Crimes Of...

Jim Jones told his people he loved them. He built a church that preached racial equality and social justice at a time when those words carried weight. Then he moved nearly a thousand followers to a jungle compound in Guyana and called it paradise. On November 18, 1978, 918 people died at Jonestown — including 304 children — in a mass poisoning Jones called a revolutionary act. We trace the full ar...

Jim Jones told his people he loved them. He built a church that preached racial equality and social justice at a time when those words carried weight. Then he moved nearly a thousand followers to a jungle compound in Guyana and called it paradise. On November 18, 1978, 918 people died at Jonestown — including 304 children — in a mass poisoning Jones called a revolutionary act. We trace the full ar...

Love Has Won centered on Amy Carlson, who claimed to be a divine being leading followers toward ascension. After her death, authorities discovered her mummified body decorated in lights, exposing severe psychological control within the group. The crimes illustrate how online-age cult dynamics can spiral into neglect, abuse, and fatal delusion. Head over to our Crimes Of… YouTube channel to WATCH t...

Crime House’s Murder: True Crime Stories presents a special series for America’s 250th Birthday: The Crimes That Built America. Listen every Monday until July 6th on Murder: True Crime Stories. Join Crime House+ to get all 4 episodes right now ad-free. To subscribe, go to crimehouseplus.com or if you are listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page. 250 years ago, a b...

Love Has Won centered on Amy Carlson, who claimed to be a divine being leading followers toward ascension. After her death, authorities discovered her mummified body decorated in lights, exposing severe psychological control within the group. The crimes illustrate how online-age cult dynamics can spiral into neglect, abuse, and fatal delusion. Head over to our Crimes Of… YouTube channel to WATCH t...

The Order of the Solar Temple was an apocalyptic secret society that orchestrated mass murder-suicides across Switzerland, Canada, and France in the 1990s. Leaders convinced members that death was a “transit” to a higher spiritual realm tied to cosmic prophecy. The crimes reveal how esoteric belief systems can escalate into coordinated, ritualized violence. Head over to our Crimes Of… YouTube chan...

The Order of the Solar Temple was an apocalyptic secret society that orchestrated mass murder-suicides across Switzerland, Canada, and France in the 1990s. Leaders convinced members that death was a “transit” to a higher spiritual realm tied to cosmic prophecy. The crimes reveal how esoteric belief systems can escalate into coordinated, ritualized violence. Head over to our Crimes Of… YouTube chan...

Rod Ferrell led a group of teenagers who believed they were vampires, blending goth subculture with authoritarian devotion. In 1996, Ferrell and an accomplice murdered the parents of one member in a violent attempt to cement control. The case demonstrates how identity fantasy combined with cult hierarchy can culminate in real-world homicide. Head over to our Crimes Of… YouTube channel to WATCH thi...

Led by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho), the movement built a utopian commune in Oregon that devolved into bioterrorism, immigration fraud, and assassination plots. In 1984, members carried out the largest bioterror attack in U.S. history by poisoning salad bars to sway a local election. The case shows how charismatic leadership and insular power structures can turn spiritual movements into criminal...

NXIVM presented itself as a self-improvement organization but concealed a secret inner circle where women were branded and coerced into sexual servitude. Founder Keith Raniere was convicted on charges including racketeering, sex trafficking, and forced labor. The crimes expose how corporate-style structures can mask coercion and exploitation. Head over to our Crimes Of… YouTube channel to WATCH th...

In the summer of 1969, Los Angeles was living in the long glow of the counterculture — until two nights of murders shattered it beyond repair. Charles Manson never held the knife himself, but he held something more powerful: the total psychological devotion of young men and women who would kill on his word. We examine how Manson built his family, what he promised them, the ideology of race war he...

Marshall Applewhite believed — and made others believe — that Earth was about to be wiped clean, and that the only escape was to shed the human body and board a spacecraft trailing the Hale-Bopp comet. In March 1997, 39 members of Heaven's Gate were found dead in a mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, California, dressed in matching black and wearing new Nike sneakers. They had packed bags for the journey....

The Olympic Marathon at the 1904 St. Louis Games was supposed to be a showcase of human endurance. Instead, it became one of the strangest, most chaotic sporting events in recorded history. Competitors ran in ninety-degree heat through clouds of dust kicked up by the officials' cars. One runner was chased off course by a dog. Another was unknowingly given strychnine by his coach. The first man to...

Between 2013 and 2017, Anna Sorokin — a Russian-born, German-raised young woman with a sharp eye for luxury and a sharper tongue for anyone who doubted her — convinced New York's elite that she was Anna Delvey, heiress to a vast European fortune. She stayed in five-star hotels, flew on private jets, defrauded banks out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and nearly secured a $22 million loan to f...

Real Housewives of Salt Lake City cast her as a larger-than-life personality with an enormous entourage, designer everything, and a lifestyle that demanded constant explanation. What Jen Shah didn't explain — until federal agents showed up at a cast event — was that her business empire was built on a telemarketing fraud scheme that targeted thousands of vulnerable people across the country, many o...

Gypsy Rose Blanchard spent most of her childhood in a wheelchair she didn't need, taking medications for conditions she didn't have, and telling the story her mother Dee Dee had written for her — of a sick little girl who needed constant care. Dee Dee Blanchard fabricated illness after illness, collecting charity, sympathy, and total control. When Gypsy finally found a way out, it ended in her mot...

In one of the strangest and stickiest white-collar crimes ever committed, a group of Quebec thieves siphoned off nearly 3,000 tons of maple syrup—worth over $18 million—from the Global Strategic Maple Reserve, an actual government-run stockpile meant to stabilize syrup prices. Head over to our Crimes Of… YouTube channel to WATCH this episode: https://www.youtube.com/@crimehousestudios If you’re ne...

He stole trucks. He stole cattle. He stole a plane. And every time he was arrested, he seemed to walk free. Joshua Paul Calhoun, known as the Texas Superthief, turned small-town chaos into a years-long game of cat and mouse with law enforcement. Sabrina and Corinne unpack one of the wildest crime sprees in Texas history. Head over to our Crimes Of… YouTube channel to WATCH this episode: https://ww...

Rudy Kurniawan rose to fame as a rare wine prodigy, dazzling collectors with his knowledge of vintage Burgundy. But behind the prestige was a counterfeit operation worth tens of millions. Sabrina and Corinne uncover how Kurniawan blended cheap wine in his kitchen and sold it as priceless French vintages in one of the biggest luxury fraud cases in history. Head over to our Crimes Of… YouTube channe...

In 2009, a Colorado family claimed their six year-old son had floated away inside a homemade flying saucer. As helicopters tracked the balloon live on national television, the country braced for tragedy, until the story began to fall apart. Sabrina and Corinne revisit the Balloon Boy hoax, a crime that turned panic into spectacle and exposed the power of a well-timed lie. Head over to our Crimes O...

Lorena Bobbitt became one of the most infamous women of the 1990s after she severed her husband John Bobbitt’s penis in 1993. But behind the sensational headlines was a harrowing story of domestic violence, marital rape, and a system that repeatedly failed her. Sabrina and Corinne unpack the Lorena Bobbitt case, unpacking the abuse, the trials, and the crime of passion that forever reshaped public...

In 2005, sisters Linda and Charlotte Mulhall killed their mother’s abusive boyfriend, Farah Swaleh Noor then dismembered his body and dumped the remains into Dublin’s Royal Canal. Branded by tabloids as the “Scissor Sisters,” the women became symbols of shocking brutality. Sabrina and Corinne unpack the Mulhall Sisters case, a devastating crime of passion shaped by generational trauma, domestic vi...

Pamela Smart was a 22 year-old aspiring media star when she began a sexual relationship with a 15 year-old student named Billy Flynn. What started as manipulation disguised as romance soon escalated into a deadly plan to kill her husband, Gregg Smart. Sabrina and Corinne break down the Pamela Smart case: a chilling crime fueled by control, grooming, and a hunger for attention that ended in murder....

Betty Gore was a young mother living in a quiet Texas suburb when she was brutally murdered by her friend Candy Montgomery. The killing, driven by an affair with Betty’s husband, shocked the community and exposed the dark underside of suburban perfection. Sabrina and Corinne unpack the Candy Montgomery and Betty Gore story, a crime defined by jealousy, repression, and extreme violence. Head over t...

In this episode of Crimes Of... Sabrina and Corinne unpack the disturbing and deeply complex case of Susan Polk—a woman who married her own therapist and, decades later, killed him. What begins as a troubling story of blurred boundaries and unethical behavior evolves into a marriage defined by power imbalances, emotional control, and escalating instability. Rather than asking whether Susan killed...