Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski | True Crime News & Commentary

This is the interview that changes how you see the Murdaugh case. James Lasdun's The Family Man spent years pulling threads that nobody else followed — and what he found reframes everything from the boat crash to the verdict. The book reveals that the accepted narrative of who was driving the boat the night Mallory Beach died may have been built after the fact. It traces Alex's manipulation patter...

The good days are the trap. You disappear one compromise at a time. And the most dangerous moment is when you decide to go. That is the arc of this conversation — the full three-part interview with psychotherapist Shavaun Scott about the psychology the public refuses to accept. Four cases anchor the discussion: Mica Miller, who could name the trap and still went back. Asa Ellerup, who defended Rex...

June 1. Miami. Twelve jurors who have probably never heard Anna Kepner’s name will be asked to decide whether the person accused of killing her spends his life in federal prison. And the way this trial has been set up may surprise you as much as the verdict. Timothy Hudson’s defense team has not asked for a single continuance. The sixteen-year-old signed a written waiver requesting adult prosecuti...

Licensed therapists carried the words of three boys to the podium because those children still can’t face the woman prosecutors say killed their father — and what Kouri Richins did while listening tells you everything the jury already knows. The oldest wrote about becoming a parent to his younger brothers because the adult in the house couldn’t be bothered. He wrote about a father who’ll never be...

Everybody says just leave. As if it is one decision and then it is over. It is not. Leaving is a window. And everything the research tells us says that window is where the danger lives. Maggie Murdaugh had reportedly consulted a divorce attorney. She was living at the Edisto beach house. On June 7, two witnesses testified she did not want to go to Moselle when Alex asked her to come. Her own siste...

Three boys — ages nine, eleven, and thirteen — had their words read into the record by therapists because they couldn't face the woman convicted of killing their father. One described being locked in his room so often he can't remember which side the lock was on. Another described becoming a parent to his younger brother because their mother was drunk or gone. The youngest said hearing Kouri's nam...

Michael Scott lost his family. His daughter was three when he was arrested. His wife. His anniversary. Gone — not because of anything he did, but because detectives sat a man with learning disabilities in a room for 18 hours until he said what they wanted to hear. Robert Springsteen survived death row, had his sentence commuted, his conviction overturned, and his charges dropped — only to have the...

The Twelve Tribes reportedly designed a world where leaving meant losing everything. And according to former members, that was not a side effect. It was the point. In this episode, Tony Brueski examines what happens after the escape. Former members describe walking out of Twelve Tribes compounds with no savings, no identification, no work history, and no understanding of how to navigate a world th...

Nobody wakes up one morning and realizes they have lost themselves. It happens in increments so small they feel like nothing — an opinion you stop voicing, a friendship you let go, a boundary you move because moving it is easier than defending it. The erosion is invisible until the day you catch your own reflection and do not recognize who is looking back. This conversation puts two cases side by...

The worst moments in an abusive relationship are not what keep you there. The best ones are. The relief after the storm. The version of your partner who seems to understand what they did. That cycle rewires your nervous system in ways that have nothing to do with intelligence, willpower, or self-respect. And it is the reason Mica Miller could tell police her husband was grooming her and still go b...

The final part of our interview with James Lasdun, author of The Family Man , goes into the question the trial never touched: How does a man kill his own family? The book draws on decades of research into family annihilators and finds cases that are disturbingly similar to Alex Murdaugh. Jean-Claude Romand faked an entire career for eighteen years, stole from everyone close to him, and killed his...

Indiana's response brief in the Richard Allen appeal does not read like the work of a State that's confident in its conviction. It reads like the work of a State trying to keep three judges from ever opening the trial record. The defense brought specifics. The van timeline contradicted by FBI cell data. The confession that doesn't match the cause of death. The alternative suspect whose interview w...

April 23rd, 2026. Two things happen at the B Street Cruise Terminal in San Diego. Disney Cruise Line announces a landmark partnership extension through 2031 — doubling sailings, projecting over a million passengers through that dock. On the same day, at the same terminal, CBP agents board the Disney Magic and walk ten crew members off the ship in restraints. A passenger films her family’s head ser...

Kouri Richins has been sentenced to Life Without Parole after being found guilty of murdering her husband, Eric Richins, by poisoning him with a lethal dose of fentanyl in March 2022. She was also sentenced to several consecutive sentences for the other 4 charges. The case drew national attention from the beginning: a Utah mother, real estate agent, and children’s book author accused of killing he...

  A jury already decided what happened to Eric Richins. But at sentencing, his wife's defense team made clear they weren't done fighting — and they weren't going quietly. At Kouri Richins' sentencing hearing, attorneys Wendy Lewis and Kathy Nester came in swinging. Lewis told the court flat-out that her client cannot show remorse for something she claims she didn't do — a calculated argument that...

If three judges at the Indiana Court of Appeals rule the search of Richard Allen's home was unconstitutional, Indiana cannot use the .40-caliber pistol again. Not in this case. Not in a retrial. Not ever. That is the consequence sitting underneath the search warrant issue in the Delphi appeal. It is also the reason the de novo standard of review on that issue matters so much. De novo means the app...

Verdicts get the headlines. Victim impact statements get the truth. Kouri Richins has been sentenced to [INSERT SENTENCE] for the murder of her husband, Eric Richins — poisoned with a lethal dose of fentanyl in March 2022 while his children slept nearby. The jury already decided what she did. Now, the people who loved Eric got to say what it cost them. In the sentencing hearing, Eric's family stoo...

No DNA. No fingerprints. No forensic link. No witnesses. The only evidence against Robert Springsteen and Michael Scott in the yogurt shop murders was their own coerced words — confessions extracted after days of interrogation by detectives who blocked the door and screamed questions from inches away. Springsteen was sentenced to death. Scott got life. The jury never learned that the detective who...

Before Alex Murdaugh ever opened his mouth to testify, the Colleton County Clerk of Court had already told the jury what to think. Don’t be fooled. Watch his movements. Don’t let the defense confuse you. The South Carolina Supreme Court just ruled that those words — spoken by an officer of the court with a financial motive for conviction — destroyed the integrity of the verdict. The unanimous ruli...

Inside the Twelve Tribes, adultery was reportedly the worst sin a member could commit. Punishable by banishment. No exceptions. Except one. When founder Gene Spriggs allegedly discovered his wife Marsha had affairs with young male disciples, he did not apply the rules he had enforced on everyone else. He reportedly ordered the transgressions covered up and privately forgave her. Families had been...

Richard Allen walked into Westville Correctional Facility weighing 180 pounds. By April 2023, he weighed 135 pounds. He had been in solitary confinement the entire time. He was not under sentence. He had not yet been to trial. He was a pretrial detainee in a maximum-security prison's most restrictive housing — and the documented evidence is that he was losing his mind. He tore up his legal mail. H...

Indiana's response brief in the Richard Allen appeal does not read like the work of a State that's confident in its conviction. It reads like the work of a State that's worried about its record. The defense brought specifics. A van timeline contradicted by FBI cell data and surveillance footage. A confession from Richard Allen claiming he shot Abby Williams and Libby German, when the medical exami...

Part 2 of our interview with James Lasdun, author of The Family Man , digs into the night of the murders — and what the jury at Alex Murdaugh's trial was never shown. The full SLED timeline from June 7th included calls and texts between Alex and men with criminal records just hours before the killings. Alex had deleted his entire call log from that week. The next morning, Cousin Eddie texted him t...

The evidence across the D4VD case, Nancy Guthrie's alleged abduction, and the Duggar family allegations shares something uncomfortable in common — each allegedly involves a system designed to protect people that reportedly failed the people who needed it most. Tony Brueski and Robin Dreeke work through the most pressing questions across all three cases. The D4VD evidence demands accountability for...

Two years before Lynette Hooker disappeared off a dinghy in the Bahamas, she sent messages to a friend that read, in hindsight, like a flashing light. She had walked away from her husband Brian. She had walked away from the boat. She told her friend, in her own words, it was real bad — that she could not be out there with him. A month later, the messages show, she was back. Two years later, she wa...