Deadly Truths

Across the lonely highways, neon lights, and desert valleys of Northern Nevada, women have disappeared without a trace. From downtown Reno to Washoe Valley, from the casinos to the ghostly expanse of the desert, their stories paint a chilling portrait of mystery and loss. In this episode, we investigate the unsolved disappearances of women including Luella Beckley, Melinda Beardsley, Nancy and Jam...

In the debut episode of Reno Murders: Death in the Biggest Little City , we investigate the case of David Stephen Middleton — a former police officer turned notorious “Cable Guy Serial Killer.” Once abusing his badge in Miami and later hiding in plain sight in Colorado and Nevada, Middleton used uniforms and jobs as a chilling disguise to gain access to women. This true crime episode covers: The s...

In June 2006, Reno, Nevada was shaken by one of its most shocking crimes. Darren Mack , embroiled in a bitter divorce, brutally murdered his wife, Charla Mack , before targeting Family Court Judge Chuck Weller in a sniper-style shooting outside the Washoe County courthouse. This true crime episode of Deadly Truths revisits the Darren Mack case—tracing the history of domestic violence and control b...

In January 2008, Reno was shaken by the disappearance of 19-year-old college student Brianna Denison. Abducted from a friend’s home near the University of Nevada campus, her case became one of the most high-profile investigations in the city’s history. This episode uncovers the chilling details of her abduction, the DNA trail that connected her case to other assaults, and the eventual capture of p...

Between 1986 and 1989, a series of attacks on young couples and victims in secluded areas across southeastern Virginia became known as the Colonial Parkway murders. In this episode of Deadly Truths with Becca , we break down the four core cases, the victims behind the headlines, the decades of dead ends, and the modern DNA breakthrough that identified Alan Wade Wilmer Sr. in some of the killings....

In the spring of 1946, fear spread across Texarkana as an unknown attacker targeted young couples parked on secluded back roads and lovers’ lanes. The press would come to call them the Texarkana Moonlight Murders , and the killer became a legend of Southern true crime: the Phantom Killer . The attacks left five dead, several more wounded, and a city gripped by paranoia. In this episode of Deadly T...

Ted Bundy is one of the most heavily covered killers in American history, but this episode takes a different route. Instead of retelling the same old story, we examine Bundy through the lens of mobility, interstate travel, and the expanding highway system that gave him room to move, cross jurisdictions, and keep killing. From Washington to Utah, Idaho, Colorado, and finally Florida, Bundy exploite...

Long before America feared interstate killers, there was Billy Cook. In this episode of Interstate: Highly Deadly , we go back to Route 66 and the brutal murder spree that helped destroy the old American idea that a stranded stranger was probably harmless. Billy Cook was young, violent, and already deeply damaged by the time he began moving across the road system with a gun in his hand and rage in...

On November 3, 1998, long-haul trucker Wayne Adam Ford walked into the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office carrying part of a woman’s body. What followed exposed a case stretching across California: four murdered women, remains found in different waterways, and a pattern built on mobility, vulnerability, and delay. In this episode of Interstate: Highly Deadly , we look at Ford’s crimes, the women he...

He was handsome, mobile, and easy to underestimate. But behind the charm was one of the most chaotic and far-ranging killing sprees in America. In this episode of Interstate: Highly Deadly , Becca traces how Paul John Knowles used highways, stolen cars, false identities, and jurisdiction gaps to move across state lines and leave devastation behind him. This is the story of a predator who turned th...

Keith Hunter Jesperson looked ordinary enough to keep moving. But behind that ordinary surface was a man who used America’s highways, roadside corridors, and transient spaces as cover for murder. In this episode of Interstate: Highly Deadly , we examine the known victims of the man later labeled the Happy Face Killer , starting with Taunja Bennett and moving through the women whose lives were take...

In this sound-improved re-release bonus episode of Interstate: Highly Deadly , we examine the disturbing case of Joe Naso, often called the Alphabet Killer — a man who lived a double life as a traveling salesman and photographer while investigators later tied him to a series of murders. This episode explores the road-based nature of his movements, the unsettling overlap between mobility, anonymity...

America built millions of miles of highway to move people, connect towns, and promise freedom. But for some killers, the road became something else entirely: cover. In this episode of Deadly Truths with Becca , we examine two of the most haunting patterns in American true crime: the so-called Redhead Murders —a loose cluster of murdered and unidentified women found near highways in the 1970s and 1...

Across the empty desert highways of Nevada, a disturbing pattern has emerged over the decades — unidentified women found along Interstate 80 in the Great Basin , their names lost but their stories still waiting to be told. These victims are known only as Jane Does . In this episode of Interstate: Highly Deadly , we examine the cases of the Great Basin Jane Does , women whose remains were discovere...

We built the interstate system to connect America. But for some killers, those same roads became the perfect hunting ground. In this new season of Deadly Truths with Becca , Interstate: Highly Deadly investigates the murders, disappearances, predator patterns, and forgotten victims tied to America’s highways. From long-haul truck routes to roadside dump sites, from isolated exits to cases that cro...

In 1990, an Arizona state trooper made what appeared to be a routine traffic stop along Interstate 10. Inside the sleeper compartment of a long-haul semi-truck, he found a woman alive — bound and chained to the cab. The driver was Robert Ben Rhoades. Over the next several years, investigators linked Rhoades to the murders of Lisa Stasi, Regina Walters, and Ricky Lee Jones. Evidence recovered from...

In November 1981, Hollywood icon Natalie Wood drowned off Catalina Island during a Thanksgiving weekend aboard her yacht, the Splendour . Present that night were her husband, Robert Wagner, co-star Christopher Walken, and the yacht’s captain. The original ruling: accidental drowning. Decades later, the case was reopened. The cause of death was amended to “drowning and other undetermined factors.”...

During the height of Prohibition, George Remus wasn’t just a bootlegger — he was one of the richest and most powerful liquor traffickers in America. Operating out of Cincinnati along the Ohio–Kentucky corridor, he built a whiskey empire worth millions while bribing officials and manipulating the law. But the real scandal wasn’t just his criminal enterprise. It was what happened in Eden Park in 192...

In 1895, San Francisco was a city of fog, faith, and reputation. Inside the walls of a respected church, that illusion shattered. He was educated. Religious. Trusted. A young medical student who volunteered in the congregation. And yet, beneath the sanctuary’s quiet order, two women would be lured, assaulted, and murdered — their bodies hidden in the belfry of the very place meant to symbolize saf...

Before fingerprinting. Before national manhunts. Before modern policing. A family built a roadside inn along the Osage Trail in southeastern Kansas — about three hours south of Kansas City — and turned it into a killing chamber. They sat travelers at the head of the table. Struck from behind a curtain. Dropped bodies through a trapdoor. Buried them in an apple orchard. At least ten victims were un...

In the winter of 1884, something began moving through the dark streets of Austin, Texas. Women were attacked in their beds. Doors splintered. Skulls crushed. Bodies dragged into the yard before dawn. The first victims were Black domestic workers sleeping in servant quarters behind wealthy homes. The city barely reacted. Then the violence escalated. In just over a year, between 1884 and 1885, eight...

Before the Mafia. Before organized crime wore tailored suits. There were the Whyos. In the late 1800s, New York’s Five Points neighborhood was ruled by a violent Irish street gang known for selling brutality by the job. Beatings. Retaliation. Murder. Their reputation was so notorious that newspapers claimed they even had a price list. But the Whyos weren’t masterminds building empires. They were p...

Before organized crime wore tailored suits and answered to syndicates, New York’s streets were ruled by brute force. Monk Eastman controlled large swaths of the Lower East Side at the turn of the twentieth century. His gang enforced protection rackets, operated gambling dens, and served as muscle for Tammany Hall’s political machine. But as crime became more structured and less theatrical, Eastman...

On a suffocating August morning in 1892, two people were killed inside a locked house in Fall River, Massachusetts. No forced entry. No robbery. No confession. The only suspect was their daughter, Lizzie Borden — a churchgoing, unmarried woman who stood to inherit her father’s fortune. She was arrested, tried, and acquitted. But acquittal is not the same as certainty. In this episode of Dead State...

In 1836, the brutal murder of Helen Jewett shocked New York City—and changed how crime was covered in America forever. Jewett was found killed inside a boarding house, struck with a hatchet and left in a deliberately set fire. Suspicion quickly centered on Richard Robinson, a young, educated man known to her. The evidence appeared strong. The outcome did not. As newspapers competed for readers, th...