Crimery

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Crimery , Tim Novotney tells the terrifying story of Edward Arthur Surratt , a little-known serial killer from Aliquippa, Pennsylvania , who terrorized Western Pennsylvania, Eastern Ohio, and beyond in 1977 and 1978. Known in newspapers as the Highway Killer and the Shotgun Killer , Surratt stalked couples in their homes, attacked families while children slept n...

Send us Fan Mail THE MORGAN PETERS MURDER: 9 STORIES IN A BIKER MAGAZINE AND A 47-YEAR COLD CASE  In 1972, 29-year-old wrestler and gym equipment installer Morgan Peters Jr. vanished along the Pennsylvania Turnpike in rural Franklin County, Pennsylvania. What began as the cold case murder of a husband and father from Bay Shore, New York, eventually unraveled into something far darker: a roadside r...

Send us Fan Mail IN COLD BLOOD PART 4: THE CORNER, THE EXECUTIONS, AND WHAT TRUMAN CAPOTE GOT WRONG In the final episode of Crimery’s four-part series on Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood , host Jennifer Novotney takes you through the last chapter of one of the most famous true crime books ever written. This episode covers the trial of Perry Smith and Richard Hickock , the guilty verdict, their years...

Send us Fan Mail IN COLD BLOOD PART 3: THE ANSWER — PERRY SMITH’S CONFESSION, THE CLUTTER MURDERS, AND CAPOTE’S DARKEST CHAPTER  In Part 3 of Crimery’s four-part In Cold Blood series, Jennifer Novotney takes you into the section Truman Capote withheld until the book’s emotional breaking point: “Answer.” This is the episode where the 46-day manhunt ends in Las Vegas, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock ar...

Send us Fan Mail IN COLD BLOOD (PART 2): PERSONS UNKNOWN — THE CLUTTER MURDERS, ALVIN DEWEY, AND THE HUNT FOR PERRY SMITH  The Clutter family is dead. Holcomb, Kansas is in shock. And for 6 weeks, investigators have nothing: no suspects, no motive, no real leads. In Part 2 of Crimery’s 4-part In Cold Blood series, host Jennifer Novotney follows the story into its most unsettling section: “Persons...

Send us Fan Mail In this special Crimery series opener, host Jennifer Novotney is back and takes you inside In Cold Blood — the true crime classic that changed American storytelling forever. This is Part 1: The Last to See Them Alive , covering the 1959 Clutter family murders in Holcomb, Kansas , the quiet wheat-town world they lived in, and the writing genius that made Truman Capote’s In Cold Blo...

Send us Fan Mail Four young men disappear in Bucks County, Pennsylvania after setting out to buy marijuana. What police called a drug deal gone wrong soon turns into one of the most disturbing true crime cases in Pennsylvania history. In this episode of Crimery , host Tim Novotney goes deep into the Cosmo DiNardo case , the murders of Jimi Patrick, Dean Finocchiaro, Tom Meo, and Mark Sturgis , and...

Send us Fan Mail KAREN READ: MURDER OR COVER-UP IN CANTON, MASSACHUSETTS A Boston police officer is found face-down in the snow outside a fellow officer's home in Canton, Massachusetts. His name is John O'Keefe. He had been lying there for hours. His girlfriend, Karen Read, was accused of backing into him with her Lexus SUV and leaving him to die in a blizzard. But after two trials, two...

Send us Fan Mail MAURA MURRAY DISAPPEARANCE: THE 7-MINUTE WINDOW, ROUTE 112 CRASH, WITNESS A’S SUV, AND THE FINGERPRINT MATCH On February 9, 2004, 21-year-old UMass nursing student Maura Murray crashed her black Saturn sedan on a dark curve on Route 112 in Haverhill, New Hampshire. A local bus driver stopped to help. Maura asked him not to call police. He called 911 anyway. And in the time between...

Send us Fan Mail TAKEN IN THE NIGHT: THE NANCY GUTHRIE DISAPPEARANCE — MASKED INTRUDER, DOORBELL VIDEO, DNA GLOVE, AND THE $6M BITCOIN RANSOM On January 31, 2026, at 1:47 a.m., the doorbell camera at an isolated desert home outside Tucson, Arizona suddenly went offline. Forty-one minutes later, a masked man wearing gloves, a backpack, and a gun appeared on the front porch. By morning, Nancy Guthri...

Send us Fan Mail On November 13, 2022, four University of Idaho students were murdered inside an off-campus house in Moscow, Idaho. In the days that followed, fear spread across the country as investigators searched for the person responsible. In this episode of Crimery: True Crime Uncovered , we break down how one overlooked mistake—a knife sheath left behind at the crime scene—became the key tha...

Send us Fan Mail September 18, 1992: the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturns Jay C. Smith’s conviction—and bars a retrial for prosecutorial misconduct so extreme the court says trying him again would violate double jeopardy. After 13 years in prison—seven on death row—Smith walks free. Meanwhile, William Bradfield remains locked up on three consecutive life sentences. And the children—Karen Reine...

Send us Fan Mail In June 1979, a teacher’s body was found in the trunk of a car in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.  Susan Reinert had been drugged, beaten, and suffocated. Her two children—Karen, 11, and Michael, 10—were gone. They have never been found. This is the story of William Bradfield—a charismatic English teacher who inspired devotion, loyalty, and obedience from everyone around him. For months...

Send us Fan Mail Weatherly/Freeland, Pennsylvania. 2016.  A house fire at 234 Third Street looks like simple insurance fraud… until federal agents start pulling at one landlord’s life and uncover something far worse. Roberto Torner —a convicted felon turned “King of Weatherly”—ran a Pepto-Bismol-pink boarding house called The Cottage Hotel , collecting vulnerable tenants the way he collected distr...

Send us Fan Mail It’s an ordinary Thursday night in Shavertown, Pennsylvania — until a family member walks through an unlocked door and finds the lights on… a ceiling fan still spinning… and a trail of blood cutting through the house like a roadmap of violence. At the end of that trail is 56-year-old Jonathan Balester , stabbed repeatedly in the back inside his own home. No forced entry. No robber...

Send us Fan Mail Victorian Pittsburgh trusted her with the sick. Martha Grinder was the woman neighbors called when illness crept into their homes — the quiet caregiver who brought soup, tea, clean linens, and patience. She sat through long nights at the bedside, whispering comfort, holding hands, earning a reputation as the perfect Victorian woman. And then people died. In this episode of CRIMERY...

Send us Fan Mail Eighteen months after Holly Maddux was murdered, her killer walked free on bail — and vanished into Europe. In Part Two of The Unicorn Killer , the story shifts from the crime itself to the longest and most relentless manhunt most people have never heard of. As Ira Einhorn disappears across borders, changing names and building a new life abroad, Holly’s father, Fred Maddux, makes...

Send us Fan Mail For years, Ira Einhorn was celebrated as a visionary. He called himself The Unicorn — a peace activist, environmental prophet, and counterculture icon with powerful friends and devoted followers. He spoke about consciousness, love, and the future of humanity. People believed him. Then, in March of 1979, police opened a padlocked closet in his Philadelphia apartment. Inside was a s...

Send us Fan Mail On February 22, 1985, in rural Winfield Township, Pennsylvania, eight-year-old Cherrie Mahan stepped off her school bus at 4:10 p.m. She had only 150 feet to walk home. She never made it. Witnesses reported two suspicious vehicles near the stop—a bright blue van with a painted skier mural and a small blue car. In the snow, investigators found tire marks… but no footprints leading...

Send us Fan Mail On November 28, 1969—the quiet day after Thanksgiving—a 22-year-old Penn State graduate student walked into Pattee Library to retrieve one final source for a research paper. She never walked out. Betsy Ruth Aardsma was stabbed once—cleanly, precisely—between the shelves of the basement stacks. No scream. No visible blood. Students and staff believed she had collapsed from a medica...

Send us Fan Mail A 26-year-old woman vanishes from Long Pond, PA on May 11, 1983. Her husband waits 72 hours to call police. Fifteen years later, two separate accounts surface—one claiming her remains were dumped off Seaside Heights, another pointing to a shaft in Centralia, the ghost town that’s been burning underground since 1962. If investigators are right, Susan Cerritelli rests in a place no...

Send us Fan Mail Eighteen-year-old Jennifer Barziloski walks out into a warm June night in 2001 and never makes it home. Three years later, her closest friend, 22-year-old Phylicia Thomas—the one who wouldn’t stop asking what happened to Jennifer—vanishes too. One skull is found along an ATV trail years later; the other woman is still missing. The same names, the same party talk, the same rural po...

Send us Fan Mail An 11-year-old leaves Mercy Hospital in Scranton with a stuffed animal for her mom and starts the short walk home—broad daylight, one block to go. Witnesses see a girl matching Michelle “Jolene” Lakey get into a light yellow car near North Washington Ave. She is never seen again. This episode of CRIMERY traces the chilling threads that still haunt Northeast PA: the three-day ranso...

Send us Fan Mail A well-liked Pleasant Valley freshman drives to a secluded cul-de-sac for a $120 marijuana sale—and meets three teens who never planned to pay. Within minutes, 15-year-old Aiden Paiz is shot with an AR-15, his friend is wounded, and the killers scatter into the Poconos night. It will take Pennsylvania State Police less than a day to crack the case—built on a brave survivor’s accou...

Send us Fan Mail A devoted father and small-town carpenter walks out of his Polk Township home one October afternoon—and never returns. His blue work van is found wiped clean. His bank accounts go quiet. For years, rumors swirl. Then a drunk shoplifter starts talking about a crack house in the woods, a hammer, a rifle, and a basement “injection” meant to end a man’s life. What follows is a decade-...