Dark Hearts with Stacy Lee

If you ask 100 True Crime creators their Top 5 most disturbing stories, 90 of them will say the story of Israel Keyes is in their Top 5. Raised as a white supremacist, Keyes hated most everyone. He began killing as a teenager. He is terrifying because he does not follow any of the patterns we know about serial killers. He has no victim profile, no preference, and no pattern. He began traveling the...

John List had a serious problem. He'd been hiding the fact that he'd been fired from his prestigious job at a New Jersey bank and he was broke. He devised a diabolical plan. He shot and killed his wife Helen then his mother Alma. He then waited for the teenagers to come home from school and one by one, he shot them dead. He placed all but his mother's body in the mansion's ballroom, wrote some let...

Michael Gargiulo was known as a weird guy. He made women uncomfortable. He said strange things. When his childhood best friend's sister, Tricia Pacaccio was murdered in Chicago, her case went cold. Years later, women in California were being stabbed to death in their own homes. It took almost two decades, but finally, the police were able to link The Hollywood Ripper, Michael Gargiulo, to the murd...

Marc Dutroux, The Beast of Belgium was a troubled kid who became a dangerous adult. He took multiple victims, children most, and tortured them before murdering them. His wife, Michelle Martin was complicit and did nothing to help the girls locked in the hidden room of the house. When the public was told an arrest had been made, and that the killer was a previous criminal who did only three years i...

The Tromp family was a close, well respected family living in Silvan, Australia when the father, Mark began acting strangely. He became paranoid and started telling his wife, Jacoba and their three adult children that the family was being tracked. He said their money wasn't safe in the bank and that the family was in danger. Then, Mark and Jacoba insisted that the entire family get into the car wi...

American pastors and preachers are no longer respected or admired like they once were. Now, there is a good chance that the man preaching your Sunday sermon has skeletons in his closet and illegal images on his hard drive. How has American Christianity fallen so far from what it started out to be and what can be done to ensure that children are protected in the churches? Why isn't more being done...

This is the kind of story that keeps me up at night. We know people murder for money, for sex, for revenge, but somehow it is more horrifying when a random murder is committed against people who are totally and completely innocent. Clinton and Cristen Brink planned a fun day hiking in Devil's Den State Park in Arkansas. While enjoying their afternoon, a man jumped out and began stabbing Clinton. C...

Allentown, Pennsylvania was a depressed but safe place to live until, in the early 1990s, women began being murdered in their homes. Then a 15 year old girl was murdered on her paper route. The police chased the killer but had no luck because they were looking for an adult. They came up with a plan to stake out a previous victim and survivor's home to see if the killer would return to finish the j...

Daniel Perez is a conman. After being convicted of sexually assaulting two girls in Texas, he faked his own death and took on the name Lou Castro. He started a small cult that he called Angel's Landing, telling his followers that he spoke to God and had magical abilities. But he needed something to sustain his powers: young girls. A dogged Kansas cop named Ron Goodwyn started to get suspicious and...

When Crystal Rogers vanished in Bardstown, Kentucky in July of 2015, her family immediately knew she had been murdered. The local cops investigated and called her boyfriend Brooks Houck in for an interview. During that interview, Brooks brother, Nick Houck, a local cop himself, called his brother and told him to stop talking to the police. What were the brothers trying to hide? For years, Crystal'...

Corinna Mullen was working at the Bardstown, Kentucky police department, saving up to go to nursing school. When she discovered that an acquaintance was selling drugs and moving stolen property, she told one of the police officers she worked with. Then, she ended up murdered. Her boyfriend, Jimmie Springer was put on trial and acquitted and the case went cold for twenty years. After a determined c...

This is a current story and the outcome is still uncertain. No arrests have been made. What is clear is that singer D4VD is in a lot of trouble. The body of his rumored girlfriend, fifteen year old Celeste Rivas Hernandez was found dead and dismembered in the front trunk of David Burke's Tesla. This was two months ago and still, no arrest has been made. Even if it turns out that D4VD had nothing t...

Howard Rubin is a celebrated financial wizard. He made billions for firms like Bear Stearns and Soros Fund Management. For years, he has been dogged with civil lawsuits filed by adult sex workers and performers alleging he hired them for BDSM sessions that turned incredibly violent. Howard Rubin has been able to pay his way out of those lawsuits. But in late September of 2025, the Feds came knocki...

Burt Templet was a controlling and angry man. He monitored his wife and son's activity as though he was a prison guard. Susan Templet left, taking her son Peyton with her which meant Anthony Templet was now alone with the father he hated. Then, in 2019, there was an argument and Anthony shot Burt Templet. As Anthony's coworkers hear about the murder, they decide to look into this unusual young man...

Murder doesn't take a night off and killings happen even on Halloween. Karl Jackson, a computer programmer with a bright future lost his life in a violent altercation with seventeen year old Curtis Sterling, all over loud music. Karl's story became a cautionary tale about the violent 1990s in New York. In our second story, nine year old Lisa Ann French goes trick or treating in Fond du Lac, Wiscon...

Bob Singer was a happily married man until he met charming Judith Singer at temple. The two began an affair and both ended up divorcing their spouses so they could be together. Judy took her kids and the couple moved back to her home state of Michigan but Judy's ex-husband, Howard Witkin wasn't happy and wanted his kids back in California. Then, Howard ended up dead, murdered in his doorway. An in...

Stephen Morin spent his life as a criminal. What started as a career in theft quickly turned to serial murder. He abducted, assaulted and killed women as he traveled throughout the country. Investigators estimate his victim count to be around forty people, but many of those murders are not well documented. When the police learned just how dangerous Stephen Morin was, they located him in a Texas mo...

Bruce McArthur is an unusual serial killer. Most serial killers stop killing later in life but the Toronto Village Serial Killer did not. Gay men began to disappear from the Toronto Village area and by the time there were eight missing men, the cops had formed two task forces to investigate the disappearances. Their investigation led them to a plump, elderly landscaper who had been digging more th...

Michael Woods was an angry man with a bad temper. He wanted to become a rock star and he dragged his long suffering wife, Susan from town to town chasing his dream. She finally put her foot down and when she stayed in Stephenville, Texas, Michael left her and returned to Indianapolis where he was from. Then Susan Woods was murdered, found in her bathtub in July of 1987. Everyone involved was convi...

We'll call this Part One. Kouri Richins has not yet gone to trial. She is accused of massive financial fraud, shoddy builder practices, forgery, drug possession and murder. When her husband Eric Richins died suddenly, Kouri wrote a book called "Are You With Me," about children dealing with the death of a parent. She even went on a media tour to promote the book. Then, Kouri was arrested...

Laurie Shaver claims she was terribly abused at the hands of her husband Michael. Laurie's daughter, Isabelle backs those claims. The couple fought constantly and then one day, Michael Shaver vanished. Laurie told people he'd run off with another woman. For two years, her story held until Michael's old friend went to the police stating he couldn't get in touch with Michael. The cops served a searc...

Are killers born or are they made? That is the question we ask all the time here on Dark Hearts. In today's story, there is a strong argument for those who believe some people are just born bad. Kim Edwards and Lucas Markham were obsessed with each other. When Kim's mother, Elizabeth Edwards tried to keep them apart, Kim and Lucas decided she had to go and with her, Kim's younger sister, Katie. Th...

Paul Castellano was a man who wanted to polish the image of the mafia. He preferred conversation to confrontation but wasn't afraid to order a hit on anyone who insulted him. When godfather Carlo Gambino died, Paul took the reins and this made a lot of mob guys unhappy. One in particular, John Gotti, despised Paul's corporate mentality and ban on the sell of drugs for profit and so Gotti set a pla...

Private investigators, drugs and reality TV clash in this incredible story of jealousy and a desire for fame. Years before landing the role of a young Joe Kenda on the crime TV show Homicide Hunter, struggling actor Carl Marino was working for a private investigator in San Francisco named Chris Butler. When the Lifetime Network decided to produce a reality show about Chris Butler's all female staf...

Grace Millane was a young woman full of hope for the future. She took a solo backpacking trip through South America and then flew to New Zealand to continue. There, she matched with Jesse Kempson on Tinder and the two went out for dinner and drinks. They went back to his hotel room for what Grace thought would be a sexual encounter. Instead, she ended up murdered and stuffed into a suitcase. We tr...