Michigan Monsters

The news was shocking. Occult obsessed cult leader Benny Evangelist, his wife, and their four young children had been murdered in their lavish Detroit home by an ax-wielding maniac. Beheaded. Dismembered. As police ran down the long list of suspects, an unfathomable possibility emerged. Was Benny himself behind the murders? The 1929 St. Aubin Street Massacre is one of Detroit’s oldest and most not...

Listener ghost stories, including the haunting of a town with a tragic past. 

As the Great Depression sunk its teeth into America, a Lansing man's fortune was on the rise- literally. Auto magnate R.E. Olds built a decadent sky scraper, the tallest building in Michigan's capital city, to house his bank. But less than a year after the Olds Tower opened its doors, blood and bullets tarnished its immaculate reputation. What drove a pillar of the community to a shooting rampage?...

When a young woman was found lying gravely injured on the side of the road, a mystery that would take nearly two decades to solve began to unfold. Who was she, really? And who was the strange older man claiming to be her husband? This episode's sponsor is Magic Mind. Visit magicmind.co/sodead  and use code SoDead20 to save 20% off a single purchase, or 40% off a subscription!

In Depression-era Cleveland, a madman stalked the streets of the Kingsbury Run neighborhood, leaving body parts in his wake.

In the late 1970s, an FBI task force targeted a massive interstate auto theft ring headquartered in Mid-Michigan. Building their case proved difficult, though, because their key witnesses kept meeting grim fates.

The summer of 1967 was an especially violent one in the United States. Known as "the long, hot summer," there were 159 race riots in America over the course of just a few months, the deadliest of which occurred in Detroit in late July. What led to the deaths of nearly fifty citizens, mostly at the hands of law enforcement officials called in to quell the violence? And what really happened inside T...

When a beloved wife, mother, and grandmother suddenly fell ill and died, her family was shocked to learn she'd been intentionally poisoned. Even more shocking was the identity of her murderer.

A charismatic waitress in a Yugo headed north to visit the man she hoped to marry. A young father in a Bronco driving south, back toward home. Though their paths did not cross in life, their fates are forever linked by the tragedy that befell them both on the Mackinac Bridge, one of the world's longest (and most treacherous) suspension bridges.

A sideshow performer, an unknown serial killer, and an ice skating chimpanzee. Luke Karamazov seems like outlandish fiction at times, but is the true story of the Ranes brothers from Kalamazoo, Michigan, the only serial killer siblings in American history, And soon, it will be a movie starring Zachary Quinto and Jacob Elordi.

A disgraced Lansing doctor out to make a quick buck by performing "illegal oprations" left countless bodies in his wake. A socialite unable to live with the shame of being an unwed mother took her own life in a Charlotte hotel room. A Benton Harbor farmboy felt murder was the only way out when his flapper girlfriend wound up pregnant. This was the harsh (but not uncommon) reality of the early 1900...

When a leisurely Sunday drive near the Michigan/Indiana border turned into a scene out of a horror movie for Ray and Marie Thornton, their lives were changed forever. Their experience, quite literally, inspired a horror movie. But the true story was so much more terrifying than anything Hollywood could conjure up.

In 1998, the body of a young boy was found beneath a billboard along a North Carolina highway. With very little to go on, authorities were not able to determine who the boy was, or who killed him. But one investigator was determined to solve the case no matter how long it took. So he kept the case file in a box beneath his desk, right in his way, so that he bumped his leg on it every time he turne...

Promising wellness and everlasting youth, Dr. Linda Hazzard lured wealthy patients to her "health retreat" in Washington state. Once she'd captured her prey, she held patients hostage and bled them dry- literally and figuratively. 

In the early 1900s, the auto industry reigned supreme in Lansing. But another, more deadly industry was making moves in the shadows. Fruit. When two rival fruit companies owned by Italian immigrants with strong ties to La Cosa Nostra went to war, no one was safe. Using fruit stands as a front throughout the city, a secret battle raged for years- contract killings, bombings, murder, extortion. Lans...

What led two young brothers from Chechnya to commit one of the most shocking terrorist attacks in American history? Acclaimed journalist Masha Gessen aims to answer that question.

The young caller's voice waivered only slightly as she detailed a ghastly scene to the 911 operator. It almost sounded like a prank, too wild to believe. But what happened in the house on Sunnydale Street was very real, and ultimately worse than anyone could have imagined.

When a young couple was attacked on a Lover's Lane one stormy Halloween night, the pressure was on police to arrest someone. So they did. 

The name Tom Toaz was well-known in Mid-Michigan at the turn of the 20th century. He was a celebrated lawman, infamous for throwing more citizens behind bars than all of the other constables combined. He had a hand in all of the scandalous, headline-making cases in Eaton County in the late 18 and early 1900s, but no case he was involved in was quite as scandalous as his own.

When a young woman is found dead in her Tijuana hotel room, authorities have more questions than answers. Mainly- why doesn't the photo on the driver's license match the body on the floor?

Out on the open water, there is a hotspot of unusual activity- ships disappearing in broad daylight, planes vanishing into thin air, unexplainable weather phenomena. Not the infamous Bermuda Triangle, but a similar danger much closer to home- the Lake Michigan Triangle.

When a serial killer was sent to the gallows in Victorian-era London, his infamous last words were, "I am Jack the..." before the noose snapped his neck. Were the Lambeth Poisoner and Jack the Ripper one in the same?

Born just outside Detroit to a single teenage mother and a violent criminal, Aileen Wuornos had the cards stacked against her from birth. She was raised in a house of horrors, amidst rumors of incest and unspeakable abuse. A child sex worker who gave birth at the age of 15, Aileen lived in the woods behind her family home after she was kicked out by her sadistic grandfather. And that was just the...

In celebration of the new Scream movie coming to theaters this week, here is a Patreon bonus episode from a couple years back exploring the true story behind the inspiration for the Scream movies.

On February 20, 2016, the city of Kalamazoo, Michigan found itself under siege. From a father/son duo out car shopping to a group of friends meeting for dinner, a madman was methodically gunning down unsuspecting citizens with no rhyme or reason. When the family man responsible for the rampage was apprehended, authorities were not prepare for the story he told them. Did Jason Dalton simply snap on...