Just The Tip-Sters: True Crime Podcast

Melissa opens Season 4 with a vexing case out of Soutwest Ohio – the town of Kettering , where on February 7, 1999, nine year-old Erica Baker took her aunt’s dog for a walk and never returned.  The dog, with leash still attached, was found just an hour after Erica left the house.  And this disappearance is not just frustrating and sad (as all cold or missing person cases are).  It is also weird.  ...

As a between-season special, we thought we’d pass along this delightful interview with Melissa from last week when she visited the YouTube Live channel for The Incognito Society and its host, Elizabeth.  In the interview, Melissa shares a lot about herself, her podcast, the relationship between podcasts and law enforcement, as well as a number of cases, including the vexing Delphi Murders out of I...

Melissa wraps up Season 3 of the podcast with the tale of an horrific “family annihilator” mass murder from 2002 and the mysterious 18 year delay it took to bring a suspect to justice...mysterious because, right from the very beginning, all signs pointed – with big bright shiny, glowing arrows – to Jason Michael Walker , who was finally arrested on December 2, 2020 after nearly two decades followi...

On this special episode, Melissa explores the phenomenon of outlier religious or alternative followings – otherwise known as cults.  At the center of this fascinating discussion, Melissa focuses on the still-operating community known as  Buddhafield – currently situated in Hawaii.  The cult is the subject of the 2016 documentary “ Holy Hell ,” which was made by former cult member Will Allen, with...

On October 19, 1971, ten year-old Cheryll Spegall was last seen running to catch the bus to school near her home in Highland Heights, Kentucky.  No one saw her after that.  No one, that is, except her murderer.  Whoever that person is (or was), he has never been caught.  Not yet, that is.  Cheryll’s lifeless body was found nearly two weeks later, buried under a pile of rocks in a remote area in ne...

Ever since the mid-1980s, when Sir Alec Jeffreys first developed “genetic fingerprinting” which soon came to be known of DNA profiling , forensic science has not only become more important in crime-solving than in the previous several hundred years combined, its potential for making it almost impossible to commit a crime in the first place seems to grow exponentially with each passing day.  To be...

Murderers are evil – and yes they’re evil because they take the lives of innocents – but also because of the lives and futures they affect for those left behind.  Sometimes the murder itself is so disturbing or maddening that it’s easy to forget that the friends and colleagues – and particularly family –  who are left to pick up the pieces of a murdered or disappeared loved on are often victimized...

This Thanksgiving week Melissa updates a couple of unsolved missing person cases – one we’ve not yet covered but which has been covered extensively and one we’ve covered extensively and almost no one else has…and as with all unsolved cases, it’s a mixed bag.  The first update has to do with the 2015 disappearance of Crystal Rogers , the then 35 year-old mother of five from Bardstown Kentucky who w...

You wanna hear a really creepy ghost story?  Well…actually…a really creepy satanic possession story…or something? Try this on for size: Guy gets really good at his job.  So good that he’s given a cameo doing his job in one of the biggest horror movies of the century.  A movie whose set became legendary for weird accidents, injuries, fires – even deaths! – during its making…and a few years later, s...

Diane Louise Augat did not have an easy life.  Diagnosed with bipolar disorder in her early 30s, she lost her marriage and custody of her children as she was forcibly institutionalized 32 times between 1990 and 1998.  Living the best life she could, protected and watched over by family who cared for her, Diane was living with her sister in Odessa , a tiny town located in Pasco County, just north o...

There is absolutely no doubt that a new era in crime-solving was introduced with the bombshell announcement in the spring of 2018 that the four decades-long search for the infamous and evil Golden State Killer had been solved utilizing publicly available DNA data and applying the science of genetic genealogy .  In the two-and-a-half years since Joseph James DeAngelo was brought to justice, more th...

This episode takes us back to the Tri-State area (the Cincinnati Metro Area), where Episode 147 took us in an overview of the Bill and Peggy Stephenson murder investigation out of Kenton County Kentucky.  The Stephensons were murdered in their townhome on a quiet suburban street over Memorial Day weekend in 2011 under strange circumstances.  Across the other side of the Ohio River, to the northwes...

This week’s episode updates two podcasts from the first season of JTT – Episode 16, which focused on the weird death of Vicki Morgan, who had been a sort of paid mistress to Alfred Bloomingdale and (sometimes) his high powered friends – and Episode 19, which told the tale of Grade A Asshole Scott Peterson – who may or may not have murdered his wife Laci and the couple’s unborn son back in 2002.  T...

This week’s episode is the third in a row wherein Melissa looks at a case revolving around a state of emergency – the first two are still technically unsolved – this one is solved but every bit as fascinating.  Dana Marie Surette Pastori, who was known as "Polly" to her friends and to her customers at the Bourbon Street restaurant in New Orleans where she last worked in 2002, had lived a turbulent...

Last week’s episode concerning the disappearance of Sneha Philip right on the cusp of the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11/2001 got Melissa to thinking about other cases revolving around major national emergency events.  And so this week’s episode is about someone else whose disappearance – this one occurring just the day after 9/11 – is still a mystery and whose killer has never been convicted...

The recent anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001 was once again a moment to pause and reflect on the awful events of that day, and the heroism of so many people from all walks of life who helped remind us all of the humanity we all share.  So many souls were lost that day – the official count is nearly 3,000 – and even after all this time there...

Earlier this year, in Episode 130 , Melissa retold the story of a terrible and terribly unsolved murder out of Fort Worth Texas – the tragic 1974 abduction and killing oif 17 year-old Carla Jan Walker.  Carla and her boyfriend had just attended the Valentine’s dance at Carla’s high school and were doing what young lovers do in the front seat of the boyfriend’s car, in the parking lot of a local bo...

If you’ve never experienced small town life, it’ll be almost impossible to comprehend the now-infamous tale of tiny Skidmore Missouri and the day nearly forty years ago that forever changed it.  That day – July 10, 1981 – was the day 47 year-old Ken Rex McElroy was gunned down in cold blood, in a hail of gunfire, in broad daylight while sitting in his truck alongside his wife, on Skidmore’s Main S...

What makes a prolific serial killer like Randy Kraft – who authorities say brutalized, sexually assaulted and mutilated at least 61 (and almost certainly more unknown) young men in Southern California, Oregon and Michigan in the 1970s and early 1908s – prolific?  How is it possible for such a large number of victims to fall prey to someone who is inarguably a monster?  The answer appears to be tha...

For more than a dozen years, from the early 1970s through the early 1980s, Randy Kraft , a callous and truly sinister serial killer, terrorized young men and boys throughout Soutern California.  His crimes, which included several in other states as well, were some of the most horrific and brutal ever seen by law enforcement.  Kraft was convicted of 16 murders – which involved everything from tortu...

It’s the big Tuesday after the Big Thursday of last week, when our gal got her first taste of TV fame in her home town of Cincinnati – and it’s time to get back to the business at hand with a brand new episode...In June of 1978 the body of a young man – aged 15 to 19 years old – was discovered face down on a back street/alley/parking lot in Long Beach, California.  He was well dressed.  His body a...

Even though Nicole Croom (originally from Stockton California) and Jordan Taylor (originally from Waterbury Connecticut) grew up 3,000 miles apart from each other, both of the two young women found themselves fascinated with pathology – specifically forensic pathology – you know: the science of cutting into dead bodies to see what’s what.  As it happens both Nicole and Jordan found themselves firs...

40 years ago this past weekend, on August 16, 1980, 17 year-old Randy Sellers went to the Kenton County, Kentucky Fair to meet with friends and hang out.  Sometime during the evening, he had too much to drink, got into a fight, took a swing at one of the policemen who responded to the scene and was eventually taken away in a squad car.  He has not been seen or heard from since.  In early 2019, on...

57 years ago psychiatrist J.M. Macdonald   wrote a paper published in The American Journal of Psychiatry entitled "The Threat to Kill," in which he proposed that there is a link between three childhood behaviors - persistent bed-wetting past the age of 5, an obsession with fire and fire-starting, and cruelty to animals - and violent behavior, most notably homicidal and sexually predatory behavior....

One of the very reasons this podcast got started nearly three years ago was that Melissa became involved with her local community in searching for a man who seemingly disappeared into thin air back in 2017.  As far as Linda Cierzan knew, her husband, Will Cierzan was at home making dinner on the evening of January 26, 2017.  But when she entered the house upon returning from work, a chicken was si...