Just The Tip-Sters: True Crime Podcast

In 2009 Mitrice Richardson, a young and beautiful twentysomething taking a year off between her graduate and postgraduate studies, showed up one night far from home at a ritzy Malibu, California restaurant - behaving weirdly.  When she told the wait staff she couldn't pay the bill, the LA County Sheriff's Department was called and Richardson was hauled away to jail  What happened next is the stuff...

What kind of a sick monster would be so crass as to commit a burglary that he really didn't need to commit, then set out to murder anyone who not only betrayed him by telling on him, but also taking out anyone he THOUGHT MIGHT betray him...and recruiting others to do it for you?  Our boy Clarence Ray Allen, that's who.  Take a walk to the darkest side of Darkness Avenue with Melissa as she recount...

Are you addicted to true crime?  Love a really scary ghost story?  Seen all the "Freddy" movies 15 times each?  Good for you!  You are NOT a freak bunky - in fact, you may be healthier than most people.  As Melissa explains in this intriguing MURDERTIZER (an appetizer of murder), exposing yourself to scary tales may just make you feel safer and more secure! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company...

In part 2 of Melissa's exploration of the conviction of Kevin Cooper in the bloody slaughter of the Ryen family of Chino Hills California in 1983, your host gets into the nitty (and truly) gritty details of the positively botched investigation conducted by law enforcement at the time of the murders, and Cooper's decades-long path to having new DNA testing conducted on items that were overlooked or...

In June 1983, two separate stories met at a ranch house in Chino Hills, California.  The first story is the brutal stabbing/axing/icepicking mass murder of Doug Ryen, his wife Peggy, their daughter Jessica and Christopher Hughes, the 11 year-old best friend of the Ryans' son, Josh - Josh himself was near death, but eventually survived.  The second story is that of one Kevin Cooper. a full-time con...

When Kentucky teenager Randy Lee Sellers got into a drunken brawl at the Kenton County Fair in 1980, the police who arrived decided not to arrest the young man, and instead put him in their patrol car to take him home.  And that's the last time his friends or his loved ones ever saw or heard of him again.  The patrol officers stated that Sellers asked to be dropped off prior to getting to his hous...

Greed is bad - evil greed is worse - and psychopathic evil greed is just downright bloody awful.  And Dana Ewell and his best bud Joel Radovcich were about the greediest, psycho-nut-job evil rat bastards ever to crawl into the world.  Melissa's retelling of this gruesome 1992 multiple murder of Ewell's parents and only sibling on Easter Sunday is as chilling as it is disgusting.  As usual though,...

Melissa's first MURDERTIZER (an appetizer of murder!) of 2019 catches us up on some important developments in the Will Cierzan and Thomas Brown cases.  PLUS a preview of an upcoming interview with one of the world's top DNA experts - AND a report on Melissa's personal taste test on that Trader Joe's garlic dip she's heard so much about from Tip-Ster Charlotte.  Oh and so very much more! Hosted by...

Melissa visits with true crime podcast aficionado and budding criminologist Tanya Todd, who visits the Homestead Studios all the way from Toronto, Canada to share some of her insights, theories and general worldview as she embarks on a path toward her criminology degree.  A delightful, funny, informative conversation between two lovers of the macabre, the mysterious and true crime solving. Hosted...

Melissa takes us through the deeply creepy disappearance of 18 year-old Thomas Brown on Thanksgiving Eve 2016, just moments after being videotaped pumping gas in the small town of Canadian, Texas.  Can it really be true that law enforcement botched this case so badly that the victim's mother had to hire a private investigation team to try to get to the truth?  Evidently so.  Because due to the har...

The very case that first inspired Melissa to host her own podcast - the case of the 2017 disappearance in Santa Clarita, California of Will Cierzan, beloved husband, brother and friend of just about everyone he met.  On the two-year anniversary of his vanishing, Melissa takes another look, determined to keep the case alive until Will is found.  The facts of Cierzan's disappearance (he has not been...

Jasmine and Jeremy and Jayme and Jake.  Two young girls and their boyfriends with cute and alliterative names.  Fun!  Right?  Um.   No.  In 2006, 12 year-old Jasmine Richardson disappeared from her home in Medicine Hat, Alberta after her parents and young brother were found brutally slain in their home.  At first, authorities believed that Jasmine was kidnapped by the killer and was being held hos...

It takes a lot for Melissa to go wild over a podcast - there are plenty she LIKES but only a handful that turn her into a true fan.  The "Big Feelings" Podcast with Lorraine Schweikhard and Ginger Warren shares that rare air.  And for good reason - Lorraine and Ginger are hilarious, engaging, thought provoking and a true joy to listen to.  Half chat-fest between two moms raising young children in...

Season 2 opens with a case that's haunted Melissa for 2 decades - the untimely deaths of John F. Kennedy, Jr., his wife Carolyn Bessette and Carolyn's sister Lauren.  Amid the obvious story lines of the Kennedy family's tragic history, its place in U.S. culture as the closest thing to an American royal family - and the sadness surrounding the demise of the young 38 year-old John-John, his bride an...

In the Season One Finale of JUST THE TIP-STERS, Melissa is joined on the phone by Michelle Kramer Joe - whose son - Cody Turner - disappeared without a trace in July 2015 after going out for the night and never returning to his grandparents' home in Yakima, Washington.  Michelle has spent the last three years struggling to keep Cody's name in the forefront of police and the press, both of which sh...

Getting ready to gorge on all those holiday appetizers?  Before you start digging in to the fruitcake pops, how about a tangy-but-hearty MURDERTIZER?  Melissa fills us in on the latest in the hideous swirling vortex of awful that is Joseph James DeAngelo - the latest being a surprising DNA  test that may present more questions than it answers.  Plus a court hearing sets the stage for a long (and e...

In the second episode of this month's focus on unsolved missing person cases, Melissa is joined on the phone from Washington DC by special guest TAD DIBIASE, a former federal prosecutor and author of the book "No Body Homicide Cases: A Practical Guide to Investigating, Prosecuting and Winning Cases When the Victim is Missing."  Dibiase has led a fascinating career, most recently focusing on how pr...

Melissa looks at the heartbreaking, frustrating disappearance of Shannon Baldwin Hokanson, a beautiful young mother of three who disappeared in Enid Oklahoma in 2012.  One of literally tens of thousands of unsolved missing persons cases each year in the United States, Shannon's case represents one of the most haunting and nightmarish scenarios any family member or loved one can ever face - the sud...

In her third and final installment on Los Angeles' most prolific serial killer, Lonnie Franklin, Jr. - aka The Grim Sleeper, Melissa examines the details of the botched search for the killer over the decades, the Los Angeles Police Department's eventual recognition of the importance of catching him - and Franklin's arrest and conviction.  Most compelling is Melissa's retelling of the victim impact...

It's the second installment of Melissa's recounting of the awful life and times of Lonnie Franklin, Jr. - the infamous "Grim Sleeper" killer who terrorized South Central Los Angeles for three decades before finally being brought to justice.  During those years Franklin, raped, tortured and murdered at least nine young women and killed one lone male victim - for reasons that are still only speculat...

Lonnie Franklin, Jr. was everybody's friend.  Gregarious.  Friendly to a fault/.  Had good jobs, first at the City Sanitation Department and then as a mechanic for the LAPD.  Lovely house on a corner lot.  Lovely and devoted wife.  Two kids.  Kinda guy that would give you the shirt off his back - or perform sometimes complex repairs to your car for just 20 bucks.  The epitome of a great neighbor. ...

Melissa is joined via telephone by one of the most fascinating crime-fighting duos ever to bring really bad guys to justice!  Except this bad "guy" was actually a female, but just as - or even more - evil than your average serial killer. Kelly Cochran was more than just a "black widow" - she is suspected of knocking off at least 10 men, including her last husband, Jason - whom she had enlisted in...

What ties together the still-unsolved 1981 Halloween murders of photographer Ronald Sisman and Smith College coed Elizabeth Platzman in a Greenwich Village apartment...and the murder of young, beautiful Arlis Perry in the Stanford University chapel some seven years prior to, and 3,000 miles away from, the Sisman/Platzman crime?  Well - it ain't anything...or anyONE...you'd suspect.  Join Melissa o...

In certainly what appears to be a series of gross miscarriages of justice, in the late 1970s Texas millionaire Cullen Davis was (a) acquitted of one murder, (b) not charged in a second murder and the attempted murder of his ex-wife and two others, then (c) got a hung jury in a SECOND trial where he was charged with soliciting the murder of two other people (and acquitted in the re-trial).  ALL of...

Melissa unravels another cold case brought to us by a Tip-Ster - this one frustrating to the point of maddening.  In July 1999 in Fresno, California, teacher/wife/mother, 54 year-old Sandra Kerby went to Target to pick up a few things - and was never seen or heard from again.  In the intervening years, lots of evidence points to one suspect - but not enough of it to issue an arrest warrant.  And t...