Crimes and Consequences

In 1983, four American Jehovah's Witnesses inadvertently knocked on the door of drug lord Ernesto Fonseca. Paranoid they were undercover DEA agents, he had his henchmen (one being El Chapo) kidnap, torture, rape, murder, and dismember them. Then, a month later, two American tourists walked into a seafood restaurant for dinner, unaware that it had been reserved for a cartel party. The tourists were...

The “Secret Witness” hotline was established in Shasta County, CA to take anonymous tips about crimes that occurred in the county. On the evening of June 19, 1985, a tip came in concerning a missing person, Averill Weeden. Averill disappeared on May 23, 1985, and the caller said he knew where Averill’s body was and wanted to know how much money he could get in exchange for this information. Listen...

The media in Columbus, Georgia gave the name "The Stocking Strangler" to a serial killer in the area that preyed on elderly white women in 1978. In April of that year, a local newspaper and the police began receiving letters from an alleged vigilante group calling themselves "The Forces of Evil." This group warned that if the Stocking Strangler didn't stop killing caucasian "grannies" the Forces o...

In the 1970s there was someone lurking, stalking, and attacking women in the Metro Detroit area. The viciousness and brutality increased with each attack until women were ending up dead in truly grotesque ways. The attacks in Michigan ended in 1981 because the killer, later determined to be Coral Watts, decided the heat was getting too hot and moved to Texas to continue his killing spree. By the t...

A week before Christmas in 1983, Kathy Smith went shopping for gifts for her three children.  Later that evening, when she returned home in Philadelphia, she noticed the lights weren't working throughout most of the house.  She called her mother, who lived next door, and she came over with a flashlight.  Together, they went to the basement to see if a fuse was blown.  That's when their nightmare b...

Mark Kilroy and his friends decided to go on Spring Break 1989 to South Padre Island in Texas. In the midst of their partying, Mark and his friends decided to cross the American/Mexican border one night to check out the nightlife in Matamoros, Mexico. Little did they know but Matamoros was holding a secret—people were disappearing at an alarming rate. On the night of March 14, 1989, Mark’s friends...

Brittany Killgore was a beautiful 22-year-old woman married to Marine Cory Killgore.   Originally from Pennsylvania, she moved to Fallbrook, California, near the Camp Pendleton base.  While there, Cory got sent to Afghanistan and their marriage fell apart.  In 2012, she filed for divorce and started packing to move back east.  Before she left, she really wanted to go on a dinner cruise called the...

In the early morning hours of March 1, 2008, a call came into the local sheriff’s department that there had been a shooting at the Caffey family home in Alba, Texas. The deputy that responded to the call found the Caffey home ablaze when he got there. Where were the family members—dad Terry, mom, Penny, and their three children Erin, Matthew, and Tyler? Who set the fire? Listen to this week’s epis...

The women of San Diego, California were near hysteria in 1990.  Headlines in the news read "Eerie Serial Killings Have San Diego Women on the Edge.”  A monster was breaking into the apartment of young women during the day and murdering them.  Six women were killed within one year, and dozens of others were burglarized.   In addition, a handful of women barely escaped the clutches of this serial ki...

From May 1979 to November 1984, there were six unsolved throat-slashing killings in the San Diego area. The police arrested a man and while he was in jail awaiting his trial, the throat slasher struck again. However, this victim, who was left for dead on the side of the road, survived her injuries and was able to help authorities capture the real killer and end his throat-slashing spree. Looking f...

During a cold, wintery week in December 2002, brothers Reginald and Jonathan Carr decided to go on a crime spree that ended with 5 people dead and 2 others mentally scarred for life. The Carr Brothers’ final heinous act ended on December 15, where they shot 5 friends execution-style in a soccer field in Wichita, Kansas. The brothers failed to make sure their victims were all dead, and one of the w...

Almost every true crime addict knows about the infamous Louisiana serial killer Derrick Todd Lee. However, most people have never heard of Louisiana’s other serial killer: Nathaniel Code. Nathaniel had a unique ritual that linked him to at least eight murders but his true victim count is estimated to be double that amount. What made his crimes so unique that even the FBI had never seen anything li...

Earle Nelson was the first serial killer in the U.S. to get widespread media notoriety throughout the United States, Canada, and Australia. During 1926-27, he killed at least 22 people, and most of them were classified as “sex murders”—meaning Earle derived sexual pleasure during the killing. Earle denied responsibility for the murders until his last dying breath—which was taken at the gallows of...

In January of 2007, Channon Christian was a beautiful and intelligent 21-year-old sociology major who studied at the University of Knoxville in Tennessee. She had been dating 23-year-old Christopher Newsom for about two months when they decided to have dinner and then go to a party one Saturday night. They never made it to the party because they were carjacked at an apartment complex. What transpi...

On May 31, 2000, Nineteen-year-old Jill Behrman, went missing while riding her bike in Bloomington, Indiana. A local woman named Wendy Owings, and two of her shady friends confessed to 46 people that they murdered Jill. Wendy provided a detailed confession to the police and passed a polygraph test regarding her account of the crime. Wendy's confession lead the police to drain Salt River, where the...

In the late 1990s, in and around Sacramento, California, James Daveggio and his girlfriend, Michelle Michaud were meth-heads that were obsessed with local serial killers, Gerald and Charlene Gallego. Determined to make their mark like their idols, James and Michelle began a path of destruction that began with committing heinous rape and incest crimes and ended with the torture and death of 21-year...

In January of 2008, Denise Amber Lee was a 21-year-old stay-at-home mother to two young children living in North Port, Florida.   While Denise Lee's husband was at work, a man entered their home in the middle of the day and kidnapped her while she was watching her two boys.  Five people called 911 regarding the crime, one of those people was the victim, Denise Lee.  Listen to all the 911 calls and...

In September 1981, in the idyllic village of Eiching, Bavaria, Germany, a 10-year-old girl named Ursula Herrmann was riding her bike home after having dinner at her aunt and uncle’s house. Ursula never made it back to her house and seemed to vanish into thin air. Her parents received two ransom notes and phone calls from the kidnappers but after they agreed to pay the ransom and were working out t...

In the early ’80s, Michael Ryan was the leader of a small group of followers who lived together on an 80-acre hog farm in Rulo, Nebraska. All of the group’s decisions were determined by what they referred to as “the arm test,” which was a means for God to speak to them. Michael, however, didn’t need to use the arm test, as he claimed God spoke directly to him in his mind. By 1985, some of the memb...

On May 27, 1997, 18-year-old Jeremy Strohmeyer was playing games in the arcade of a hotel-casino in Primm, Nevada, about 40 miles south of Las Vegas.  While he is in the arcade, he notices 7-year-old Sherrice Iverson, who is running around the casino unsupervised.  Jeremy and Sherrice start playing hide-and-seek, and their game turns deadly for Sherrice when Jeremy follows her into the ladies bath...

In 1974, two Australian nursing students, Lorraine Wilson, and Wendy Evans decided to take some time off from their work and studies to travel around Australia.  Unfortunately for the young women, Lorraine’s car broke down in the middle of their vacation and the repair shop said would take over a week to fix it.  Undeterred, the two decided to hitchhike to Brisbane to spend a week with Lorraine’s...

In 2004, a film class at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, set out to make a documentary on the 1978 cold case murder of 22-year-old Janet Chandler. Janet was known by her family to be a conservative woman of strong Christian faith and morals, but an investigation into her murder showed there was another side to Janet that she kept hidden from her parents. On a cold January night, while working a...

In the summer of 1984, 14-year-old Kenny Myers left his home to go for a bike ride when he failed to return, his mother reported him missing.  His strangled body was found 30 miles away in a park.  A year later, 13-year-old Shawn Moore disappeared while riding his bike and like Kenny, his body was found decomposed two weeks later, 150 miles from his house.  Other teen boys reported being kidnapped...

On June 2, 1991, in southern California, Denise Huber was getting ready to go to a Morrisey concert with a friend.  After the concert, she and her friend, Rob, went for drinks at a local watering hole.  They invited more friends to join them and the night didn’t end until last call.  Denise dropped Rob off at his house at about 2 am, and she told him she was on her way home.  She was never seen al...

Two days before her graduation from high school, 17-year-old Shari Smith was kidnapped from her mailbox. The kidnapper called her family on eight different occasions taunting them and even threatened that Shari's 21-year-old sister, Dawn, would suffer the same fate. Eventually, the perpetrator's phone calls stopped, but his crimes didn't. Two weeks after Shari's disappearance, he called the Smith...