Evidence Locker True Crime

Four youths from Hyvinkää in the south of Finland spent a Friday night in November 1998 getting wasted on moonshine and listening to Black Metal music. A minor confrontation between Jarno Elg and an unnamed friend turned into a deadly clash. It was to become one of Finland’s most gruesome murder cases ever. The court sealed the case for 40 years, due to its horrific details.  Sponsor: Best Fiends...

Funeral Director Dan O’Connell and intern James Ellison were shot and killed in Dan’s office at the O’Connell Funeral Home. Police were stumped as neither of the victims had any enemies, on the contrary, both were upstanding and beloved members of the community in Hudson WI. With no leads in the investigation, the case went cold. Until police decided to take a second look at the background of one...

On the night of 26 January 2008, radiation physicist Bob Chappell spent the day renovating his yacht in the River Derwent, Hobart. He decided to stay the night on the Four Winds . The next morning the yacht was sinking and there was no sign of Bob. His partner of 18 years, Sue Neill-Fraser, was charged with his murder. What followed was one of Tasmania’s most controversial criminal cases.  Sponsor...

Stockholm, 1932. A young woman’s naked body was discovered in her apartment, lying face-down with fatal injuries to her head. Her clothes were neatly folded on a chair next to the bed and the rest of the scene was spotless. When a blood-stained gravy ladle emerged sometime later, investigators wondered if the killer used the ladle to drink his victim’s blood.  Sponsored by Tails.com - Go to tails....

In the abandoned village of Santoalla in the Galician hills of Spain lived only two families. A local family who had witnessed the mass evacuation and a Dutch couple who had made their dream of running an organic farm come true. At first the families got on just fine, but after a couple of years, tensions began to rise. It seemed like the stone-rubble village was not big enough for two families af...

On the night of 17 November 1973, five teenage friends went to the Gitchie Manitou Preserve to hang out by a campfire. They were playing the guitar and singing along, passing around a joint. In the dark of the night, they heard something in the trees… What followed seemed to be a scene straight out of a horror film. By the end of the night, four of them were dead. One survived to tell the tale of...

On the day before her 21st birthday party, Leigh Matthews was abducted from the parking lot at Bond University in Johannesburg. Her parents received a call from the kidnapper, demanding a large sum of money. Her father paid, but 10 days later, there was still no sign of his daughter. This became one of the most publicised cases in South Africa and it seemed like everyone was looking for Leigh. Spo...

When family physician Dr John Schneeberger was accused of drugging and raping a patient, people in the small town of Kipling, Saskatchewan refused to believe it. He volunteered a blood sample to be tested against DNA evidence and it was not a match. However, the victim refused to give up. Two further tests showed that he was innocent, but was he? For pictures and more information, join us on Faceb...

Kate and Adrian Prout lived on Redhill Farm in the idyllic Gloucestershire countryside. He arranged pheasant shoots and ran a pipe-laying business. She catered for the shoots, arranged flowers in the local church, walked her dogs and did pottery. Life seemed like it couldn’t get any better, but behind closed doors, it was everything but perfect. Then Kate vanished. Adrian believed that she had lef...

When an outspoken journalist and political commentator failed to return home after a day’s work, his wife knew he had been kidnapped in an attempt to silence him. Four months later his decapitated body was found in the woods outside Kyiv. This is the story of Georgiy Gongadze, whose death brought about historical change in a country in turmoil. Sponsor: Best Fiends - Download Best Fiends FREE on t...

Dear Evidence Locker listeners, Unfortunately, there will be no regular episode this week, as we've had some technical difficulties in recording remotely.  We’ll be back next week with a new case! Meanwhile, here is a Q&A episode, phone conversation between Noel and Sonya, answering questions from listeners. Links to the episodes discussed in the conversation: 1. Sweden - The Tent Killings at...

In 1984, the Oregon town of The Dalles suffered a mass outbreak of food poisoning. More than 700 of its residents were affected. Health officials looked at hygiene in local restaurants, but an investigation led them to a local spiritual commune who had a plot to taking over the city’s government. Sponsored by Philo – TV for everyone . Sign up at philo.tv/evidence and get 25% off your first two mon...

It was a Sunday night like any other in the Wilson home. Alistair, the 30-year-old father of two, was reading bedtime stories to his young sons when an unknown man rang the doorbell. Moments later, Alistair was dead – shot three times on the doorstep of the family home. Alistair's murder would become one of Scotland's most puzzling unsolved mysteries. Sponsors Noom: Sign up for your trial today at...

Aurore Martin and Marc De Beers got married in May 1995 and honeymooned on the French island of Corsica. A romantic late-night drive ended in a tragic accident, costing Marc his life. But something didn’t quite add up and when investigators learnt about a similar accident in their home country of Belgium three years before, they knew there was more to this untimely death than met the eye…  Sponsor...

**To everyone isolating at the moment - here is a little something extra. It was released as a Patreon-only bonus mini-sode in September 2019. Hang in there, be safe, and please stay home.** When Dorothy Donovan was found brutally murdered in her Delaware home suspicion fell on her son, Charles. He had a bizarre story and everyone thought he was guilty. Until DNA proved otherwise...   Resources Yo...

When the body of a young Japanese woman was found in a hidden storage room in a building in Auckland’s CBD, police were stumped. Once they identified her, they learnt she was Kayo Matsuzawa, a 29-year-old English student who had worked and studied in Christchurch. She disappeared hours after she arrived for a weekend of sightseeing in Auckland. She was found eleven days later and her state of deco...

**To everyone isolating at the moment - here is a bonus mini-sode. Hang in there, be safe, and please stay home.** On the morning of 2 December 1997, family and friends grew concerned when 23-year-old actress Anat Elimelech and her ex-boyfriend, celebrity hairdresser David Afuta did not respond to phone calls. David’s brother broke into the apartment the lovers used to share and found both of them...

19-year-old Roberto Succo was sentenced to 10 years in a psychiatric facility after killing both his parents. After five years he escaped and travelled to France and Switzerland where a committed a series of crimes, including robbery, rape and murder. Law enforcement agencies from three countries hunted Europe’s most wanted man, but he remained elusive to the end, even in captivity.  For pictures...

WARNING: This episode is about the sexual assault and murder of a young woman. Listener discretion is advised. Holly Bobo was a bright and beautiful 20-year old nursing student, who on the morning of Wednesday the 13th of April 2011 was on her way to write an exam. Her brother, Clint, saw Holly a man in camouflage hunting gear walking off into the woods behind their home. That was the last time an...

In 2005, Mexico City police were dealing with a series of unsolved murders. In each case, the victims were elderly women who lived alone. Police released information on the possible suspect: it was a tall male between 40 and 50 years of age who did not have a permanent job and relied on public transportation. Possibly a transgender person. When someone was arrested running away from a murder scene...

On a night in early November of 1982, 20-year-old Tony Jones called home from a phone booth in Townsville, North Queensland. He was on a six-month hitchhiking trip around Australia and planned to head home to Perth for Christmas. He intended to catch a ride along the Flinders Highway to meet his brother Tim in Mount Isa. The highway that has been dubbed: The Highway of Death. No one ever heard fro...

When the body of 51-year-old Frieda Rösner was discovered in the woods behind a hospital in Köpenick, Berlin in 1943, police arrested a local man, Bruno Lüdke. He was intellectually challenged and people who knew him were surprised when they learnt he had confessed. But it was only the tip of the iceberg… In the end, Lüdke confessed to 84 murders. He was sent to The National Socialist Criminal Med...

A Sacramento father and husband lost his wife and two children, one after the other in the space of three years. Investigators were baffled and thought that they had a genetic disease, or that they were exposed to a toxic substance within their home. But when Jack Barron’s aged mother also died in a similar way in her home in Oakland, they knew there was more than coincidental tragedy at play… Spo...

On the 8th of June 1989 the body of 44-year-old nurse, Cindy James was found in an abandoned lot in Vancouver. She had been drugged, strangled and hogtied, yet RCMP investigators considered her death to be a suicide. In the seven years leading up to Cindy’s strange death, she was continually harassed and threatened – could her tormentor have been closer to home than anyone realised? Sponsored by:...

Alexander ‘Sasha’ Spesivtsev lured women and children into his Soviet-style apartment. He tortured, raped and murdered them. When his mother found the corpses, she took it upon herself to dismember them and dispose of them piece by piece in the Aba River. Smaller pieces were made into soups and stews that mother and son enjoyed together. Their dog always had a human bone, cut from the latest victi...