Beers with Queers: A True Crime Podcast

A trusted friend. A quiet overnight stay. And within just 79 minutes, a successful young lawyer was dead inside a Washington, D.C. home, leaving behind one of the most baffling unsolved murders in modern true crime. In Part 2 of our coverage of the murder of Robert Wone, we unravel the disturbing forensic evidence, conflicting timelines, and unanswered questions that continue to haunt investigator...

A trusted friend. A quiet night in Washington, D.C. And less than 80 minutes later, Robert Eric Wone was dead. When successful attorney Robert Wone asks to spend the night at the home of a longtime college friend after working late, it seems like the safest decision he could make. Instead, he becomes the victim of one of America's most baffling unsolved murder cases. In Part 1, Jordi and Brad unra...

A gas station attendant with a plan. A hidden network. And the secret desires of Hollywood’s biggest stars. Fresh from the horrors of World War II, a young Marine named Scotty Bowers arrived in Los Angeles looking for work. What he found instead was a city built on illusion, where fame came with morality clauses, careers could be destroyed by a rumor, and countless queer stars were forced to live...

A rainbow of secrets. A coded language. And a hidden world built for survival. Long before Grindr, Scruff, Sniffies, or social media, queer men relied on an intricate system of colored bandanas to communicate desires, identities, and interests in a world where being yourself could be dangerous. In this Pride Month episode, Jordi and Brad dive into the fascinating history of the Hanky Code, explori...

A birthday celebration. A vulnerable young man. And a night of cruelty that would leave a community demanding answers. When Steven Simpson turned eighteen, he had every reason to celebrate. Openly gay, living independently despite autism, epilepsy, and other challenges, Steven had worked hard to build a life on his own terms. But what began as a gathering of friends in his South Yorkshire flat qui...

A king haunted by controversy. A court drowning in secrets. And a murder so scandalous it helped poison the English crown itself. Long before the King James Bible shaped the English speaking world, King James I was navigating a palace fueled by forbidden desire, ruthless ambition, and deadly political games. James grew up isolated, abused, and desperate for affection. As an adult, he openly surrou...

A poisoned enema. A shadow king. And a royal court where desire could be just as deadly as treason. What began as King James I’s obsession with beautiful young men would spiral into one of the most dangerous and scandalous power struggles in queer history. In this episode of Beers With Queers, Jordi and Brad dive deep into the dark and twisted world of the Jacobean court, where political ambition,...

A quiet park. A hidden meeting place. And a murder that exposed how criminalized queer lives made perfect targets. In 1960, a man entered Queen's Park and never came home. What began as another secret encounter in the shadows of a city that treated gay men as criminals became one of Scotland’s most disturbing LGBT true crime cases. In an era when queer relationships had to exist in whispers, preda...

A dating app. Two men looking for connection. And a man that wanted to kill every gay man he could. In just four days, the quiet streets of Sligo became the center of one of Ireland’s most chilling modern hate crime investigations. Aidan Moffitt and Michael Snee were found dead in their own homes, after meeting someone through a dating app, and another man barely survived an earlier attack. What f...

A stadium packed with thousands… and a bomb waiting at center field. They came to destroy disco but what erupted that night exposed something far deeper. On July 12, 1979, what started as a cheap baseball promotion at Chicago’s Comiskey Park spiraled into chaos now known as Disco Demolition Night. Fans were promised discounted tickets if they brought disco records—records that would be blown up be...

Five men hunted him for sport. And when it was over, the justice system let them walk free. In 1982, 31-year-old Declan Flynn went to Dublin’s Fairview Park, unaware he had been chosen as a target in a wave of violent “queer-bashing” attacks. What followed was a brutal killing that shocked Ireland, but the real outrage came after: a courtroom decision that left the public stunned and furious. This...

She survived abuse, abandonment, and a lifetime of violence but the story was far from over. As the bodies continued to mount, one woman’s spiral into infamy would leave the world asking whether they were witnessing a monster… or the making of one. In Part 2 of our series on Aileen Wuornos, we follow the final chapter of one of the most infamous cases in American history. From the murders that sho...

A child abandoned. A life shaped by violence. Long before the headlines, the story of Aileen Wuornos began with a childhood that looked more like survival than innocence. Born in Michigan in 1956, Wuornos entered the world surrounded by instability. Her parents separated before she was born, and by age four she and her brother had been abandoned by their mother and left to be raised by their grand...

Patients trusted him with their lives. Instead, they were slowly dying under his care. Behind a hospital smile lurked one of the most prolific medical serial killers in American history. In the 1970s and 80s, hospital orderly Donald Harvey quietly moved between patient rooms in hospitals across Ohio and Kentucky. To coworkers, he seemed gentle, soft-spoken, helpful, even compassionate. But behind...

For generations of LGBTQ+ Americans, a simple night out could mean a huge risk. But the local gay bar offered safety, community, resistance, and eventually revolution. Long before Pride parades and marriage equality, queer bars were the beating heart of LGBTQ life in America. Hidden behind unmarked doors and dim neon lights, these spaces offered something the outside world often refused: safety, c...

A brilliant spy. A duffle bag containing a body, padlocked from the outside. And a death no one can explain. When an intelligence officer is found zipped inside a padlocked duffel bag in his own bathtub, the official answers only deepen the mystery. In August 2010, brilliant Welsh mathematician and intelligence analyst Gareth Wyn Williams was discovered dead in a London flat his naked body sealed...

A mile-long island in New York holds more than a million bodies. No headstones. No funerals. Just rows of pine boxes disappearing into the earth. Just off the coast of the Bronx sits Hart Island, America’s largest public cemetery and the final resting place for the people society forgot. Since 1869, the island has received the unclaimed, the unidentified, the poor, and even victims of epidemics, q...

A friendly favor. An insidious plan. And a disappearance that would expose one of the most disturbing crimes in Sioux Falls deaf community’s history. In February 2006, Darlene VanderGiesen, a beloved member of the deaf community in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, left work to meet someone she trusted. She told friends she was helping plan a Valentine’s Day surprise for a mutual friend. But she never ca...

Thirteen men walked into the woods of Paturis Park seeking a moment of freedom, only to be met by a predator who treated their lives like a "social cleansing." In a case where the justice system's silence was as deafening as the gunshots, the line between the hunters and the law began to blur. From 2007 to 2008, the busy suburbs of São Paulo were haunted by a serial killer who specifically targete...

A marriage built on secrets. A body burned beyond recognition. And a courtroom scandal that shocked an entire nation. In early 20th-century Australia, a laborer known as Harry Crawford seemed like an ordinary husband until his wife vanished after a quiet holiday outing. Years later, when investigators began unraveling the mystery, they uncovered something that sent newspapers into a frenzy. Crawfo...

A quiet North Carolina highway. A young woman’s body left in the grass. And a love triangle that would unravel into jealousy, obsession, and murder. In January 2008, 21-year-old college student Latrese Curtis was found brutally stabbed along Interstate 540 near Raleigh. What initially looked like a random act of violence soon exposed a tangled web of relationships hiding beneath the surface of her...

A quiet night in a small Alabama town ended in a brutal, fiery betrayal that shocked the nation. He wasn’t just a victim of a crime; he was a man targeted for the simple truth of who he loved. Billy Jack Gaither was a well-liked, hard-working man who lived a quiet life in Sylacauga until a chance encounter at a local boat ramp turned into a horrific nightmare. This week, we examine the 1999 gay mu...

A selfie of a beautiful couple posted to Instagram. A whispered secret exposed. And a queer icon found stabbed to death just 24 hours after lawmakers passed a massive anti-LGBTQ bill. When Georgian transgender model, actor and influencer Kesaria Abramidze posted a photo to her Instagram that publicly acknowledged her relationship, some say it triggered a fatal rage in her closeted partner, leading...

A secret love. A world at war. And a queer bond Nazi history nearly erased. In 1943 Berlin, a Jewish resistance fighter and a Nazi officer’s wife risk everything for a forbidden love that defied hate, ideology, and the very machinery of genocide. In honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day we bring you an incredible true queer love story.  Lilly Wust, a mother of four married to a Ger...

On November 30, 2013, in Portland, Maine, police discovered the bodies of two men inside an apartment near Deering Oaks Park. One of them was 22-year-old Matthew Rairdon, a graduate student and aspiring educator. The other was Patrick Milliner, his former partner. What initially appeared to be an isolated tragedy soon revealed a devastating case of intimate partner violence that unfolded quietly—w...