Our True Crime Podcast

On the morning of September 11, 1979, nineteen-year-old Micki Jo West left her mother’s home in St. Joseph, Missouri, as she had every morning. She wore her nurse’s aide uniform, pulled on a khaki coat, carried her white purse, and adjusted her glasses, marked with her name on the right lens. Bright, outgoing, and compassionate, she had a quick laugh and a warmth that drew people to her. She walke...

Thank you, Petra, for the episode suggestion. In 1990, a teenage girl escaped from a house in Pretoria, South Africa, narrowly avoiding an unimaginable fate. Her story revealed that she was not the first of several young girls taken under suspicious circumstances. Evidence suggested the girls were being held and moved, possibly for a wider trafficking network that spanned beyond the city. Despite...

In this month’s special, Cam and Jen talk with Hopper from Final Trace. In the summer of 1986, 18-year-old Brent Brand went to a party in Vincennes, Indiana, and never made it home. Eight days later, across state lines, Brent’s body was found face down in a drainage ditch. No injuries. No clear cause of death. What began as a missing-person case soon spiraled into something bigger: accusations, ru...

On a bitterly cold night just before New Year’s Eve, 23-year-old Ashley Kline disappeared from her home in Robesonia, Pennsylvania, after walking to a friend’s house just four blocks away. She was never seen alive again. When Ashley vanished, her family and community were left searching for answers, clinging to hope that she would return. But as investigators traced her final movements, they uncov...

In the middle of a spring night in 1988, Margie slipped from her bed, which she shared with her husband, and slowly crept into the other room where he kept his briefcase with all his important documents. There was no doubt that her husband’s behavior had changed since their wedding day just seven weeks ago. Some things that he said just didn’t make sense. Things didn’t line up. His temper was shor...

For much of the twentieth century, Mississippi was a place where racial violence was not merely ignored but actively erased. Witnesses stayed silent. Juries looked away. It was just a different time, they say. James Craig Anderson’s murder did not happen in 1955. It happened in 2011. This time, the cameras were watching. This time, the federal government stepped in. This time, the perpetrators ple...

In March 2021, Sarah Everard left a friend’s house in London and started walking home. It was a normal evening, the kind of walk most people do without thinking twice. But when she didn’t return, her family and friends became worried. They called her, searched the area, and waited for news. As the hours turned into days, the story spread beyond her friends and family. The case became a national he...

In this month's special, Melissa from Just The Tip-Sters shares a case close to her heart with Cam & Jen. It's a head-scratcher. In May 2011, Bill and Peggy Stephenson, a kind, generous, and deeply loved couple from Florence, Kentucky, were brutally murdered inside their own home. Both were 74 years old. Their deaths sent shockwaves through Northern Kentucky and left family, friends, and an entire...

In the quiet, unassuming town of Ina, Illinois—where life moved slowly and danger felt distant—Keith and Elaine Dardeen were building a modest, faith-centered future with their young son, Peter, and a baby on the way. Their trailer sat tucked into the woods near the highway, close enough to hear passing traffic yet isolated enough to disappear into the darkness. When Keith failed to report for his...

In November 1998, Wayne Ford was troubled and scared. He called his brother Rodney and said he had “hurt some people.” Rodney could hear the worry in his voice, so he drove six hours through the night to be with him. When he arrived, Wayne was upset and emotional. The next day, the brothers tried to have a normal day. They visited places from their childhood in Humboldt County, had breakfast toget...

It was supposed to be an ordinary night in a quiet Missoula neighborhood, the kind where doors stayed unlocked because nothing bad ever happened. But just after 10 p.m., Doug and Kris Wells pulled into their driveway and found something that didn’t belong: a pickup truck abandoned on their lawn and a man slumped inside. What followed wasn’t a burglary gone wrong. It wasn’t a random act of violence...

Today, Cam and Jen are excited to share a special episode from our friends at Fresh Hell, a historical true-crime podcast hosted by Annie in the United States and Johanna in Austria. The two are close friends who, despite years of collaboration, have never met in real life! We think you will really enjoy Fresh Hell, especially since its thoughtful storytelling is compelling. Annie and Johanna take...

It all began in November 1961, when Arthur Duperrault, a 40-year-old optometrist from Green Bay, Wisconsin, finally set out to give his family the adventure he had been dreaming of for years. Arthur had built a thriving practice specializing in contact lenses, a career that afforded him comfort and stability. But he wanted more than the routines of Midwestern life. What he craved was experience, s...

On the 12th Nightmare Before Christmas… The Genesee River flows peacefully through Rochester today, but it still holds a dark memory from the late 1980s. Back then, it became the hunting ground of Arthur Shawcross. He had already served time for murder but was let out early, even though experts warned he was still dangerous. Soon after he arrived, a terrifying pattern emerged: people disappeared n...

On the 11th Nightmare Before Christmas... On a sunny November morning in 1971, best friends Debbie Ackerman and Maria Johnson, both just 15, set out for a day of surfing near Galveston, Texas. The two girls were inseparable—bonded by their shared love of the beach, the waves, and the promise of youth. Maria, a newcomer to Galveston, had already endured a turbulent childhood. After her parents spli...

On the 10th Nightmare Before Christmas… Palm Sunday is usually a day of hope and reflection, but in 1984,  East New York faced a horror it would never forget. Families were at home, children played, and neighbors went about their day, but inside 1080 Liberty Avenue, everything changed. Ten lives were lost in a single, shocking act of violence. The house was ordinary, the people inside were ordinar...

On the 9th Nightmare Before Christmas... On the afternoon of March 12, 2004, a quiet Fresno street exploded with panic. Twenty-five-year-old Sofina Solorio stood outside the boarded-up home where she’d once lived, screaming for Marcus Wesson to release her children. Her cousin, Ruby Ortiz, shouted beside her. Both women had grown up under Wesson’s rule. Both had borne him children. Now they wanted...

On the 8th Nightmare Before Christmas… Andrew Urdiales grew up in a troubled home, facing abuse that shaped a deep anger inside him. After serving in the Marines, he turned that rage outward, stalking and murdering women across California and the Midwest. For over a decade, he left a trail of victims that left police struggling to track him down. Join Cam and Jen as they discuss “A Marine Without...

On the 7th Nightmare Before Christmas... Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, is the kind of place that sells serenity. Nestled in the lush green folds of the state’s northern panhandle, its glittering lakes and cozy resorts draw tourists each summer, while locals call it the Lake City. It’s a place where doors stay unlocked, where evenings hum with crickets, and where danger feels far away. Eight miles east of...

On the 6th Nightmare Before Christmas… The Sunset Strip was famous for music, bright lights, and big stars, but in the late 1970s and early 1980s, it also became the hunting ground for Douglas Clark and Carol Bundy. They seemed like a normal couple, but behind closed doors, they were obsessed with control and murder. Together, they lured young women and committed terrible crimes that shook the cit...

On the 5th Nightmare Before Christmas... In the summer of 2005, a North Carolina couple slipped away to their Oak Island beach house for a quiet weekend—only to find a stranger renovating their living room. Power tools hummed, drywall dust floated in the air, and the man in work boots calmly insisted the property was his. He even produced a deed, complete with signatures and a tidy paper trail. Ac...

On the 4th Nightmare Before Christmas… On a quiet Florida night, a patrolman sees two cars pulled over. Inside one, a clean-cut man and a woman who whispers, "I'm okay." The officer drives away, unaware he's just left a victim alone with her future killer. That moment was just the beginning. Oscar Ray Bolin left a trail of terror that stretched across Florida. He seemed ordinary, friendly, unassum...

On the 3rd Nightmare Before Christmas... On the sweltering evening of July 14, 1982, a call came into the Waco Police Department that would shatter the community’s sense of safety. Two teenage boys, fishing near the shores of Lake Waco at Speegleville Park, had stumbled across a scene no one could have imagined. Beneath a tree lay a teenage boy. His hands were bound tightly behind his back, a gag...

On the 2nd Nightmare Before Christmas… In November 1987, Korrina Malinoski disappears without a trace, leaving her family and a quiet South Carolina town full of questions. Almost a year later, her eleven-year-old daughter, Annette Sagers, vanishes from a bus stop in Monck’s Corner. She leaves behind a short, mysterious note, but no other clues. No evidence. No witnesses. Only decades of unanswere...

On the 1st day of Nightmares Before Christmas... Nineteen-year-old Sarah Stern was a gifted artist, a young woman passionate about painting, sketching, and all things Disney. Known for her kindness, creativity, and quiet energy, she was loved by friends and family alike. Her disappearance, in December 2016, would shock the close-knit communities of Neptune City and Belmar, New Jersey. But it was w...