Crime of a Lifetime

Dorothea Puente dresses like a woman ten years her senior. She wears coke bottle glasses and lets her hair go gray. With a box of kittens in one hand and a bottle in the other, she seems to be the sweet, docile caretaker of the boarding house on F street. But when her tenants go missing, police unearth lies, theft, and maybe even murder. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

No one in the small town of Carthage, Texas likes Marjorie Nugent: She’s blunt. She’s cold. She’s not afraid to tell her neighbors why they're unworthy of her time. But everyone loves her bubbly younger boyfriend Bernie… even after he does the unthinkable. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On a Thursday night in 2011, a group of fun-loving girlfriends hit the clubs of downtown Denver. Just as the party is getting into full swing, the girls notice one of them is missing: Kenia went to the bathroom but never came back. Her phone and wallet are at the bar. What happened to Kenia? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Everyone in Dixon, Illinois assumed that Rita Crundwell’s fortune came from her horse empire. The American Quarter Horse Association had named her the “leading owner” for eight years running after all. It wasn’t until an overworked municipal clerk stumbled upon an unusual bank statement that two decades of deceit came to light. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On April 14th, 1935, the New York Daily News published a story about a young kidnapping victim named Mary McElroy. She was looking for justice – not for herself, but for the men who had held her at gunpoint.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Criminologist and author of “Extreme Killing,” Emma Fridel has spent much of her career trying to understand why women kill and how their methods differ from men. Kerry and Quin pick her brain about the cases we’ve covered so far.  For more insights from Emma, you can find the 5th edition of her book: “ Extreme Killing: Understanding Serial and Mass Murder ” anywhere you buy books.  Host...

When Lisa Montgomery called her husband Kevin to tell him that she’d had a baby, he was ecstatic. But as Kevin soon found out, the baby wasn’t Lisa’s… and how she ended up with it was more horrifying than anyone could’ve imagined. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nothing could be less threatening than the 77-year-old, white-haired Betty Neumar, and yet she sits in jail awaiting trial for murdering her husband. If you ask Betty, she’d say she was dealt a bad hand, but there’s a reason the paper dubbed her a “Black Widow." Betty doesn’t just have one late husband… she has five… and each one died in more mysterious ways than the last. Hosted on Acast. See aca...

On July 26, 2001, the headline in the Detroit Free Press read “BANDIT QUEEN’S BLOODY END.” The article underneath paints an almost mythical picture of an Indian politician named Phoolan Devi who has just been shot dead. But this was no ordinary political assassination. Her assailants had come to avenge the murder of some twenty men who Phoolan Devi had executed decades earlier. But why did she kil...

On January 20th, 1947, a local Texas newspaper read: “New York Loves a Mystery if it has Fantastic Touches.” Beneath the curious headline is an even more bewildering drawing of a beautiful brunette, Olga Rocco, who lies on a subway platform, her leg gushing with blood. Behind her is an equally stunned 19-year-old Pearl Lusk, surrounded by a fog of smoke and holding what appears to be a Christmas p...

On April 15th, 2007, the front page of central New Jersey's Home News Tribune reads: DID SHE OR DIDN’T SHE? The “she” in question is the 34-year-old widow Melanie McGuire. And she’s on trial for the murder of her husband, who was found chopped up and stuffed into three suitcases. The jury is left to decide: did her husband pack his bags, leave their apartment, and get murdered by unknown pers...

True-crime fanatics Kerry Ipema and Quinlan dive weekly into real crimes ripped straight from the headlines to uncover the truth that lies beyond them. They follow the stories as they unfold in real-time and pull apart fact from fiction to paint in vivid detail the hard-to-believe crimes you will not soon forget. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.