Our True Crime Podcast

In the summer of 1985, the folks in the small town of Gillespie, Illinois were shaken to their core when 16-year-old Bridget Drobney was found brutally murdered. Three men were arrested and one, Robert Turner was sentenced to death. In January of 2003, Governor Ryan commuted all 167 of Illinois’ death row inmates to life sentences. One of those was obviously, Robert Turner. Years later, In March o...

The Mafia, the Mob, the family. It has many names but there is only one thing this organization is concerned about: money. This long-standing group has members operating from the streets hustling all the way up to corrupt government officials. In the neighborhoods they run, they are feared by some and adored by others. This family follows a set of rules demanding loyalty to each other above all el...

Friday, March 25th, 1988, Lisa got in her Honda and headed north. She would take Interstate 25 to Casper, Wyoming, and from there she would take the mostly two-lane US-20/26 to Greybull, where she would then finish the trip at her boyfriend's house in Cody, Wyoming, on US14. She’d planned to stay the night there and make the remaining hour-and-a-half trek to Billings the next morning with her boyf...

Today we are going nearby to St Charles Missouri where a local businessman was found shot to death inside his office on June 8, 2007, by a postwoman. It was about 12:30 in the afternoon when she called 9-1-1 and informed the operator that the man had been shot and, she thought he was dead. As she is on the phone with 911, a police officer drives by and she flags him down. The officer enters the bu...

On a flat and lonely stretch of highway in San Joaquin County, California, in February of 2012, onlookers were horrified as a backhoe violently tore into an abandoned well, nicknamed "Loren's Boneyard." The giant claws of the backhoe rose out of the ground holding a massive amount of dirt and the skeletal remains of the victims buried within—the victims presumably of Loren Herzog and Wesley Sherma...

We are headed to Cape Cod where the Montgomery County police just received a phone about a female body on the beach. When they arrive, they found a young woman on her stomach, both her arms reaching into the sand. She was topless and her back was severely sunburned. As they get a closer look, they realize both of her hands have been cut off and part of her face is missing. Police discover she has...

On a beautiful Midwestern June evening in 2017, nineteen-year-old Tanner Scott Ward told his mom, Lisa, he was headed out to see his friend, Jeremiah, and to fix him a plate for dinner because he’d only be gone about thirty minutes. He kissed his baby girl, Sophia, and left on foot with only the clothes on his back. It was the last time his family would see him alive. Six months later Tanner's bod...

Today we are headed to the outskirts of Dallas to a seedy area known as Oak Cliff, where income is low, and crime is high. It is 1990, and gangs, drugs, and sex workers frequent the area. Crack was big, and people would do almost anything to get it, including selling themselves for enough money to get a hit of crack, and then the cycle would repeat itself. Officer Regina Smith is on duty on Decemb...

At 11:24 PM on Saturday, April 29th, 1989, police in Alton, Illinois received a call from Robert Sims who said he had found his wife, Paula, unresponsive on the floor of their home, and their six-week-old baby girl was missing. Paula Sims said that she had been taking out the trash an hour earlier when she was confronted by a masked man carrying a handgun. After ordering her back into the house, t...

A woman comes out of the river water screaming for help. Frantic and barely able to get the story out, tells the man that she and her two sons were on a boat, and the boat capsized and her oldest son is missing. As police begin to question Judy about the accident, things become questionable from the start. Judy changes her story. In fact, she tells them 4 different stories. She tells officers that...

***Content Warning***12-year-old Sabine Dardenne was riding her bike to school In Tournai, Belgium, when two men in a white van grabbed her off of her bike. Sabine was held captive for nearly three months in an underground dungeon by one of Belgium's most notorious pedophiles, convicted rapist, and murderer Marc Dutroux. We mentioned him briefly on Day 8 of the 12 Nightmares Before Christmas in 20...

Just after 3 PM on January 13th, 2010 a deputy driving through a gated community in Conyers, Georgia noticed two distraught teenage girls running frantically towards his car. 16-year-old identical twins, Jasmiyah & Tasmiyah Whitehead told the deputy that they had just come home from school and found their mother brutally murdered inside their home. Upon entering the house, police find signs of a v...

Husband and father James Kraig Kahler took really good care of his family by being a great provider. His wife Karen was a pillar of the community who was busy raising their three children. From the outside, they seemed to be the perfect family but as we know no one is perfect. It seems Kraig liked things a certain way and by a certain way, I mean his way. He made rules for not only the children bu...

On April 5, 1980, Sister Madalyn Marie went to prepare for Easter Sunday which was the following day, entered the sacristy and stumbled across a horrifying scene.71-year-old Sister Margaret Ann Pahl lay dead on the floor. Father Robinson was the main suspect but there wasn't enough evidence for him to be charged and the case went cold. Twenty-three years later the case would be reopened after a wo...

We are headed north to Lake Orion, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. On August 6, 1994, a man was discovered on his apartment floor. His body is surrounded by blood. The man had fought furiously to escape his killer, as demonstrated by all the injuries on his face and body. His apartment showed no signs of a break-in, but it did look like someone had gone through the apartment. The man was Kevin Boyd...

On the night of November 5, 1989, first responders arrived at the 3700 block of Delor St in St Louis, Missouri. Inside of an apartment, next to two bloody knives, lay the body of 16-year-old Tina Isa. Tina's father said that he had killed her in self-defense. Police would learn Tina's father, Zein Isa, was a suspected ringleader of a Palestinian terrorist cell and had been under the watchful eye a...

Today we are going to the southern United States to a town named Grassy Creek, North Carolina. It is home to a very well-known and recognized Christmas tree farm. It is January 24, 2008, right before noon, when a panicked call comes into 911 describing a most heinous scene at the Hudler tree farm. The caller explains there are two people who have been shot. Police are dispatched to the farm, and o...

The second week of 1977, England saw the coldest January in 14 years. Low pressure carried from northern Europe brought heavy snowfall across the UK. On January 12th, 1977, 28-year-old Billy Hughes was to appear at Chesterfield Magistrates Court on charges of rape and assault. Hughes had other plans. He wasn't going back to prison no matter what the cost. Pulling a stolen knife out from his boots,...

Today we are venturing back to a time when small towns had small-town doctors. These doctors were not only fixtures of the community, these men and women made house calls and knew all their patients and all their ailments. If Mr. Smith couldn’t pay, no problem. If Mrs. Robert’s’ infant spiked a fever, the doctor would be there within the hour. Doctors took an oath. ‘first do no harm’ but maybe jus...

On November 2nd, 1987, paramedics responded to a 911 call about an unresponsive 6-year-old Lisa. Upon arrival at the Greenwich Village apartment in New York, they found the little girl unconscious and nude on the floor. The apartment was filthy, and another child, a 16-month-old little boy, was found tied to a playpen by a rope around his waist. He was lying in his own filth with spoiled milk avai...

We are headed to North Liberty, Iowa, population 18,000 plus. This Midwest town is not unlike others. Most of the members know each other where they work and live together. It is February 1999, When one of their own, is murdered in his home, the community is stunned. With little to no evidence, investigators look to an unusual witness and hope, even though she can’t speak, she will lead them to th...

Around 10:25 AM on February 13th, 2018, a 911 call came in on Lake Couer d’Alene in Idaho. The woman identified herself as Lori Isenberg, told the dispatcher; “I need help. I’m on the lake but I don’t know where. My husband has had a stroke and he fell over ...he fell overboard” That same morning, many of the couple's friends and neighbors would be opening the local paper to discover Lori was lead...

It is October 20, 2007, when a woman calls 911. She is hysterical and crying, barely able to get out the words. She relays to the operator that when she got to her parent's house, she found her mother shot, her father shot, and her brother home and unharmed. Police rush to the scene, but as they are heading to the crime scene, 16-year-old Daniel jumps in his parent's car and takes off. Soon a chas...

This episode is more graphic than usual. Listener discretion is strongly advised . The corpses of five young women were found in and around several small villages in West Germany. Each woman had been raped, stabbed, or strangled. Even worse, they had been mutilated. Nearly two decades would pass, and many more women would lose their lives. When police finally arrested the man responsible for all t...

On September the 15th, 1990, people were walking along a river near Prague when they stumbled up what they thought was a mannequin. As they got closer, they realized it was the body of a young woman. Her body, nude, was left in a vulgar display. Her stocking was wrapped around her neck. The killer had tried to cover her with leaves and debris as if to hide his crime. The woman would turn out to be...