Murder, My Dude

Happy New Year, My Dudes! This horrible, horrible year is just about over, so why not spend an hour and a half or so finishing out 2020 (or, if you’re late to the party, ringing in 2021) with a hilarity-filled look at a gruesome, gruesome killing! This week, we explore the life and death of newsman Walter Liggett, whose love for politics was matched only by his hatred of corruption. When those two...

Murder, My Dude returns from a brief Winter break to provide you with more true crime comedy goodness just in time for Christmas! This week, we cover one of the most famous unsolved crimes of the past quarter century, one that still spurs outrage and debate to this day: the death of JonBenet Ramsey. After going to bed Christmas Night, 1996, JonBenet was nowhere to be found the next morning. Instea...

It may be two months before Valentine’s Day comes around again, but we’ve got an old-fashioned Lover’s Triangle on this week’s episode. John Ruetten and Stephanie Lazarus lived in the same dorm building during their years at UCLA. Eventually, that friendship wound up adding some “benefits.” Apparently, Stephanie thought those benefits were something more permanent, and when John married Sherri Ras...

We’ve covered a lot of gruesome cases in the 2+ years we’ve been doing this show, but this one could be the worst of them all. Junko Furuta was a soon-to-be high school graduate with a job lined up and her whole life ahead of her when a group of young gang members put it to an end and subjected her to some of the worst treatment imaginable. Fair warning: if you feel like you’d possibly be disturbe...

It’s MMD’s third Thanksgiving episode, and it’s about time we look at the forgotten half of the holiday’s equation: America’s indigenous people. It’s heartbreaking, but true that Native Americans - Native American women in particular - are at a higher risk for violent crime, especially violent crime at the hands of people outside of their ethnic group, and this week’s episode explores two of those...

This week, we take a look at one of the most sinister sexual sadists in recent history: New Mexico’s Toy Box Killer. A lifetime of obsession over more and more sinister sadomasochistic acts ended with an incredible escape and the exposure of a sinister network of enablers. Before that: This Week In Murder updates some old cases and looks at some all-time awful parents. Then Who Died The Worst expl...

Jackson and B.P. return with an explosion of concussive true crime with comedy as the catalyst. As you can tell by the awful puns, we’re going to be talking about Ted Kaczynski, the infamous Unabomber, who injured many and killed three in a series of attacks where he mailed explosive devices or left them where his unsuspecting victims would find them. Today, we explore his motives, his twisted vie...

Everyone knows the names John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald. Charles Julius Guiteau and Leon Frank Czolgosz? Not so much. So on this Election Day special, we take a look at the two lesser known presidential assassinations in American history, and we do it in signature Murder, My Dude Style! BUT FIRST! We look at a former fringe candidate for the governorship of Idaho arrested in a decades-old...

You’re all cordially invited to our spooky second birthday celebration! It’s a Halloween episode and an anniversary show all-wrapped up in one! And this week’s episode takes a nod from one of our favorite subgenres of scary movies: short story compilations like Creepshow, Trick ‘r Treat, & Twilight Zone: The Movie. Instead of one big story, we’re going to be taking a look at three smaller Hall...

It’s the week before we celebrate two full years of Murder, My Dude, and we kick off the countdown to Halloween with a fun-sized episode! Also, both of your hosts were incredibly tired and decided to make it a short one this week. But what we lack in length we make up for in body count. Vlad III of Wallachia, aka Vlad Dracula, aka Vlad the Impaler, was an especially brutal ruler even when judging...

This week, we take a look at a love triangle that almost certainly went horribly wrong. Heather Elvis was 20 years old, studying cosmetology by day and waiting tables in Myrtle Beach at night. In the summer of 2013, she began a whirlwind fling with a married man. That December, she disappeared. Never to be seen again. This week, we take a look at the circumstances behind her disappearance and like...

This week, we get back into the classic true crime wheelhouse with a look at one of the most brutal, monstrous serial killers of the past twenty years. Israel Keyes wore a mask as a small business owner, a father, and a loving boyfriend. But upwards of a dozen people got to see his real self firsthand: a brutal, relentless murderer who sadistically killed the easiest possible targets. This week, w...

Podcasts may be taking over for terrestrial radio as the world’s preferred form of audio entertainment, but that’s not stopping us from taking a look at the life and untimely death of a rising radio star, and the play and movie(s) it inspired. Alan Berg had a talent for making great radio. Unapologetic for his politics and Jewish faith, Berg battled and belittled callers up until his untimely assa...

This week’s episode takes us back to the early days of Hollywood, and specifically to the mysterious, premature deaths of two top comedic stars. Known as “The Ice Cream Blonde” and “Hot Toddy,” Thelma Todd went from being Miss Massachusetts 1925 to a star of over 100 short and feature films. Her reputation as a comedic actress was followed by a reputation as a partier, and the aftermath of one par...

This week, we turn back the clock nearly a century and look at two terrible stories from the early days of film. Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was just a few years removed from signing the first million dollar a year deal in Hollywood History when it all went away following him being accused of rape and manslaughter. One of his perennial co-stars was deeply involved with not one, but two shootings. We e...

After covering the murderer known as the Original Night Stalker last week, this week we come back for the sequel. Richard Ramirez’s upbringing seemed designed to create a monster, and create a monster it did. For just over a year in the mid-1980s, Ramirez made the citizens of Los Angeles and San Francisco live in fear, doing so with a string of ruthless robberies, rapes, and murders. This week, we...

True crime podcasts have come and gone, but Murder, My Dude will never leave you in the dark. This week, we cover one of the most talked about serial murders in recent memory: the case of the infamous Golden State Killer. A robber, ransacker, and sexual predator, the GSK also killed over a dozen people in the 1970s and 80s and was recently brought to justice using a very innovative (and controvers...

This week, we have an urgent request for you: please don’t reveal the secret ending of this episode to your friends. Okay, fine. It ends the same way it always ends. We play Who Died The Worst. And a game of WDTW with an obvious winner, at that. But before all that, we get into about a half dozen side tangents that make this the longest episode in MMD history! We also take a look at another office...

We’re still in the dog days of Summer, but Murder, My Dude is already thinking Fall with an episode that’d be fitting for Halloween season! Richard Chase, best known as The Vampire of Sacramento, was a tortured soul for sure. Mental illness, drug abuse, and awful parenting combined to create a bona fide monster that Bram Stoker himself couldn’t have thought up. This week, we go over his horrendous...

New season, same comedic true crime goodness! BUT FIRST! If you thought that Season Four would spell an end to lengthy soapbox rants and side tangents, you are a fool! This week, we spend the first 50 minutes or so discussing comedy, cancel culture, and fast-changing societal norms. From there, This Week In Murder returns with a look at a Pakistan shooting that caused a bit of an international inc...

Hello, family. It’s the 3rd season finale of Murder, My Dude! 75 glorious episodes in, and we finally get around to one of the most sinister criminal groups of the 20th Century: the demented Charles Manson and his murderous family. The personification of late-sixties counterculture gone bad, the Manson Family claimed the lives of over a half dozen people in the Summer of 1969, and we cap off seaso...

How does a true crime podcast mix together gruesome deaths and big laughs? Give this episode a listen, and you’ll find out! But first, you may want to skip to about 55 minutes in, as most of the first hour is one of our trademark Jackson Welles side rants, as he delves deep into the topic of race relations. From there, This Week In Murder explores a fatal shooting targeting the family of a judge w...

This week, we head down South and take a look at a combination of two cases we don’t regularly cover on this show: a case where (probably) innocent party was found guilty and also a case that is (probably) unsolved. Those parenthetical probablys are the West Memphis Three: a trio of teenagers who were arrested for a particularly heinous crime. But that was only the start of their story. Elsewhere,...

Let's all jump back in time (has to be better than 2020, right?) to the year 1994! Starter jackets, Lisa Loeb glasses, and crushed velvet for everyone! One name dominated the mid-nineties when it came to crime: OJ Simpson. The double murder of the NFL Hall of Famer's ex-wife and a waiter returning a pair of glasses to her home sparked the most famous low speed chase of all time and what was very l...

It's hot as hell outside and that damn COVID is spreading all over the place again - at least here in the U.S. - so what better time to put the air conditioner on full blast and fire up an episode of Murder, My Dude that might be too hot for some to handle! Up first, it's This Week in Murder with an update on two headline-grabbing cases: The Golden State Killer case and the shooting death of Ahmau...