Murder Most Foul

In 1990, Jens Soering, a German honors student at the University of Virginia, was sentenced to life after a spectacular televised trial for the 1985 murders of his lover’s Elizabeth’s parents, Derek and Nancy Haysom. In a classic example of “he said/she said,” at their trials the star-crossed lovers each pointed the finger at the other as the actual murderer. Were Jens and Elizabeth Romeo and Juli...

To all who knew him, Robert Hansen was a typical hardworking businessman, husband, and father. But hidden beneath the veneer of mild respectability was a monster whose depraved appetites could not be sated. From 1971 to 1983, Hansen was a human predator, stalking women on the edges of Anchorage society—women whose disappearances would cause scant outcry, but whose gruesome fates would shock the na...

On May 31,1985, two days before her high school graduation, Shari Faye Smith was abducted from the driveway of her family home in South Carolina. For several days after the abduction, the kidnapper called and sent letters to the family, taunting them with details of abduction and murder of Shari. Ultimately, he revealed the location of Shari’s body on a phone call to Shari’s older sister, Dawn. Bu...

I saw her standin' on her front lawn Just a twirlin' her baton Me and her went for a ride, sir And ten innocent people died From the town of Lincoln, Nebraska With a sawed off .410 on my lap Through to the badlands of Wyoming I killed everything in my path I can't say that I'm sorry For the things that we done At least for a little while, sir Me and her we had us some fun Now the j...

“A Murder in Hollywood” - the dark story behind the bright lights of Tinseltown. Before there was Jodie Foster and Brooke Sheilds, there was Judy Turner. You may know her by her stage name, Lana Turner.  Discovered at a malt shop in LA in her early teens and thrust before the cameras, she seemed to have it all―a thriving film career and the kind of fame and fortune that most people could only drea...

It’s every mother and father’s worst nightmare to discover your daughter has vanished after a night on the town. Finding Amy is the story of just such a nightmare, written by Detective LT, Joseph K. Loughlin, who led the investigation into 25-year-old Amy St. Laurent’s disappearance and his co-author, Kate Clark Flora. The story is especially compelling because of the personal accounts of Lieutena...

In the early 1970’s, F.B.I agent, John E. Douglas, created and managed the FBI's Criminal Profiling Program, now called the Behavioral Analysis Unit. Agent Douglas became the inspiration for the character Jack Crawford in “The Silence of the Lambs,” played by actor Scott Glenn. Douglas has interviewed numerous serial killers and other violent sex offenders at various prisons, including David B...

In the winter of 1982 in Brighton, New York, a bedroom suburb of Rochester, Jim Krauseneck came home from work to discover his wife, Kathleen, lying in bed, dead, with an ax lodged in her head. Their 3-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Sarah, was unharmed alone in the dark, cold house. She had attempted to dress herself and make herself breakfast, which was evident by the cereal strewn all over the ki...

It is hard to imagine that there is anyone out there who doesn’t know the name Scott Peterson, the man convicted in 2004 of the murder of his young wife who at the time was 8 months pregnant with their child they had named Connor. Peterson was initially sentenced to death, but in 2020 that sentence was overturned and commuted to life without the possibility of parole. Most thought that this was th...

1969: The Age of Aquarius - Peace, love and understanding! Nowhere was this more evident than in Helltown, also known as Provincetown, Massachusetts. And Tony Costa was at the center of it all. Like Charles Manson on the left coast, Tony had a group of loyal followers, mostly smitten women who called him Sire. Tony was the undisputed leader of their counter-culture movement, the charming man who s...

Doppelganger: “A person who looks or acts the same way you do – a twin.” Many of us have been told that we look exactly like a celebrity. Sometimes you might walk up to someone in the supermarket and start talking to them as if they are someone you know, only to be fooled because they are not. Harmless fun? Yes, except for poor Pamela Hutchinson, who was murdered by her doppelganger. To tell us th...

Elliot Ness and the American Demon. Almost sounds like a Nancy Drew Mystery. I wish the story were that benign. In the mid 1930’s, just after Prohibition ended, Cleveland played host to a killer whose grizzly murders rivaled that of London’s Jack the Ripper. The victims were all beheaded and often their limbs were also removed earning this sadist the moniker: Torso Killer! My guest today is New Yo...

If you’ve ever been at a criminal trial or, like me, have never missed an episode of Law & Order on TV, you are aware that certain evidence and witness testimony is not allowed by our current judicial system. But in 1673, in Colonial Portsmouth, Rhode Island, it was not that restrictive. Thomas Cornell, Jr., was charged with killing his mother, Rebecca, by burning her alive. Evidence at the tr...

Sixty years ago this year, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Not quite two weeks after the tragedy, The Warren Commission, established by President Johnson, was launched to investigate the incident and report its findings to the American people. The Committee stated in publishing its findings that “the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy was a cruel and shocking act. This...

Look! Up in the sky, it’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman! For us “baby-boomers” there is only one Superman. And that is as portrayed actor, George Reeves. Reeves version of the Man of Steel was beamed into our living rooms as The Adventures of Superman. The serial aired from 1952-1958, first in black white and then in color, during the birth of the Golden Age of Television. Mr. Reeves did not...

You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you.   If you have watched any cop show after 1965, from Dragnet to Law and Order , you recognize those words, often printed on a small, crumpled card pulled out of a detective’s pocket. Miranda Right...

The biggest, the fastest, the longest of anything intrigues us. Many aspire to have their feats, no matter how trivial, immortalized in The Guiness Book of World the Records. The record of “Most Murders by a Serial Killer” is no exception. And that honor goes to Sam McDowell Little. Starting in 1971 and continuing for 20 years, the FBI confirmed Little's involvement in at least 63 of the 93 co...

In 1954, two college students were hiking along a creek outside of Boulder, Colorado, when they stumbled upon the body of a murdered young woman. Who was this woman? What had happened to her? The initial investigation turned up nothing, and the girl was buried in a local cemetery with a gravestone that read, "Jane Doe, April 1954, Age About 20 Years." Decades later, historian Silvia Pett...

On August 28th, 2003, in the suburbs of Erie Pennsylvania, a pizza delivery man named Brian Wells was accosted by several men who locked a time bomb around his neck and ordered him to rob a bank.  After delivering the money, he would receive clues to...

September 2nd, 1945 - World War II is over! A time for celebration and rejoicing,except in the small town of Campbell, California. Like most towns at the time, thefolks were happy that the war was over, and life was slowly returning to normal. That is, tragically except for one poor family in Campbell. It was Fridaynight, November 2nd. The high school was the site of a falltradition, an interschoo...

“Elementary, my dear Watson.” I hazard a guess that you are all familiar with that phrase uttered in almost every film portrayal of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s literary creation, Sherlock Holmes. More about that utterance later. What some folks don’t know about Sir Arthur, is that he was in every sense the alter ego of his creation, Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle was not only a brilliant spinner of mys...

With 50-year-old cold murder cases there is rarely the opportunity to bring the perpetrator, even if identified, to justice. Odds are that he, or she, is long deceased. But not so in the case of 8-year-old Gretchen Harrington of Marple, PA, a quiet suburb of Philadelphia. In 1975 she was abducted on her way to Bible Camp, brutally murdered and her naked body dumped in Ridley State Park. In 2022, a...

As a father, I cannot think of anything more horrifying than discovering that your 4-year-old daughter has been abducted from her bed, in the middle of the night, while your family is vacationing in a foreign country. But that is exactly what happened to the parents of Madeleine McCann. The cold case, which is over 15 years old, is as controversial as it is disturbing. What better person to take u...

Why do folks like True Crime stories in all their manifestations? I have been told it’s not the gore or even the unravelling of the mystery. In the end, it comes down to one thing: the “perp” getting his or her just desserts and going prison or being executed. But what if that resolution relied on JUNK SCIENCE to obtain that outcome. Those of us addicted to Law and Order or CSI love our forensic e...

No topic, save maybe abortion, engenders more debate than that of Execution in our penal system. The arguments on both sides are intense, but I think it’s safe to say that both sides do not want an innocent man or woman to fall victim to the “Final Judgement.” As they say on LAW AND ORDER, “the case at bar” is that of Richard Eugene Glossip of Oklahoma. Mr. Glossip has been on death row for over 2...