A True crime Podcast

In the winter of 2010–2011, two teenagers walked the same snowy paths every night in Irkutsk’s Akademgorodok, searching for people they considered weak. Armed with hammers, mallets, and knives, Artyom Alexandrovich Anoufriev and his friend Nikita Lytkin left six people dead — including a 12-year-old boy — and filmed themselves laughing over one of the bodies. Host Alexander Lawson unravels the chi...

In just seven months in 1996, six women in Paris were attacked with such extreme force that police believed a baseball bat had been used. Two of them died. There was no weapon—only a pair of bare hands. Host Alexander Lawson recounts the crimes of Mamadou Traoré, the Senegalese-born Frenchman known as le tueur aux mains nues . From the brutal assaults that left survivors permanently injured to the...

Dawn, June 29, 1944. Seven Jewish men are lined up against a cemetery wall in Rillieux-la-Pape and executed. The order came from Paul Claude Marie Touvier, head of the Milice intelligence service in Lyon. For nearly half a century he vanished—protected by monasteries, living under false names, even briefly pardoned by a French president. In 1994 he became the first Frenchman ever convicted of crim...

In March 2017, the quiet French town of Montluçon was shattered by a series of savage crimes. Over just ten days, two young men tortured and murdered three elderly residents in their own homes—then kidnapped a young couple and subjected them to hours of terror. One of the killers was only 18. His name was Zaki Ali Toumbou. While police were still investigating the first double murder, he walked up...

In September 1993, an eight-year-old girl in Perpignan trusted the friendly man she called “Tonton Patrick.” Hours later, her body was found at the bottom of a well. Patrick Tissier was no stranger to violence. A known murderer and serial rapist who had already served time, he was free again—living quietly among a Mormon community, winning the trust of families, and hiding a monstrous past. This e...

On a summer night in 1993, seven-year-old Jessica Blanc vanished from a village fair in the French Alps. Hours later her body was found in the garden of a man neighbors knew as “the Legionnaire.” Michel Sydor had already killed twice before — once in the 1950s, once when he shot his own wife in 1961. The justice system had set him free. What followed shocked France and helped force a permanent cha...

He answered classified ads, offered the full asking price, and never haggled. Then his victims vanished—and he moved into their homes. In this episode of A True Crime Podcast , host Alexander Lawson unravels the chilling crimes of Alfredo Stranieri, the Italian-born Frenchman known as “the Classified Ads Killer” and “the Cuckoo.” Between 1997 and 1999, Stranieri targeted property sellers across Fr...

Franck Siegler was already serving life for murder when he decided to kill again — this time inside a high-security French prison, with a shoelace. From his first killing at just 18 to a brutal murder on day release and a cold-blooded strangling behind bars, Siegler’s three-decade crime spree exposed every failure of the justice system meant to contain him. Host Alexander Lawson unravels the full...

A fisherman pulls a human foot from the Marne–Rhine Canal near Nancy. Days later, a severed head, hands, and kneecaps surface—pieces of two men, deliberately sawn apart. Behind the grim discovery is Nadir Sedrati, a lifelong fraudster and identity thief known as Le Dépeceur du Canal . In 1999 he lured three former cellmates to his apartment with promises of money and work, poisoned them with cyani...

In 2008, women began disappearing from the streets of Marseille. One answered a call about babysitting. Three others met a client after dark. None were ever seen again—no bodies, no crime scenes, only silence. Until one survivor walked out of an apartment and told police what she had seen in the bathtub. Host Alexander Lawson examines the crimes of Patrick Salameh, the man known as the Marseille R...

In 1990s France, the Minitel was the cutting-edge way to connect — including on the secretive “pink” boards where men sought anonymous encounters. One man used it as a hunting ground. Rémy Roy, an ordinary-looking family man from the Paris suburbs, messaged gay men offering BDSM sessions. He bound them, then bludgeoned them to death. Three victims never made it home. A fourth barely survived — and...

For nearly two decades, Jean-Claude Romand convinced everyone he was a respected doctor at the World Health Organization. He wore the suits, carried the briefcase, and spoke like an expert. In reality, he had never finished medical school. He spent his days in parking lots reading journals and lived off money he stole from family and friends. When the lies finally began to unravel in January 1993,...

January 1900. Workers digging in a muddy cistern on the outskirts of Lyon pull out packages they first mistake for veal. Then a human torso. Then two severed heads wrapped in old newspapers. One belonged to a milkmaid collecting a debt. The other to a widow who simply vanished. The soft-spoken Italian concierge living just steps away—the man who fixed shoes, smiled at neighbors, and worked for a r...

In the shadows of a French train station, young women vanished. Their bodies were later found mutilated with almost surgical precision. For nearly two decades the killer walked free—living near the tracks, striking when the night was quiet—until DNA finally put a face to the monster. Host Alexander Lawson examines the case of Jacques Rançon, the man known as the Perpignan Station Killer. From his...

In the summer of 1995, a series of deadly bombs tore through the Paris metro and RER, killing eight people and injuring nearly two hundred. French authorities traced the funding of the attacks to a quiet Algerian man living in London: Rachid Ramda, also known as Abou Farès. Host Alexander Lawson uncovers the story of the man accused of financing the bloodiest bombing campaign on French soil since...

In the summer of 1995, a mother and daughter visiting an animal cemetery in rural France never made it home. Their burned bodies were found days later in a field. The man responsible was Louis Poirson — a powerful stonemason nicknamed “Rambo,” already a convicted serial rapist who had walked free after nearly a decade behind bars. Over the next five years he would kill again, targeting women alone...

In the dead of night along the Rhine, women vanished without a trace. Throats cut. Clothing disturbed. No DNA. No fingerprints. Locals called him the Ghost of Kehl — a phantom who crossed between France and Germany, killing and disappearing into the dark. Between 1999 and 2000, Jacques Plumain left a trail of fear from Kehl to Strasbourg. A newspaper carrier. A teacher on her bicycle. A survivor w...

He escaped a German prison by tunneling under a twelve-foot wall, shot down 27 enemy planes, and became one of France’s greatest World War I flying aces. Decorated, celebrated, a national hero. Thirty years later, the same man stood in a Paris courtroom in full uniform as a judge sentenced him to life at hard labor for treason. How does a legendary pilot become a convicted collaborator? Host Alexa...

In 1870s Aix-en-Provence, death came quietly—served in a spoon of soup or medicine. Baptistine Philip, a domestic servant with a sharp eye for fortune, used arsenic to eliminate those who stood between her and wealth. Three victims. Seven years of suspicion. And a neighborhood that waited too long to speak. Host Alexander Lawson unravels the chilling true story of France’s quiet poisoner, from the...

In June 1925, French agents snatched Vietnam’s most wanted revolutionary off a Shanghai train platform and smuggled him back to Hanoi in chains. Accused of masterminding bombings that killed French officers and a colonial official, Phan Bội Châu faced a death sentence the empire had already passed in absentia. Host Alexander Lawson unravels the true crime of a scholar-turned-revolutionary: the 191...

In the quiet French suburb of Pierrelaye, a mild-mannered house painter raised peacocks and lived above the bodies of his victims. Bernard Pesquet killed at least six people across three decades—starting with a brutal murder during the German occupation in 1941, then returning to violence in the 1970s by shooting his wife, a real-estate agent, and a wealthy couple along with their maid. He buried...

On temporary leave from prison in 1977, André Eugène Pauletto visited his 10-year-old daughter… and murdered her. He had already killed two women he claimed to love. The French press called him “the Monster.” The justice system had let him walk free—twice. In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, host Alexander Lawson examines the three murders committed by multi-recidivist killer André Eugène Pau...

Paris, 1895. Two American con men argue over the spoils of their latest swindle at a crowded railway station. One of them draws a gun. A single shot rings out—and the “King of the Bunco Men” becomes a murderer on French soil. In this episode, Alexander Lawson traces the rise and fall of Tom O’Brien, one of the most successful confidence men of the late 19th century. From gold-brick scams at the Ch...

July 18, 1980. A quiet building in Neuilly-sur-Seine. Three men posing as journalists walk into the lobby. Minutes later, a young police officer is bleeding out, another is dead, and a 45-year-old woman has been executed in her own apartment. The intended target—the last prime minister of the Shah of Iran—survives. Two French citizens do not. This is the story of Anis al-Naqqash, the Lebanese mili...

In the hills above Hyères, they called him the Boar of the Moors. Albert Pierre Millet was a man who could not accept the word “no.” Between 1954 and 2007 he killed three people — each time after the justice system decided he was safe enough to walk free. In this episode of A True Crime Podcast , Alexander Lawson traces Millet’s chilling pattern of jealousy, possession, and lethal violence across...