Just The Tip-Sters: True Crime Podcast

On this episode Melissa gets real about a couple of true crime-related issues - one about those delightful folks who use (far too) easy racism as a way to excuse or further their awful or simply stupid deeds - and the other involving the very nature of the True Crime genre itself.  We start off with a silly story from a detective contact Melissa converses with from time to time - involving a car,...

Just across the Ohio River and a few miles south of downtown Cincinnati lies the quiet suburban community of Florence, Kentucky.  It was there, in an average condominium on a quiet residential street in the community of Oakbrook , on Memorial Day weekend, when Bill and Peggy Stephenson were brutally murdered in the early morning hours of May 29, 2011.  And they were murdered for reasons - and by p...

Sometimes the life of a cop can be filled with danger and even terror.  Sometimes with grief none but those wearing Blue can even begin to comprehend.  But a police officer's day is also filled with a never-ending parade of examples of the weirdness and wonder of the human species - and oftentimes those examples can be amazing in their complexity and/or rife with outrageous (and sometimes gruesome...

In this episode, the last of a four-part series on what came to be known as the "Baton Rouge Serial Killers," we meet Sean Vincent Gillis - the "other" of the two evil men who rained terror upon women in South Louisiana in the late 90s and early 2000s.  The "original" killer, whom Melissa dubbed "The Key Collector" (because of his penchant for keeping victims' keychains as souvenirs) was Derrick T...

When you're a veteran cop in a small town, with a deep knowledge of your community and the bad guys in it - and you're smart and everyone knows it...well...you'd think that when a serial killer is loose in your backyard and your years of experience with, and detailed documentation about, one bad guy in particular points as clearly to that bad guy as being said serial killer - you'd think the egghe...

The string of murders that eventually led to the realization that a serial killer was on the loose in Baton Rouge Louisiana began  on when the body of 41 year-old Gina Wilson Green was found murdered in her home near the LSU campus on September 24, 2001.  But by the time Derrick Todd Lee was finally unveiled as the terror known as the "Baton Rouge Serial Killer," it became clear that his trail of...

Beginning in 1993 and continuing for a full decade thereafter, dark haired women were being murdered in and around the river town of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  The means and methods of the murders were not consistent, leaving law enforcement baffled as to who their unknown suspect might be.  It turns out that the man the cops were looking for was one Derek Todd Lee, who the press came to call the Ba...

Sometimes there's just too much to talk about at the top of a podcast without getting in the way of the episode's main subject matter.  And so far this June, there are three separate cases that Melissa would have mentioned at the top of JUST THE TIP-STERS if they had happened at different times - but they all converged at once!  All three are cases that Melissa isn't planning on doing an episode o...

Carolyn Rose was a driven, successful real estate agent working in suburban Pensacola Florida when one day, after she didn't return from a mid-day home showing, her colleagues drove over to the empty house to find her car still parked in the driveway.  Inside the empty, brand new home they found Carolyn's crumpled nude body, hands bound - and dead.  She had been raped before being strangled.  The...

When Tracy Trudgett got the news in late 2018, she passed out. Tracy hadn't seen her brother Shane Snellman, since she visited him in prison nearly a decade before. Tracy and Shane had been separated from their father when they were just children - raised in a convent and then foster parents  when the New South Wales authorities refused to let dad have the kids back due to his single parent status...

So hold on just a minute.  Let's get this straight:  Guy was murdered in his home.  All the doors were locked. No broken or open windows.  All the locks had been recently changed except the French doors in the bedroom.  The only person known to have a second key for those French doors is guy's soon-to-be ex-wife, whose new live-in boyfriend hates guy's guts and - in more than one written email and...

Since 1980, more than a quarter of a million unsolved homicides have occurred in the United States - which is more than all U.S. military deaths since the end of WWII.  And here's the maddening truth about those unsolved cases - there is no centralized agency in the United States dedicated to keeping track of cold or inadequately investigated murders.  Unbelievably, the statistics we read about mu...

In one of the most rage-inducing cases she's covered so far, Melissa investigates the outrageous circumstances surrounding the official suicide of U.S. Army PFC LaVena Johnson while stationed at the Balad Air Base in Iraq in July 2005, just eight days shy of here 20th birthday.  And we put the emphasis on "official" because the "official" position of the Army is...well..."suspect" is the kindest w...

18 year- old Abdi Sharif lived with his family in Des Moines, Iowa.  He and his sister both worked at a local Target store to help support the struggling household.  By all accounts a happy, friendly kid, Abdi intended to spend some time with his friends on a snowy night at the mall where the Target Store is located on a snowy January 17, 2020.  He was last seen walking on a road near the mall, an...

Bryce Laspisa was having problems.  What sort of problems, he wouldn't say.  But at the end of August 2013 it was pretty clear to his friends - and his girlfriend - up in the far-Northern California town of Chico, where Bryce was attending a local community college, that something was not right.  The young redhead had started giving some of his prized possessions away.  He told his mother - who li...

In October 1998 15 year-old Crystal Marler disappeared from her home in McCreary County Kentucky after being out with friends and - evidence suggests - briefly returning to the house. Where she went, and with whom, remains a mystery.  As too often happens when a teenager vanishes, the authorities did not take Crystal's disappearance as anything much more than a case of a runaway.  That perception...

This time around we focus not just on another missing persons case where we KNOW that SOMEONE knows something that could close it - but also a look into an amazing organization working hard to solve that case and dozens of others around the United States.  The case: 41 year-old Jeffrey Combs from Wilkesboro North Carolina, a sweet and caring fellow who, after a hard-knocks youth filled with traged...

25 year-old Jennifer Morey had just moved into her Houston,Texas-area apartment - her very first - on April 14, 1995.  She went out to dinner with friends to celebrate her move-in, then had a  friend drive her home, where she went to bed in her brand-new place...and then around 4 am on April 15, Jennifer was awakened to the terrifying realization that she was being straddled by a stranger with a k...

It was sometime after midnight in February 1974, not long after the Valentine's Day Dance at Western Hills High School had ended in the Fort Worth suburb of Benbrook, Texas.  17 year-old Carla Walker and her boyfriend, high school football star Rodney McCoy, were in the front seat of Rodney's mom's 1969 LTD doing what teenage couples in love tend to do in cars on a Saturday night.  Suddenly,the pa...

In 1999, the remains of a young boy, probably no older than five or six, were found in a cemetery in DeKalb County Georgia - just outside of Atlanta.  The remains were compelling - and heartbreaking.  The boy had obviously been well taken car of - obviously loved.  The attire was impeccable - his clothing was new, clean and not inexpensive.  He had clearly been dressed by a caring parent - probabl...

Here's a major change of pace to bring a little springtime to your soul in this weird winter of our discontent - a stirring story of human redemption through the beauty of giving to, and caring for, other living beings -  which, in turn, redeems and restores  the lives of humans who find in themselves in the most dire of circumstances.  Jon Grobman, in his own estimation, was not a good person in...

Hal Arthur was pretty much what anybody would want from a high school teacher.  One of the most respected and beloved instructors at Grant High School in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles, Mr. Arthur was a real hero - something every teacher should strive for.  A true advocate and helper of his students, Hal Arthur gave his own time and resources to make sure all kids in his charge had e...

You may recall, dear Tip-Ster, way back in Episode 8, when Melissa recalled the tragic-yet-amazing story of "Tent Girl," a young woman whose body was  found wrapped in a canvas designed to wrap circus tents, on the side of a road near Georgetown Kentucky in May 1968.  Tent Girl's story is remarkable for two reasons.  The first remarkable fact is that after a couple of years of trying everything th...

On a warm summer Oklahoma day in 2008, two best friends - 13 year-old Taylor Paschal-Placker and 11 year-old Skyla Whitaker - went for a walk along a desolate dirt road near Taylor's home in the small town of Weleetka, on their way to a local creek, where they were going to hunt for pebbles and shells.  When they didn't return after darkness fell, Taylor's grandfather went looking for the girls -...

In the cold early morning hours of February 11, 1987, 37 year-old Peggy Hettrick left the Prime Minister nightclub in Fort Collins, Colorado, heading across the street to an open field, toward her ex-boyfriend's apartment on the other side of the field, where she hoped to get some shelter until she could get back into her own apartment, for which she had lost her key.  As the sun rose a few hours...