Evidence Locker True Crime

In January 1977, two young women, Suzanne Armstrong and Susan Bartlett, were brutally murdered inside their Melbourne home, while Suzanne's 16-month-old son was found alive nearby. The shocking crime became one of Australia's most enduring unsolved murder cases. For nearly five decades, investigators pursued countless leads with little success. Then, an extraordinary breakthrough revived the inves...

Eva Bourseau, 23, was murdered in her Toulouse apartment on 26 July 2015 by two students, Taha Mrani Alaoui and Zakariya Banouni, over a drug debt. Her body was submerged in hydrochloric acid in a plastic trunk — a method inspired by the TV series Breaking Bad . Discovered by firefighters after her mother raised the alarm, the case shocked France and made international headlines. After a 15-day tr...

On August 2, 2006, Washington D.C. attorney Robert Eric Wone was stabbed to death inside the Dupont Circle townhouse of his college friend Joseph Price. Three housemates – Price, Victor Zaborsky, and Dylan Ward – were home at the time. Evidence suggested the crime scene had been staged, and that Wone had been drugged and sexually assaulted before his death. All three men were acquitted of obstruct...

On New Year's Eve 1998, fifteen-year-old Kirsty Bentley vanished while walking her Labrador, Abby, near the Ashburton River in Canterbury, New Zealand. Seventeen days later, her body was found hidden in dense scrub at Camp Gully, Rakaia Gorge, 40 kilometres away. She had been killed by a single blow of blunt force trauma to the head. Despite decades of investigation under Operation Kirsty, hundred...

In 1895, a Swedish man named Adolf Beck was stopped on a London street by a woman who accused him of swindling her out of her jewellery. Police quickly connected him to a string of similar frauds — and to a man named John Smith, convicted of identical crimes in 1877. Over a dozen victims picked Beck out of line-ups. He was convicted at the Old Bailey and sentenced to seven years' hard labour. The...

In November 2008, 23-year-old Christine Lindsey Walters left her hotel room in Eureka, California, in her pyjamas, to collect identity documents from a nearby copy centre. She was trying to get home to Wisconsin. She never made it. A junior studying botany and ethnobotany at the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point, Christine had come to Humboldt County for a planned three-week holiday. She staye...

Frank Sinatra's "My Way" became one of the deadliest songs in history — not on a battlefield, but in the karaoke bars of the Philippines. Between 1998 and 2018, at least a dozen people were killed in disputes linked to the song, in incidents dubbed the "My Way Killings." Victims were shot for singing off-key, stabbed over microphone disputes, and killed for daring to claim the song as theirs. The...

In the sweltering summer of 1908, 20-year-old domestic servant Hazel Drew was found floating face-down in Teal's Pond, New York. Her skull had been crushed by repeated blows. A corset string wrapped around her throat. The investigation revealed a web of secrets, political corruption, and powerful men with much to hide. More than a century later, this unsolved murder would inspire Twin Peaks – and...

On a quiet September night in 2013, a routine traffic stop on the outskirts of Aksai unraveled a mystery that had haunted southern Russia for years. A violent shootout led police to a forest campsite, and what they uncovered was more than just weapons. The suspects were not professional hitmen or members of a paramilitary group. They were a family. A mother, her daughters, and her husband. Their c...

In 2017, 21-year-old French au pair Sophie Lionnet was found burned in a garden in Southfields, London. What began as a dream opportunity became a nightmare of abuse, torture, and ultimately murder at the hands of her employers. Books: Read collections of The Evidence Locker Files , available in print and digital editions. Follow us on: YouTube , Facebook , Instagram , X , TikTok For more informat...

Between September 2003 and April 2006, Wisconsin prosecutors built one of the most challenging murder cases in the state's history: proving a family annihilation without bodies, a crime scene, or eyewitnesses.  In July 1998, Allen Krnak, his wife Donna, their son Thomas, and the family dog vanished without a trace after leaving for a Fourth of July weekend at their cabin. When their truck was foun...

On a windy January day in 1965, two fifteen-year-old best friends walked into the sand dunes at Wanda Beach near Sydney. They never came home. What followed was one of the largest investigations in Australian history, yet the killer vanished without a trace. Sixty years later, three suspects have emerged, but no one has ever been charged. Was it a teenage surfer, a serial killer, or someone far mo...

Between 1959 and 1987, a series of brutal attacks in the forests and lakesides of Finland and Sweden left multiple victims dead – and investigators haunted by their similarities. From Tulilahti and Lake Bodom to Appojaure and the deck of the Viking Sally, the victims were ordinary people, asleep and vulnerable, when violence struck without warning. Some cases were solved. Most weren’t.  What links...

In July 1984, beneath Sweden’s midnight sun, a remote campsite near Lake Appojaure became the scene of a brutal double murder. Dutch tourists Marinus and Janny Stegehuis were stabbed to death as they slept in their tent, an attack that shocked the nation and remains unresolved. This episode marks a milestone for The Evidence Locker : released in celebration of our 250th episode, it is also a remas...

In the summer of 1960, four teenagers went camping at Lake Bodom. In the pre-dawn hours, an unknown assailant attacked them inside their tent, slashing them with a knife and hitting them with a blunt object. Of the four, only 18-year-old Nils Gustafsson survived, narrowly escaping death. 45 years later, he was charged with killing his friends, but acquitted. To this day, the mystery of what happen...

July 1959. Two young women on a cycling holiday vanished from a Finnish campsite. Eine Nyyssönen, 21, and Riitta Pakkanen, 23, were found buried in a bog three weeks later, marked by a sharpened stick. Over 60 years later, this brutal double murder remains unsolved. Books: Read collections of The Evidence Locker Files , available in print and digital editions. Follow us on: YouTube , Facebook , In...

On a winter evening in 1931, a soft-spoken insurance agent was lured from his Liverpool home by a strange telephone message. The address he searched for didn’t exist. By the time he returned, his wife had been brutally murdered. Who was the caller? Was the alibi a masterstroke of deception? Or did someone exploit the perfect opportunity? Tried. Convicted. Acquitted.  Nearly a century later, the mu...

Every December, thousands of letters addressed to Santa are sent to North Pole, Alaska. Boxes full of letters are then sent to North Pole Middle School, where they are included in the 6th Grade curriculum: North Pole’s 11 and 12-year-olds are nominated as Santa’s little helpers and reply to all the letters on Santa’s behalf. But in April 2006, the peace in this snow globe of a town was shattered w...

In May 1999, three members of the Orderud family were found shot to death in their home in rural Norway. The victims — Kristian and Marie Orderud and their daughter Anne — had been killed in the dead of night in what appeared to be a cold and calculated execution. Despite four people being convicted of complicity, no one has ever been held legally responsible for pulling the trigger. What followed...

Between 1970 and 1971, a series of brutal murders terrified the streets of Bucharest. The victims were mostly women — attacked at night, bitten, and mutilated. Their killer became known as The Vampire of Bucharest . His crimes were frenzied and disturbing, leaving investigators to wonder whether they were dealing with a deranged killer or a man driven by superstition and obsession. He broke into h...

In 1994, a custody dispute in South Carolina ended with a mother vanishing with her infant daughter. Dorothy Lee Barnett, accused of violating a court order, disappeared without a trace — along with 11-month-old Savannah. For nearly two decades, the pair lived under new identities across the world — first in Europe, then South Africa, then Australia — as authorities searched for clues. In 2013, an...

Between 1996 and 1997, the dismembered remains of at least five women were found stuffed in garbage bags and dumped inside suitcases around the Belgian city of Mons. The killer, who came to be known as Le Dépeceur de Mons — The Butcher of Mons — has never been identified. The murders shocked the quiet provincial city and left investigators chasing one of the most disturbing unsolved serial murder...

In celebration of Halloween, this week’s episode is a re-release of one of our first episodes - still chilling... Adolfo Constanzo, also known as El Padrino (or the Godfather), was the leader of a cult that believed that Black Magic would shield their drug cartel from being busted. Adolfo encouraged human sacrifice, and countless people fell victim to the cult, later dubbed the Narcosatanists. Whe...

On Halloween night in 1974, eight-year-old Timothy O’Brien came home from trick-or-treating in Deer Park, Texas, excited to sample his candy haul. Among the treats was a Pixy Stix — one that would become infamous in American true crime history. Within hours, Timothy was dead, poisoned by cyanide. Investigators soon discovered that the killer wasn’t a mysterious stranger slipping poison into Hallow...

For nearly two decades, a nondescript farm outside Pretoria was the epicenter of South Africa’s most covert and brutal campaign of state-sponsored terror. Known as Vlakplaas , it served as headquarters for a police death squad targeting anti-Apartheid activists. Under the leadership of Colonel Dirk Coetzee and later Eugene de Kock – dubbed “Prime Evil” – Vlakplaas was responsible for countless abd...