Murder Most Foul

Arguably the most talked about trial since the O.J.Simpson Murder Trial is the Karen Read Murder Case of Massachusetts. Her saga dominated the local and national media for over two years, covered by Court TV, 20/20, Dateline and 48 Hours , just to name a few. There were documentaries galore and even a Lifetime original movie with real actors! Promotion for the Lifetime biopic celebrated the flick...

Robert Bruce Spahalski and Stephen Spahalski were identical twins. Same hair, same eyes, same thirst for blood. Stephen was the first brother to kill - by viciously bashing in storeowner Ronald Ripley's head with a hammer when he was 17 years old! Unlike Stephen, Robert didn't stop with just one victim. With the cord of an iron, Robert strangled prostitute Morraine Armstrong while having s...

Imagine you come home from a pick-up basketball game at your church’s gym, to find your wife and two small children slaughtered in your garage. But wait! It gets worse! Now imagine after a few short days of inept, possibly corrupt, investigation and, despite the fact you have 11 witnesses swearing you were with them at the precise time the murders took place, you are arrested for the crime. Not do...

HER CASE HAD BEEN CLOSED—BUT NOT FORGOTTEN.  On an unseasonably warm winter evening in Pennsylvania,15-year-old Patty Desmond sneaked out through a basement window. She had a history of running away, and that, combined with an argument with her mother, gave police reason to suspect she’d come home in a week or two.  The year was 1965. That night was the last time herfamily ever saw her. Conrad Eug...

After his December 2003 arrest, nurse Charlie Cullen wasquickly dubbed "The Angel of Death" by the media. But he was no mercy killer nor a simple monster. But he was perhaps the most prolific serial killer in American history, implicated in the deaths of as many as 400 patients. Cullen's murderous career spanned sixteen years and ninehospitals. Now, in a riveting piece of investigati...

If you believe serial killers are not entitled to defense lawyers, STOP HERE! This episode is not for you. On the other hand, if you are curious what it is like to defend one of America's most notorious serial killers during his final deathrow appeals-Welcome.  "Killing Time with John Wayne Gacy" is a gripping account by Karen Conti, detailing her experiences defending John Wayne Gac...

A serial killer turns crime victim when his own daughteris the one viciously murdered. He asks law enforcement for help, but the case goes cold. Then he turns to Sheryl McCollum and the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute. There’s never been a case like this in history. Sheryl and her team of experts get involved and they hatch a plan. What happens when Sheryl uses a serial killer as bait t...

If your spouse joked on a nationally televised game show that his biggest mistake at your wedding was saying, ‘I do!’ would you consider that a RED FLAG?  Becky Bliefnick did. She tried to tell her family, her friends, even the police that she was getting increasingly frightened of her husband, Tim. Two weeks before her divorce trial was to begin, her husband, Tim, shot her 14 times in her bathroo...

“I just killed my children.” On June 6th, 2001 those words were uttered to a 911 operator in suburban Houston by Andrea Yates. She had just drowned her 5 children, ages 6 months to 7 years, in her bathtub. No one who knew Andrea could picture the devoted mother capable of such an unbelievable crime or imagine the terror in the eyes of her trusting children. As their father, Rusty, struggled betwee...

Join me and my guest, E.J. Hammon, self-proclaimed Bundyphile!

Two brothers, one a professor the other a cop, and North Carolina's most notorious cold case!

History is loaded with the stories of imposters, fraudsters and outright liars. Princess Caraboo, an Englishwoman who pretended to be a Princess from a fictional island. Frank Abagnale, Jr.- who in his career, impersonated a pilot, a doctor and a lawyer, just to name a few.   Victor Lustig, who sold the salvage rights to the Eiffel Tower…twice! And my favorite, from the “gullible file,” David Hamp...

For two years, silence shrouded the vanishing of a woman from the small Southern town of Malvern, Arkansas. Now, the mysterious disappearance and the suppression of the truth are cracked open by the FBI Agent, Jerry Spurgers, who worked this case of drug conspiracy, witness intimidation, and murder from start to finish.  Murder at Midnight  is the true story of how the Agent Spurgers and a team of...

In the summer of 1998, FBI agent Bob Hilland reluctantly picked up the phone to call the famous psychic John Edward. Bob didn’t expect much from the call, but he was working on an unsolvable cold case and had nowhere else to turn. What Bob never imagined was that the call would lead to a shattering of all his preconceived notions, a huge break in the cold case, and an unlikely crime-solving partne...

On July 29th, 2023, in Leongatha, a smalltown in rural Victoria, Australia, family and friends of local woman Erin Patterson sit down for Saturday lunch. On the menu, Beef Wellington. The next day, four of the guests are hospitalized. Doctors suspect death- cap mushroom poisoning. Within a week, three of them will be dead. On November 2nd of that same year, Erin Patterson is arrested and charged w...

On February 4, 2021, 23-year-old Sandra Birchmore was found dead in her Canton, Massachusetts apartment. Her death was initially ruled as a suicide by asphyxia. Federal authorities later determined that her death was a homicide, with local police officer, Michael Farwell, alleged to have killed her. Birchmore's murder has drawn parallels to the death of John O’Keefe, another high-profile inves...

Florence Bennet is found dead in a bathtub of scalding water. Her husband, Casper, claims that he found her like that, but his burned hands tell a different story. Or so the police and almost the entire population of Lorain believe. And as the Bennetts’ marriage with its secrets of alcohol, affairs and abuse is laid bare in the courtroom, it looks like the only possible verdict is murder. Bennett’...

On death row for 42 years at San Quentin, artist and inmate William Noguera formed an unlikely bond with the notorious serial killer Joseph Naso. Over years of disturbing conversations—and at great personal risk—Noguera gained his trust. What he revealed was far worse than anyone imagined. Behind prison walls, Naso described his brutal crimes in chilling detail, disclosing evidence that had eluded...

On February 15, 2010, Joseph McStay, his wife Summer, and their two young sons were reported missing from their new home in San Diego County. They left eggs and fruit rotting on the counter. Their Dodge truck sat in the driveway. Their dogs were abandoned outside without food. But investigators found no blood, signs of a struggle, or clues to their whereabouts. Did the family take an unannounced v...

Recently there has been a renewed interest in the Son of Sam Case in the form of documentaries, the latest by NETFLIX. Many are subtitled, “The Lost Tapes,” a reference to recordings of multiple interviews with David Berkowitz in Attica prison, shortly after he was incarcerated. Luckily for us, the tapes were never lost! They were recorded by Rochester, New York, Democrat and Chronicle reporter, J...

On December 30, 1999, in rural Oklahoma, sixteen-year-old Ashley Freeman and her best friend, Lauria Bible, were having a sleepover. The next morning, the Freeman family trailer was in flames and both girls were missing. While rumors of drug debts, revenge, and police corruption abounded in the years that followed, the case remained unsolved, and the girls were never found. In 2015, crime writer J...

On October 7, 1998, a young gay man was discovered bound to a fence in the hills outside Laramie, WY, savagely beaten and left to die in an act of brutality and hate that shocked the nation. Matthew Shepard's death became a national symbol of intolerance, but for the people of Laramie the event was deeply personal and it's their voices we hear in this stunningly effective theater piece.  M...

When Black women and girls are targeted and murdered their cases are often categorized by police officers as “N.H.I.” — “No Human Involved.”  Dehumanized and invisible to the public eye, they are rarely seen as victims. In the United States, Black women are killed at a higher rate than any other group of women, but their victimhood is not covered by the media and their cases do not receive an adeq...

On Christmas night in 1996, the brutal murder of six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey shocked the nation. Found dead in her family's Boulder, Colorado home, JonBenét's body was discovered in the basement, with a broken skull, strangled by a garrote and sexually assaulted. A ransom note left in the home added to the confusion, but the truth would prove even more elusive. As the case unfolded, the m...

Imagine, spending 18 years in prison for a crime you didn’t commit! October 1997 .  Late one night in Fairbanks, Alaska, a passerby finds a teenager unconscious, collapsed on the edge of the road, beaten nearly beyond recognition. Two days later, he dies in the hospital. His name is John Gilbert Hartman and he's just turned 15 years old. The police quickly arrest four suspects, all under the a...