Love and Murder: Heartbreak to Homicide

A teenage boy showed up for a routine school check-in in Brookville, Pennsylvania. Staff hadn’t seen him in person for over a year, and what they saw stopped everything. He weighed just 79 pounds, was wearing a diaper, and showed signs of severe malnutrition and abuse. What investigators uncovered next left even the most seasoned of police officers shook. Listen to the case of Sarah Faber ********...

A passerby heard a baby crying from a dumpster behind a hotel in Columbus, Georgia. Inside, police found a newborn boy tied inside trash bags, left there for hours, and somehow still alive.  The question is why and who did this? This is the case of Zinnia Hernandez. Listen now on Love and Murder ************************************************************************************************ Podcas...

Deputies responded to a “disturbance” in Key Largo where they found a man, George Henry Balboni, bleeding on the ground with arrows scattered around his body. This case raises one question: when does a roommate dispute turn into an attempted execution? Listen now to this Florida Man Friday. ************************************** Do you have thoughts about this case, or is there a specific true cri...

Firefighters responded to a burning car on a quiet Mississippi road just after sunrise. By the time the flames died down, there was nothing left but a blackened shell and no sign of the woman who owned it. Hours later, 36-year-old Ebony Owens was reported missing after she didn’t show up for work. What started as a welfare check quickly turned into a homicide investigation. As detectives peeled ba...

Police were called to a home in Reedley, California, where Yesennia Rocha had been shot by her husband, Michael Rocha right in front of their adult children and family members. What followed was a day-long manhunt and a deadly shootout with deputies that left two parents gone within 24 hours and their children trying to make sense of a life shattered in a single weekend. This is the case of Yesenn...

A 911 call came in from a Florida motel pool reporting a possible drowning — but the man on scene said no one had drowned… and couldn’t explain where his fiancée was. What police uncovered next involved infidelity, threats, a sudden breakup, and a woman found soaked, shaking, and pointing straight at the man she said tried to kill her.  This is the case of Drew Williams, the Capri Motel pool, and...

A frantic 911 call… a husband on the ground… and a wife screaming that she “did not mean to run over him.” Just after 7:30 p.m. in Lavaca, Arkansas, Clayton Masterson was found crushed beneath a van while his estranged wife, Dara Masterson, begged dispatchers to help him. What started as a routine pickup ended in a scene investigators are still trying to untangle. Was this a reckless, intoxicated...

It started with a welfare check. Deputies went out to a rural Georgia property looking for a 14-year-old girl named Mary Crocker… and instead uncovered a nightmare buried in the backyard. Mary wasn’t the only child missing. Her brother, Elwyn “JR” Crocker Jr., had vanished too, and neither child had ever been reported missing. This is one of the most disturbing child abuse cases Georgia has ever s...

A neighbor in Immokalee, Florida made a desperate call after spotting two dogs trapped in a roofless backyard pen — one already dead, the other barely hanging on in the heat. What deputies found behind that fence set off an entire criminal investigation. This is the case of Ally and Blackie — and animal neglect that turned fatal. ************************************** Do you have thoughts about th...

A late-night welfare check in Marana, Arizona turned into something far darker when police were shown screenshots no one could explain, 29-year-old Taton Dorfman, lying in bed next to his girlfriend, 30-year-old Hannah Rogers, covered in blood and saying, “I killed her.” What started as a FaceTime call spiraled into a confession, a standoff, and a courtroom where forgiveness collided with reality....

On Nassau Drive in Las Vegas, 23-year-old Mark Gaughan lay dying on the sidewalk with a gunshot wound to the neck while his 20-year-old girlfriend, Allysandra Blea, told 911 it was all just an accident during a late-night “photoshoot” with a friend’s gun. But when detectives pulled her messages, search history, and photos that story started to look very different. This is the case of Mark Gaughan...

A late-night meetup in Panama City, Florida turned into a high-speed chase with a terrified mother realizing her 7-year-old son had been shot in the back. At the center of it all was Sammie Underwood III, an angry ex who wouldn't see reason. And when deputies went looking for him, the story only got darker. This is the Florida case of Sammie Underwood, Uyvonna Powell, and a child caught in the mid...

A welfare check in Everman, Texas should’ve been simple, until officers learned six-year-old Noel Rodriguez-Alvarez hadn’t been seen in months. His mother, Cindy Rodriguez Singh, gave multiple stories about where the boy was, but was any of it true? What followed was a flight out of the country, cadaver dog alerts, a demolished patio, and a mother added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list before fin...

Late one night in West Conshohocken, neighbors woke to screams and gunfire, and a young woman, 25-year-old Alyssa Rose Wiest, running for her life from her boyfriend, Michael Dutkiewicz. Alyssa’s case is one of the most chilling examples of relationship violence we’ve covered, and the evidence that came out at trial is the kind that stays with you. This is the murder of Alyssa Rose Wiest…  Listen...

A five-year-old girl showed up at a neighbor’s door in Hilliard, Florida covered in blood splatter, shaking, and begging for help. She told them the man inside her house “had killed others.”  Moments later, deputies walked into one of the most disturbing murder-suicides Nassau County has ever seen. What pushed this quiet family home into a scene of terror? And how did a little girl become the only...

First responders were called to a Cold Springs home for a little girl “not breathing”… but what they found didn’t look anything like a medical emergency. Five-year-old Izabella was cold to the touch, lying beside a bare mattress, her small body covered in bruises no child earns by accident. As detectives moved through the house, the truth surfaced fast, and the parents’ stories fell apart the mome...

A single gunshot inside a hunting cabin in Zambia, and a wealthy dentist claiming his wife accidentally shot herself while packing a rifle. But the details around Bianca Rudolph’s death didn’t add up. Not the wound, not the timing, and definitely not what investigators uncovered about Larry Rudolph’s double life waiting back home. Soon, a so-called accident turned into a murder case built on affai...

Two Florida cases, two sets of parents, and two stories that should’ve never been allowed to happen in the first place. In the first case, six-year-old Anthony Rouse is found unresponsive in a bathtub. His parents claim he drowned… but the truth came out in text messages, a dog cage, and a sibling’s terrified confession. The second case takes another turn. Nine children removed from a home full of...

A mother goes to clean her son’s closet… and instead finds two bags so heavy, so wrong that she can’t bring herself to open the second layer. Minutes later, police arrive—and 19-year-old Brian Cohee calmly tells them exactly what they’re about to find. A human head and human hands. And the name of the man they belonged to: Warren Barnes, a beloved figure known around Grand Junction as “the reading...

A respected law professor. A bitter custody battle. And a murder that took more than a decade to fully unravel. When Dan Markel was gunned down in his Tallahassee driveway in 2014, investigators uncovered a murder-for-hire plot tied to his ex-wife’s family, the Adelsons. Now, after years of wiretaps, arrests, and courtroom chaos, the matriarch herself, Donna Adelson, has finally faced justice. Con...

A three-year-old boy is rushed to Norton Children’s Hospital in Louisville, his hands and arms covered in blistered burns. Doctors take one look and know—this wasn’t an accident. This is the case of Breanna Lair and Jacob Snead. Then, another Louisville. This time, Alabama. A mother, Amber Winstead, wakes up in a motel bathtub to find her baby, Ki’Arri Rayne Winstead, underwater. What she told pol...

When Hollywood actress Dominique Dunne landed her breakout role in Poltergeist, her future looked unstoppable ... until love turned deadly. At just 22, she was strangled outside her West Hollywood home by her ex-boyfriend, John Sweeney, a man whose obsession spiraled into violence. But what followed was almost as shocking as the murder itself. How did a confessed killer serve less than four years...

A frantic 911 call, a baby in the backseat, and a story that didn’t add up. When police in Ormond Beach, Florida arrived, 18-month-old Sebastian Gardner was already gone. His small body showed signs that he’d been left in a hot truck for hours while his father, Scott Gardner, sat drinking inside a bar. What followed was a case that shocked even seasoned officers, not just because of what happened,...

When a scuba diver unzipped a duffel bag at the bottom of a quiet Ohio quarry, he expected lost gear,  not what spilled out next. Inside were towels, rocks… and the body of a newborn baby boy. The community called him Baby Boy Hope, vowing to find the monster who had done it. But the truth, when it finally came six years later, stunned everyone. The killer wasn’t a stranger ... it was a girl they...

When 43-year-old Kristil Krug was found beaten and stabbed in her Colorado garage, police thought her past had caught up with her. For months, she’d been stalked and terrorized by who she thought was her ex-boyfriend—sending threats, photos, and messages that tracked her every move. Her estranged husband, Daniel Krug, was "there to protect her." But as police dug deeper, they realized that what be...