MURDERISH

We’re bringing back to the surface some of our favorite episodes of MURDERISH, beginning with the one that started it all. Jami was 18 years old and about to graduate from high school, when an innocent trip to the grocery store turned into a night she would never forget. She came home to find a stranger in her bedroom. Timing was everything that night. This story will make the hair on your arms st...

Clothing brand Von Dutch defined mid-2000s style, capping every celebrity they could with their signature trucker hats and motorcycle culture prints. But behind the low-rise flaming eyeballs and perfect pinstripes, disputes about ownership and management kept co-founder Bobby Vaughn on edge. In February of 2005, a homicide was linked to Bobby sending Von Dutch into a downward spiral and the victim...

What would you be willing to do for your best friend? Tell a lie? Keep their darkest secret? Commit a crime? What if your best friend asked you to take their life? What would you do then?   Trevor Bartlett and Mario Mills were best friends. On cold Wyoming nights, the pair would escape to Mills’ garage to drink, smoke and play cards until they could barely stand. Most times, the worst damage was s...

When a 25 year old Jessica McCormack and her three young daughters disappeared suddenly in July of 2019, Jessica’s closest friends thought she was taking time away to decompress. They had conversations with her on Facebook while she was gone, but it soon became clear that the person on Facebook was just an imposter who’d hacked into Jessica’s account. Several weeks later, Jessica’s body was found...

When heading out to run errands, you fully expect to make it home safely. In June of 2007, 18-year-old Kelsey Smith went to the store, but she never made it home. No one could’ve predicted that less than two weeks after high school graduation, Kelsey’s life would come to a violent end. Outside a Target store less than 10 minutes from her childhood home, Kelsey was forced into her car and abducted....

Entering the spring of 1986, Margo McKee’s story could’ve been ripped from a Hallmark movie. Despite losing her mother and father to cancer when she was 12, she’d blossomed into a straight-A student who attended church and volunteered around town. Her foster parents, Ross and Wyona Sterling, were satisfied they’d delivered on the promise they made to Margo’s dying parents five years earlier ..that...

November 12, 2013 probably started out like any other for 78-year-old Joe Gatto, who lived in a modest home in Silver Lake, California. Although Joe was retired, he was far from inactive. The energetic and talented man created artwork, jewelry and tended to his garden among other hobbies. By the evening, a day that began typically would end tragically ..with a single gunshot. Almost a decade later...

When Daisy De La O was fatally stabbed in her own community, her friends and family quickly honed in on a fairly obvious suspect. Her case, however, garnered no leads or public attention ..until it was posted on TikTok. It was then that true crime social media jumped in to help. Thanks to the activity on social media about Daisy’s case, a suspect would eventually be identified but not before he sl...

Losing a loved one to a violent crime creates a sense of loss few of us can fathom. But what if the investigation involves an entire family that simply vanishes? Could the truth become so muddled that an innocent man is pegged as their killer? When Joseph and Summer McStay, along with their two toddlers, went missing from their California home in February of 2010 no one knew what to think. Several...

The suburbs have been labeled the most visible manifestation of the American dream. It’s in these clean-cut bedroom communities where countless families seek refuge from the frantic hustle and bustle of city life and the crime that comes with it. But parents who flee to the suburbs trying to insulate their children from the scourge of drugs and violence frequently discover a hard truth: that crime...

Danielle Drohan was in her early twenties when she married a man more than 20 years older. The age gap wasn't the unusual part, though. Her husband, Michael Redlick, had previously been her stepfather. Against all odds, their controversial and rocky marriage lasted nearly two decades. It would all come to a grinding halt on January 11, 2019. That night, after a vicious argument, Michael was found...

Dirty Money Moves: Women in White Collar Crime deep dives into cases involving a more rare type of criminal, women who commit financial crimes and scams. In season one, host Jami Rice of MURDERISH podcast takes listeners on a journey to investigate Mary Carole McDonnell, a self-proclaimed heiress and the CEO of a TV production company based in Los Angeles. Jami met Mary Carole McDonnell in 2018 wh...

In March of 1981, Michael Donald became the latest victim in America’s history of racial violence. The young Black man was beaten, killed, and lynched by two members of the local Ku Klux Klan in his hometown of Mobile, Alabama, for nothing more than crossing their path. The resulting murder investigation triggered his mother, Beulah Mae Donald, to sue the state Klan into oblivion. A small comfort...

In 2015, 17-year-old Michelle Carter was indicted on charges connected to the suicide of her 18-year-old boyfriend, Conrad Roy Jr III. In a controversial 2017 trial, a Taunton, Massachusetts jury found her guilty of involuntary manslaughter. A similar case occurred in May 2019, though it received much less publicity. Boston College students Inyoung You and her boyfriend Alexander Urtula had been d...

I would love to introduce you to "Let's Change Beauty" - a podcast powered by the Dove Self-Esteem Project. Let’s Change Beauty features intimate conversations with esteemed experts and celebrated guests from the worlds of beauty, gaming, sports, technology and entertainment. What if we could work together to create a world where we define beauty on our own terms? This is the world that cultural e...

At 61 years old, Wendy DiRodio’s life was just getting started. An accomplished author, therapist and dance instructor, she was ready to excel in the only part of life where success had escaped her: love. She’d begun dating a handsome younger man; there was even talk of marriage. She was closing escrow on a home near the beach outside of Santa Barbara, California. Wendy loved people―and they loved...

The American Justice System was created, in part, to ensure that all Americans get fair and impartial administration of justice. But, the system is by no means perfect and sometimes the wrong person is convicted of a serious crime. But what happens when a person is sentenced to death and years later, new evidence is brought to light that casts doubt on their guilt? Lester Bower Jr. maintained his...

When a family’s financial situation drastically improves, temptation can lurk around every corner. And sometimes, outward appearances completely obscure a less glamorous reality. Chris Foster of Lancashire, England had known a working-class lifestyle for most of his adulthood. In 1997, though, fortune suddenly smiled upon him. At 39 years old, following a monumental tragedy, Foster invented and pa...

On the evening of January 4th, 2019 in San Antonio Texas, a 911 came in from a man saying that someone had stolen his car with his infant son inside. The man, Chris Davila, said he’d pulled into the parking lot of a Food Mart. He left the car engine running and went inside to get a bottle of water. When he came out, his vehicle and his son were gone. Sadly, the baby boy’s body was found buried und...

Pat Tillman was a star in his hometown of San Jose, California. He was an accomplished and envied athlete who led his high school team to a Central Coast Division I Football Championship, even after being told he was too small to play football. But Pat wasn’t a stereotypical high school jock. He loved to read poetry and had an insatiable thirst for knowledge. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Pat...

Dirty Money Moves: Women in White Collar Crime deep dives into cases involving a more rare type of criminal, women who commit financial crimes. In season one, host Jami Rice of MURDERISH podcast takes listeners on a journey to investigate Mary Carole McDonnell, a self-proclaimed heiress and the CEO of a TV production company based in Los Angeles. In 2018, with help from her high-profile Hollywood...

When feelings for another person run deep, people are often inclined to see the best in that person. It’s not uncommon for unsettling behavior to be excused rather than seeing it as a warning sign and acting on it. But this idealism can put someone in harm’s way without them realizing it until it’s much too late. When Nicole Montalvo went missing in October 2019, investigators quickly learned that...

Optimists have a tendency to see the best in people, sometimes to their own detriment. According to Healthline, an individual’s calling to fix other peoples’ problems is referred to by psychologists as a savior complex or white knight syndrome. A savior complex would explain the unlikely friendship between Ashley Young and her friend who had a troubling past. Ashley often saw the best in people an...

Clara and David Harris were approaching their 10th wedding anniversary. She was a dentist, he was an orthodontist and they’d built a small dental empire together. The couple were a perfect match with shared views about how they wanted to live life. The Harris’ had created an existence that most people would envy. After a decade together, however, their relationship dynamic shifted. Clara noticed t...

Since the 1880s, immigrants from all over the globe have arrived in the United States hoping to attain a better quality of life, the American Dream. Like so many immigrants before them, Lily and Ben Chin wanted their son Vincent to have more opportunities than he may have had in their native China. In the 1970s and 1980s, however, tensions were high between Japanese and American automobile manufac...