Crime To Burn

Episode 118 In Part 5 of our Whiskey Au Go Go series, the investigation takes a dramatic turn when John Stuart's own brother, Danny, decides to turn him in to police. Was it an attack of conscience, or was Australia's largest-ever reward too tempting to ignore? As detectives close in, a backyard barbecue descends into absolute chaos, a mysterious Englishman named "Doug" repeatedly vanishes as poli...

Episode 117 As the weeks leading up to the Whiskey Au Go Go fire unfold, John Stuart desperately tries to convince police, journalists, and nightclub owners that a deadly protection racket is about to erupt in Brisbane. But with his stories constantly changing, his refusal to name names, and increasingly erratic behavior, detectives are left wondering whether they're dealing with a genuine informa...

Episode 116 John Stuart spent years insisting he had been framed. Most people dismissed the claim as just another excuse from a career criminal with a long history of arrests, escapes, and bad decisions. But the attempted murder conviction that haunted Stuart's life may not have been as straightforward as it appeared. In Part 3 of our Whiskey Au Go Go series, we examine the 1965 shooting of Sydney...

Episode 115 In Part 2 of our Whiskey Au Go Go series, we leave the nightclub behind and turn our attention to the man who would become the central figure in the investigation: John Andrew Joshua Stuart. Long before the Whiskey Au Go Go fire claimed 15 lives, Stuart was already well known to police, journalists, and much of Brisbane's criminal underworld. Raised in a home marked by violence, povert...

Episode 114 In March 1973, a firebomb ripped through Brisbane's Whisky Au Go Go nightclub, killing 15 people and injuring many more in one of Australia's deadliest nightclub fires. But according to one man, the tragedy wasn't a surprise. Months before the fire, career criminal John Stuart had been warning police, reporters, and nightclub owners that organized crime was planning a series of nightcl...

Episode 113 For decades, the people of Cleveland watched their river catch fire—and barely seemed to care. In this special two-year anniversary episode of Crime to Burn, we dive into the astonishing history of the Cuyahoga River. Long before the Environmental Protection Agency existed, the Cuyahoga River became a dumping ground for oil, industrial waste, sewage, and chemical runoff. The result? A...

Episode 112 In the finale of Shockwaves: The 1947 Texas City Explosion, we examine the aftermath of one of the deadliest industrial disasters in American history—and the devastating questions that followed. Why didn’t the firefighters, longshoremen, and citizens of Texas City understand the danger they were facing? Who did understand the risks of ammonium nitrate? And how did knowledge of those da...

Episode 111 As Texas City struggles to respond to one of the deadliest industrial disasters in American history, chaos spreads across the burning waterfront. With the entire volunteer fire department wiped out in the first blast, civilians, medical workers, military personnel, and rescue crews are forced to improvise a disaster response in real time while rumors, chemical fires, and mass casualtie...

Episode 110 On April 16, 1947, a routine morning in Texas City, Texas turned catastrophic when a fire broke out aboard the French cargo ship Grandcamp, which was loaded with thousands of tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. As smoke poured from the vessel, onlookers gathered and firefighters responded—unaware of the danger posed by the volatile cargo. Efforts to contain the fire instead intensifie...

Episode 109:  In Part 2 of the Joey Lynn Offutt case, we move beyond the fire and into the contradictions that define this investigation—examining Joey’s life, relationships, and the nine critical days before she was reported missing. Investigators confirm the fire was intentional and that her infant son died before it began, but answers only become more elusive as timelines, witness accounts, and...

The Joey Lynn Offut Case follows the disappearance of Joey Lynn Offut in July 2007 after a suspicious early morning fire tore through her Pennsylvania home. Inside, investigators made a devastating discovery—her six-week-old son, Alexis Brolin III, was found dead in the upstairs bathroom. But Joey was gone, along with her car, and nearly two decades later, no one has been held accountable. In this...

Episode 107 They were looking for a serial arsonist. What they found… was a love story gone completely off the rails. After five months and more than 80 fires, investigators finally catch the person responsible—but the truth behind the Accomack County fires is far stranger than anyone expected. A former firefighter. A controlling relationship. A motive that makes less sense the deeper you look. An...

Episode 106 In Part 2 of Lit by Love, the fires in Accomack County escalate from suspicious to unmistakably intentional—spreading fear through a rural community unaccustomed to this level of destruction. As investigators struggle to keep up with a growing number of blazes, tensions rise among residents, rumors take hold online, and volunteer firefighters are pushed to their limits responding to ne...

Episode 105 In rural Accomack County, structure fires are rare—maybe a handful a year across an entire district. So when six fires break out in less than 30 hours, investigators know immediately: this isn’t coincidence. It’s arson. What follows is one of the most baffling serial arson cases to ever hit Virginia’s Eastern Shore. Over five months, 87 fires tear through a tight-knit community of just...

Episode 104 Survivor Stories: An Interview with Shawn Simons & Alvaro Llanos In this special Survivor Stories episode, we step away from case analysis and into lived experience. We’re joined by Shawn Simons and Alvaro Llanos, two survivors of the Seton Hall University dorm fire—a tragedy that claimed three lives and forever changed many others. This is not a retelling of the case. This is what...

Episode 103 Across Massachusetts, a series of fires began targeting places tied to faith and patriotism — Protestant churches, American Legion halls, and other community institutions closely associated with “God and country.” From the beginning, investigators knew they were dealing with arson. At scene after scene, the same method appeared: windows smashed to gain entry, gasoline used as an accele...

Episode 102 In the conclusion of our coverage of the Seton Hall University dorm fire, we return to January of 2000, when flames broke out inside Boland Hall, trapping students behind smoke-filled corridors and turning a college residence hall into the scene of one of the most devastating campus fires in recent memory. In this episode, we walk through the fire investigation itself—how investigators...

Episode 101 On January 19, 2000, a fire broke out in a third-floor lounge inside Boland Hall at Seton Hall University. Within minutes, thick smoke filled the hallway. Students pounded on doors. Some thought it was a false alarm. Others ran. Three students would not survive. In Part 1, we focus on the night of the fire — what happened, how it unfolded, and why conditions became so deadly so quickly...

Episode 100 In Part 2 of Domestic Detonation, we move deeper into the investigation and unravel how a domestic violence case escalated into a coordinated bombing plot that nearly claimed multiple lives. As investigators began connecting the devices, forensic evidence and witness testimony painted a chilling picture of planning, coercion, and control — revealing just how far one person was willing...

Episode 99 Some crimes are impulsive. This one wasn’t. In December 1993, six bombs were delivered across upstate New York in less than ninety minutes. Five people were killed. One survived by pure chance. Another device failed to detonate. And one bomb was unknowingly driven around the region in the back of a courier van before police could stop it. The victims weren’t politicians. They weren’t bu...

Episode 98 In 1999, Garland “Butch” Martin was convicted of killing his girlfriend, Marcia Poole, and her two young children, Brady and Kristin, and was sentenced on three counts of capital murder in Midland, Texas. The State told a compelling story: domestic abuse, accelerant-driven fire, pre-fire blunt force trauma, and motive. A jury believed it. Twenty-four years later, Butch Martin was exoner...

Episode 97 In this first episode of our two-part series, we go to Midland, Texas, where a fatal house fire claimed the lives of Marcia Pool and two children, Brady and Kristin. In the aftermath, investigators concluded the blaze was intentionally set — and they pointed to one man: Butch Martin. The state built its theory around burn patterns, accelerant findings, eyewitness accounts, and interpret...

Episode 96 On December 31, 1986, just hours before Puerto Rico would ring in the New Year, flames tore through the luxurious Dupont Plaza Hotel and Casino in San Juan. What began as a labor dispute escalated into one of the deadliest hotel fires in U.S. history, killing 97 people and injuring more than 140. In the aftermath, investigators would uncover arson, negligence, ignored safety recommendat...

Episode 95 In 1980, a seemingly unremarkable fire threatened to expose something far more dangerous than arson. What investigators uncovered was a trail that pointed toward an arms pipeline linked directly to the Irish Republican Army, operating quietly while The Troubles raged overseas. At the center of it all was Charles Galant—a small-time thief who never set out to be part of something so vast...

Episode 94 In Part 2 of our series on the Iroquois Theatre Fire, we examine what happened after the flames went out — and why, despite hundreds of deaths, no one was ever held criminally accountable. Although the fire was accidental, the failures that made it lethal were anything but unforeseeable. In the aftermath, Chicago demanded answers. A coroner’s inquest, multiple grand juries, and a wave o...