaritan heard shouting from his neighbour’s house and went to help. Minutes later he lay dying on his own front lawn, his throat cut open. The man who killed him, Ian John McLoughlin, had walked out of an open prison that same morning on his first day of temporary release after more than 21 years inside for murder. He had already killed twice...

In the early hours of 20 January 2013, a family in Keighley, West Yorkshire showed kindness to a man they barely knew. They let Anwar Daniel Rosser sleep on their sofa. Hours later, that same man walked upstairs with four knives and savagely murdered their four-year-old son, Riley Turner, as he slept in his bed. What followed was one of the most horrific child murders in modern British history — a...

She smiled for the camera with a red rope around her neck. Minutes later, 17-year-old Georgia Williams was dead—exactly as Jamie Reynolds had written it in a story he titled with her name. In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, host Alexander Lawson examines the case of Jamie Reynolds, the Shropshire shop worker who turned years of violent sexual fantasy into a meticulously planned murder. Reyno...

In early 2012, a homeless man with a lifelong hatred of Christianity left two people dead in their own homes — just six weeks apart. First, a 77-year-old retired teacher was beaten with her own walking stick, carefully positioned, and stabbed. Then a vicar opened his door and was told to “hurry up and die” as he bled out on the floor. Host Alexander Lawson uncovers the chilling crimes of Stephen F...

In the early hours of 6 June 2011, David Robert Oakes walked into a house in Braintree, Essex, armed with a shotgun, an axe and a list of instruments designed for one purpose. By dawn his former partner Christine Chambers and their two-year-old daughter Shania were dead. Host Alexander Lawson examines the controlling relationship that led to one of the most sadistic domestic murders in modern Brit...

In 1988, David Cook was jailed for life for strangling Sunday school teacher Beryl Maynard with a dressing-gown cord during a robbery. Twenty-one years later he was released on licence. Less than two years after walking free, he invited his neighbour Leonard Hill into his bungalow in a quiet Welsh town… then bound, gagged and strangled him with a television flex for petty cash. Host Alexander Laws...

In a quiet Derby block of flats, two men were found stabbed to death in their own bathtubs. A pink rose was left on a pillow. A discarded note confessed to the killings and was signed “the Angel of Mercy.” The man behind it, Andrew Dawson, had already murdered a 91-year-old shopkeeper nearly three decades earlier — and was free on life licence when he killed again. Host Alexander Lawson tells the...