Panic True Queer Crime

A few words about this moment we're in and pride. I hope you had a good one.  Hugs and Love and Hugs!

Intimate Partner violence in the LGBTQ+ community is understudied and under-reported with lesbian couples the least studied of all. These are starting to improve and resources are available.  This episode features eight cases of intimate partner murder.  Resources are available if you or anyone you know is in an intimate partner violent relationship.  You deserve to live a life free of violence of...

I've just made a group of shorts for the Panic True Crime channel and I thought I'd put them together and present them to you here. Serial killers of LGBTQ+ folks are the rarest of the rare and often highlight the societal temperature towards queer folk. For example in the murders committed by Michael Lupo in the UK in the 1980s evidence was not tested in a timely way because of a fear of A.I.D.S....

John Snavely and Samuel Del Brocco seemed to come from different worlds. One a stripper, model, and gay-for-pay adult star. The other a businessman with powerful GOP connections. A 2010 chance meeting in a Fort Lauderdale strip club would link them forever. A loved man with a double life, a gay-for-pay porn star, a brutal murder, and a possible rush to judgment. Join me for, Collision the Murder o...

Floridians Kevin Powell and Stephen Adams had been together for 29 years, when they failed to show up for a family Christmas in Ohio they would be discovered murdered in their home.  Peter Avsenew was troubled most of his life he had a troubled upbringing including physical and sexual abuse, but it was the sudden death of his sister that seemed to gin up his rage and anger.  In December of 2010 re...

Wicked and cruel are the words that come to mind for what Ed Buck did when he invited mostly young black men to his apartment in West Hollywood. Buck would entice these men into a meth-fueled session that sometimes lasted for days. On two separate occasions, these sessions ended in death. When a third surviving man agreed to cooperate with police the private life of a wealthy, politically connecte...

AAll Palm Springs, Ca. Clifford Lambert wanted love, all Danny Garcia and Kaushal Niroula wanted was Mr. Lambert's wealth, all of it. In 2008, years of scams, lies, and greed would finally end in murder. In some ways, this con was your standard con involving an older man and a younger man, but that is where anything standard ends. Mr. Lambert became the victim of con artist working covertly first...

In the early morning of July 8, 2015, Stephen Smith, a 19-year-old nursing student living in Hampton County, South Carolina, was found dead in the middle of a dark country road. His death would be the first in a long line of heartaches and tragedies connected to Alex Murdaugh and his family. Was Stephen Smith's killing intentional, was he the victim of a hate crime, or was his death the result of...

One of the reasons I wanted to make this video focused on lesbian intimate partner murder is that the attention to intimate partner violence amongst LGBTQ folks is so underreported even academic research is only now being consistently collected. One of the most poorly covered groups is women in lesbian intimate partner murders. These are three stories of women murdered as a result of intimate part...

What happens when you mix love and sex and the fear of exposure? It can sometimes result in murder. In this episode three cases of love turned to murder. On February 17th 2022, the twenty year olds Philadelphians, Naasire Johnson and Kylen Pratt's secret relationship would end in murder. The brutality of the crime would leave loved ones bereft and heartbroken. In Methuen, Massachusetts, 41-year-ol...

This one of those cases that's a punctuation point for the use of the gay panic defense in law. The poor victim was sidelined as the defense did all they could to, if not justify the murder, contextualize it, which now and then seemed like a mission impossible. My heart goes out to Hajna.   The 1962 acid murder of 25-year-old Hajna de Kaplany by her doctor husband of five weeks has at its core an...

In the 1920s through the 1960s indecent proposals, indecent advances, and honor slayings were all buzzwords used to explain one man's rationale for killing another. The handsome singer Louis Kenneth Neu murdered two men for their clothes, their cars, their cash, and his honor. When 35-year-old Lawrence Shead didn't arrive for work his Patterson, New Jersey colleagues went to his apartment. They fo...

San Francisco resident 75-year-old James Sheahan had terminal cancer but that wouldn't be his cause of death. It would be his friendship with a man whose greed and desperate need to be with the love of his life that would cost Mr. Sheahan dearly. To report elder abuse or find services for older adults and their families, visit The Eldercare Locator. You can also access the Locator by calling 1-800...

Daniel Greeley, a homeless veteran, met Bruce Becker who worked for the IRS  on Austin, Texas' The Drag in May 1995.  Nearly a year later Becker would be dead and Greeley would be on the run. What was the nature of their relationship, why did Greeley kill a man who had been so generous and kind to him? Join me for, The Drag: The Murder of Bruce Becker. To watch this episode: Youtube: https://youtu...

In 1988, 55-year-old, Yale-educated Dr. Richard Boggs and business partners 46-year-old, Melvin Eugene Hanson, and 25-year-old John Hawkins joined together in an insurance scam that would net them a million dollars. The only problem was, in order to get the money someone would have to die. The victim of the scheme, 36-year-old Ellis Greene was in the wrong place at the wrong time. In order to brin...

Thank you for joining me for, Intimate Partner Murders. Intimate partner and domestic violence have many of the same root causes as they do elsewhere. Here are three stories of same-sex intimate partner murder. 39-year-old, Dr. Louis Chen, his decade-long partner 29-year-old, Eric Cooper, and their adorable 2 1/2-year child moved into a gleaming Seattle, Washington penthouse in the summer of 2011,...

For decades murders of gay men were happening on the cliffs of Bondi Beaches. Between 1970 and 2010 gay men were hunted, brutally attacked, and in some cases thrown to their deaths from the cliffs of cruising spots above the beautiful beaches of Sydney, Australia. Many of these murders remain unsolved.  John Russell was a barmen in Bondi he'd spent the night with his friends then capped the evenin...

I choose these three cases for the things they have in common. All of them are unsolved or unresolved. None of the three cases are terribly well known and I wanted to share them with you.  Howard Efland was a nurse who lived his life in the closet until he was murdered in a seedy downtown Los Angeles hotel. No one knew the murder of three men shot execution style in a tiny adult bookstore in North...

Murder and financial crimes are rare but they do happen and when these crimes are coupled with the desire for love and intimacy they can be doubly complicated to escape. In this episode we'll take a look at three men who were killed for their money.    Jake Merendino thought he found a young handsome man who he could shower with gifts and affection. Harley Walker would meet men in online chat room...

For me one of the worst types of murder are those commmitted by a family member. In this episode six people, actually seven, murdered by the family. One of the reasons I wanted to compile this list was to illustrate that homophobic hate crimes can happen anywhere from the leafy green suburbs of Los Angeles county to a small town in Iran. A note: I say there are six cases covered but there are actu...

Between 2010 and 2017 Bruce McArthur killed eight men in the city of Toronto. Despite the imploring of families and friends, despite two separate task forces looking into the missing men, it would take investigators nearly a decade to track a serial killer who had been arrested and detained for assaults and banned from Toronto's Gay Village.  Using court records and investigative research this epi...

The serial killer Stephen Port was able to murder 4 men in plain sight leaving all of his victims within feet of his Barking, East London home. After Port's trial and sentencing, several inquests were convened to look at why the police failed so spectacularly to identify and stop Stephen Port before he became a serial killer. Over the next two episodes, I'm going to use the inquest details to trac...

Stalking is a course of conduct directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to feel fear. Victimconnect.org Thomas Whitney came out late in life and when he met Lawrence Wong he thought his life had finally begun. Instead, a relentless campaign of obsession would culminate in an act of violent brutality. Whitney and Wong were murdered one day after Wong's 51st birthday. The...

Iris SantosThe murders of transgender women of color are alarmingly high once again this year. Frequently, transgender murders go unsolved. Here are eight transwomen of color who's murders remain unsolved. Courtney Eshay Key, Tyianna Alexander, Bianca "Muffin" Bankz, Keeva Scatter, Iris Santos, Nedra Sequence Morris, Duval Princess, Kitty Moore were all murdered by gun violence between 2020 and 20...

Our history is bound up in the stories of women and men who have created and inspired, as Alice Walker wrote, in love, and in trouble. In honor of Pride, here are five gays to make you proud. Included in this episode, musical genius Billy Strayhorn, Tomatsu Yato's stunning photography of Japanese men, Sadao Hasegawa's bravura graphic artwork put Asian men at the center of an erotic world, fashion...