Just The Tip-Sters: True Crime Podcast

On this special edition of JUST THE TIP-STERS, Melissa travels south into deep Orange County California, to the campus of the University of California Irvine School of Law, where she spends a fascinating just-under-an-hour with Super Ninja Justice Lawyer Annee Della Donna, a private practice attorney in Laguna Beach who started and leads Innocence Rights Orange County.  Together with a hearty band...

Friendly, regular family guy Altemio Sanchez - affectionately known around his neighborhood in suburban Buffalo, NY as "Uncle Al" - couldn't have been more of your basic solid citizen.  A wife, kids, a good job at a local factory for more than two decades - all the markings of the Friend Next Door.  Until he wasn't.  Until he used his mornings off to attack, rape and murder unsuspecting women thro...

Hey!  Don't be distracted by that...er...more Podcasty sounding introduction...it was just a little something we tried...for about 30 seconds...and then realized we just ain't traditional Podcasty People!   Plus this is no time to mess around, since it's time for another TIP-STERS TWO CENTS, featuring listener emails, comments and general chit-chat.  PLUS Melissa and Producer Mark mix it up on a w...

In this week's podcast, Melissa rips a story directly from the headlines in a shocking, still-developing story out of Oregon, where Chef Daniel Brophy - a professor and chef at a prestigious school for the culinary arts - was found on the floor dying from a gunshot wound in one of the institute's kitchens in June 2018.  Just three months later, Brophy's wife, Nancy - a writer of romance/mystery no...

Who could have guessed that the trail to catching the infamous Golden State Killer led straight through the brilliant mind of a retired attorney, medical doctor and Ph. D. who took on genealogy as a hobby!  But that's exactly what happened when Det. Paul Holes recruited then 69 year-old Barbara Rae-Venter after reading about her phenomenal work two years earlier in San Bernardino.  In this episode...

Kicking September off with a Big Bunch of a Bang, Melissa covers some fascinating new ground in the ongoing prosecution of Joseph D'Angelo, the accused Golden State Killer.  Including a discussion of the brilliant legal move made by the Contra Costa County District Attorney to turn what could have been a legal dead end into a possible new prosecutorial avenue to get justice for more victims...a ba...

Here's a short but savory MURDERTIZER for your mid-week snack!  This time featuring a yellow Mini Cooper, a professor of anesthesiology and a big, bouncy yoga ball...oh, and of course, MURDER.  When Professor Khaw Kim-sun's wife and daughter were found dead in their family car on a Hong Kong street, there appeared to be no signs of trauma or any other reason for their mysterious passing.  What the...

...so then...there was that time when Melissa and Producer Mark were sitting down to dinner...and then...the phone rang...and then... - And what a night it was, when Producer Mark's job called him down to the scene of a murder in a building owned by the company he works for.  And guess who tagged along?  If you guessed Melissa, you get a gold "Just The Tip-Ster" star!  From that first harrowing ni...

So what is a girl to do when she's kinda sorta, you know, DONE with her husband and baby and wants to spend more time with her daddy-figure lover?  Well - according to some (not us! don't look at us!), you do what Cynthia Knox (allegedly) did - pay to have the ball 'n' chain slaughtered and drown the kid yourself.  Oh.  And then when the in-laws take exception to your plan and come after you, you...

When Shlomo (Sol) Salomen, his wife and two children suddenly disappeared from their suburban Northridge California home in October of 1982, nothing seemed to make sense.  But as the serene picture of a happy family life was peeled away, a seamy and steamy truth started to emerge - about Sol's family life, his lifestyle and, most importantly, his business and his business associates.  When one of...

A zesty MURDERTIZER wherein Melissa discusses the recent Oxygen Network documentary "Golden State Killer: Main Suspect," which features many new insights and interviews with friends and colleagues of accused GSK Joseph James D'Angelo.  PLUS Melissa reveals breaking news regarding two new cases from 1974 and 1975 that send a strong hint that the Golden State Killer's murderous ways started long bef...

Who woulda thunk it?  Two very different guys - ten years apart - used the sub-sub story line of an episode of a TV crime procedural from 2003 and (almost) successfully make it work in real life!  Or...er..death...  On this episode of JUST THE TIP-STERS Melissa takes a look into the deaths of two men - one from just weeks ago in 2018 in Florida and another from a decade ago in New Mexico, both of...

Melissa wraps up her examination of the West Mesa Murders in Albuquerque with a closer look at the multiplicity of possible persons of interest in the case - and not just the most obvious ones.  Along the way, Melissa introduces us to the story of creepy genius murderer Todd Kohlhepp -  who, while not the most likely culprit in the New Mexico slayings, demonstrates the potential of how any number...

First things first - an update on a couple of new newzbitz on the Golden State Killer prosecution and things we're learning about people and events on the periphery of the investigation (boffo stuff!).  And then Melissa continues her look into the still-unsolved West Mesa Murders in Albuquerque with profiles of each of the known victims in the case and their stories.  With the case still unsolved,...

In this short but totally sweet MURDERTIZER, Melissa reads some comments and suggestions from listeners and hands out some big thanks to other fans of the podcast.  We love our listeners and we love hearing from them even more! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Melissa takes a first look at the West Mesa Murders in Albuquerque - murders that happened over a long stretch of time but were not discovered until a mass grave was discovered on the mesa outside of town in 2009.  An incredibly frustrating case - especially for the families of the "Lost Girls" who went missing in the years before the discovery of the bones on the mesa - the majority of whom are s...

In a delicious mix of serious storytelling, film reviewing and humor, Melissa cuts loose on bad screenwriting AND awful murder as she looks at the life, career and death of writer/director/producer/actor Adrienne Shelly - who was murdered in her New York City office apartment in 2006, just when things were just starting to hit the bigtime for her.  Her indy film "Waitress" had just been named to d...

Those question marks in the title of this episode are there for a reason - because a real mystery is evolving regarding the unsolved 1978 murder of Patricia Neufeld in Garden Grove, California.  Originally attributed to a different mass murderer - who to this day denies Neufeld was "one of his" victims, a fresh look at the case reveals haunting similarities between the Orange County housewife's ho...

Nearly killed at birth.  Nearly drowned as a toddler.  Australian transplant to America, where he becomes a rich South Florida playboy.  Stone cold sexual predator.  One of the deadliest spree killers in U.S. history.  As Melissa explains in this episode, all of those descriptions apply to Christopher Wilder, who in less than three months in early 1984 wrote the swansong to his scabrous 39-year li...

It's been less than two months since the arrest of Joseph James DeAngelo, the alleged Golden State Killer - but WOW has new information been pouring out about the case ever since.  In this episode, Melissa goes through the search warrant served on the accused and the indictment - including new previously unpublicized allegations of creepy doings that are hard to believe (but, well, not that hard t...

One of the most frustrating cold cases in America comes to Melissa straight out of Houston Texas, where in late 2000 two completely unrelated women who happened to share the same exact first and last names were killed just four days apart. Could the first Mary Morris have been killed in a completely coincidental car fire?  Could a serial killer be on the loose who hates the word combo "Mary + Morr...

A blast from Melissa's college days turns into a rollercoaster ride of Murder-to-Movie- to-Murder!  A recollection of a movie from 1985 called "Blackout" - released when Melissa was still in college - pops in to her memory banks as she looks into the 1971 case of John List, who murdered his wife, children and mother in the most macabre way and went on the lam for nearly two decades before "America...

When one of our beloved Tip-Sters - Laurencia all the way from Maine! - sent Melissa an email to suggest this gruesome little tale, we were surprised to learn that its subject - Pennsylvania's own Gary Heidnik - was one of TWO real-life killers writer Thomas Harris used to create his monstrous "Buffalo Bill" character in "Silence of the Lambs."  We knew that Harris had used mass murderer Ed Gein t...

In the final years of GSK's known (and we stress KNOWN) string of vandalism, rapes and murders - from 1980 to 1986 - the killings were less frequent but far more brutal as he transitioned from Central to Southern California.  In this, the third and final installment on the history of the Golden State Killer, Melissa examines not only the brutal, last known murders in his spree - she also divulges...

In the second part of this multi-part series on California's infamous Golden State Killer, Melissa follows the path of the former East Area Rapist, now headed south to the state's Central Coast - and it's here where the now indicted John James DeAngelo allegedly acquires a real - and completely evil - taste for murder.  As fascinating as it is chilling (and not for the squeamish), the story of thi...