Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Betty Lou Beets was a Texas woman who became known as the “Black Widow” after murdering two of her husbands in the early 1980s for financial gain.

Jadion “Jay Icon” Richards and his wife Akwele “Apple” Lawes-Richards were arrested and charged in the U.S. with shoplifting and related fraud offenses related to the retail chain Lululemon.

Rod Blagojevich was the Democratic governor of Illinois whose political career collapsed in 2008 when federal prosecutors charged him with corruption, most famously accusing him of trying to sell or trade the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.

Molly Bloom was a former competitive mogul skier whose Olympic dreams ended after a severe injury, pushing her into the world of high-stakes underground poker in Los Angeles, where she eventually ran some of the most exclusive illegal games in Hollywood, attracting A-list actors, professional athletes, and powerful businessmen. As the operation grew, Bloom became deeply entangled with Russian mob...

In November 2025, a Tennessee jury found Latoshia Daniels guilty of second-degree murder for the 2019 shooting death of Memphis pastor Brodes Perry, as well as attempted reckless endangerment for wounding his wife, Tabatha Perry Archie. The trial, dubbed the "Broke My Heart" murder trial, centered on a two-year secret affair between Daniels and Perry that ended shortly before the shootin...

Johnny Lewis was a troubled actor best known for his role on Sons of Anarchy whose life unraveled amid escalating violence, mental health struggles, and drug abuse. In September 2012, Lewis brutally attacked his 81-year-old landlady, Catherine Davis, inside her Los Angeles home, beating and strangling her to death, and evidence suggested he may have assaulted other residents before fleeing.

John Donald Cody is a Harvard-educated lawyer and former U.S. Army intelligence officer who spent decades as a fugitive after disappearing from his Arizona law practice in the 1980s amid allegations he stole client funds. Decades later, using the alias Bobby Thompson, he founded the United States Navy Veterans Association, a bogus charity that raised tens of millions of dollars from donors under t...

Katie Piper is a British model and television presenter whose life changed dramatically in 2008 when she was the victim of a brutal acid attack orchestrated by her ex-boyfriend, Daniel Lynch, who hired an accomplice to throw sulfuric acid in her face as she stood outside her London apartment. The attack left Piper with severe facial burns, blindness in one eye, and extensive injuries to her esopha...

Marni Yang was a former girlfriend of NFL safety Shaun Gayle who, in July 2007, murdered Gayle’s pregnant girlfriend, Rhoni Reuter, in her Deerfield, Illinois condo.

Heidi Fleiss, dubbed the Hollywood Madam in the 1990s, became nationally infamous when federal investigators exposed her high-end prostitution ring catering to wealthy clients in Los Angeles, a scandal that erupted into pop-culture spectacle once actor Charlie Sheen publicly admitted he had been one of her customers.

Vonlee Nicole Titlow was convicted of second-degree murder in the 2000 death of her uncle, Donald Rogers, in Michigan after prosecutors said she helped her aunt, Billie Jean Rogers, kill him.

During a Coldplay concert when the stadium’s kiss cam landed on two attendees who very clearly did not want to be seen together, triggering an instant internet pile-on. As the camera lingered, the pair awkwardly recoiled, hid their faces, and appeared panicked rather than playful, which viewers quickly interpreted as evidence of an affair. Online sleuths soon identified the man as Andy Byron, the...

Daylon Pierce became known for running a widespread online dating scam in which he used social media and dating apps to target women, often presenting himself as charming, emotionally invested, and sometimes falsely claiming stable careers or military ties to build trust quickly. After forming intense romantic relationships, Pierce would manufacture financial emergencies and persuade victims to se...

Christina Paolilla is from Clear Lake, Texas, and was involved in a brutal double murder in 2003. Along with her boyfriend, Steven Spence, Paolilla carried out a home invasion that resulted in the execution-style killings of her childhood friends, Clara Harris’s relatives Josh and Alicia Moffatt, whom Paolilla had grown up with and once considered family.

Lorenzen Wright, a former NBA center who played 13 seasons in the league, was found murdered in July 2010 after disappearing from Memphis, Tennessee, his body discovered in a wooded area riddled with multiple gunshot wounds. The case drew national attention due to Wright’s prominence and the disturbing revelation of a 911 call in which he appeared to be fleeing for his life. After years of stalled...

Ezra McCandless, also known as Ezra McCandless Mitchell, was convicted for the 2018 murder of her former boyfriend, Alex Woodworth, in rural Wisconsin, a case that initially appeared to be a tragic act of self-defense but unraveled into a carefully staged homicide.

Gerald Payne was the pastor and director of Greater Ministries International, a Tampa-based religious organization that operated in the 1990s as a massive Ponzi-style fraud cloaked in faith-healing rhetoric, promising believers that if they “gifted” money to the ministry they would receive double their money back in about 17 months through supposed divinely blessed investments in foreign currency,...

In January 2007, a guerrilla marketing campaign for the Adult Swim show Aqua Teen Hunger Force triggered a widespread public panic in and around Boston when LED light boards depicting the show’s Mooninite characters were mistaken for explosive devices.

Sandra Beltrán, known as La Reina del Pacífico, was a prominent Colombian drug trafficker who rose to power in the 1990s and early 2000s as a key intermediary between Colombian cartel and Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel.

Gilberto Valle, a New York City police officer nicknamed the “Cannibal Cop” by the media, was arrested in 2012 after investigators discovered his online chats and writings.

Mary Ellen Samuels was a California woman who orchestrated a murder-for-hire plot in 1988 to kill her estranged husband, Bob Samuels.

Edmund Kemper was a highly intelligent but profoundly disturbed killer whose violence grew out of years of psychological abuse and deep resentment toward his mother. After murdering his grandparents at fifteen and spending five years in a state psychiatric hospital, he was released as a “rehabilitated” young man and returned to Santa Cruz, where he began targeting female college students in 1972....

Sheriff James Lujan’s case centered on a pattern of compromised judgment and abuse of authority during his tenure as the elected sheriff of Taos County, New Mexico. Investigators found that Lujan repeatedly interfered in law-enforcement efforts involving Sage Hammer, a local fugitive, including warning him about police activity and attempting to shield him from arrest. 

David Sconce built what became the largest cremation business in the United States by turning his family’s mortuary operation into a factory of exploitation and deception, routinely cremating multiple bodies at once, mixing remains, returning fake ashes to grieving families, and harvesting organs and tissue without consent.

The case of Tay-K centers on Taymor McIntyre, a teenage rapper whose rising career was eclipsed by a violent spiral that began with his involvement in a 2016 home-invasion robbery that left 21-year-old Ethan Walker dead. While awaiting trial, McIntyre cut off his ankle monitor and fled, turning his run from the law into a combustible piece of internet lore as he recorded “The Race,” a song that un...