Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Robert Pickton was a Canadian pig farmer and serial killer who, in 2007, was convicted of murdering six women, though he confessed to an undercover officer that he killed 49.

Ephren Taylor II rose to fame as a self-proclaimed "teenage tycoon," building a massive public profile as a financial guru and "social capitalist" who supposedly earned his first million by age 16. Leveraging this manufactured persona and his status as a minister’s son, he launched a "Building Wealth" tour that targeted African American megachurches, including Bishop...

Marjorie Ann Orbin was a former Las Vegas showgirl convicted of the 2004 murder of her husband, Jay Orbin, a successful jewelry dealer.

Leon Jacob was a failed medical resident in Houston who, along with his girlfriend, veterinarian Valerie McDaniel, orchestrated a plot to hire a hitman to murder both of their ex-partners. Motivated by a desire to prevent his ex-girlfriend from testifying in a stalking case against him and to resolve McDaniel's custody battle, Jacob offered cash and luxury watches to an individual he believed...

Jonathan Crupi was a Brooklyn high school English teacher who, on July 5, 2012, murdered his wife and fellow teacher, Simeonette Mapes-Crupi, in their Staten Island home.

In 2005, Amy Bosley made a frantic 911 call reporting that an intruder had broken into her Kentucky home and shot her husband, Bob Bosley, while their two young children were asleep nearby. However, investigators quickly grew suspicious of her story after finding bullet casings in the washing machine and evidence that she had staged the break-in by breaking glass after the shots were fired. The tr...

In September 2025, a California jury unanimously cleared Cardi B of all liability in a $24 million civil lawsuit brought by former security guard Emani Ellis. The legal battle stemmed from a 2018 encounter at a Beverly Hills medical office where Ellis claimed the rapper- who was four months pregnant at the time- physically assaulted her, spat on her, and used slurs after a disagreement regarding p...

Robyn Lindholm, a former Melbourne adult dancer often dubbed the "Black Widow," is a convicted double murderer whose crimes involved orchestrating the deaths of her own partners by manipulating other men into doing her bidding. In 2013, she arranged for her then-boyfriend Torsten Trabert and another associate to kill her former partner Wayne Amey following a bitter property dispute; Amey...

Wendi Andriano is an Arizona woman currently on death row for the brutal October 2000 murder of her terminally ill husband, Joe Andriano. Driven by financial greed and resentment over her role as a caregiver, Wendi first attempted to poison Joe with sodium azide before ultimately bludgeoning him with a barstool.

In the 1980s, Dorothea Puente operated a boarding house in Sacramento, California, where she presented herself as a kind, grandmotherly figure who cared for "shadow people"—the elderly, alcoholics, and the mentally disabled who had no one else to look after them. In reality, she was a cold and calculating serial killer who drugged her vulnerable tenants with sedatives, strangled or suffo...

She had no loyalty at all. - - In November 2000, Kristin Rossum, a toxicologist at the San Diego County Medical Examiner’s Office, murdered her 26-year-old husband, Gregory de Villers, by administering a lethal dose of drugsstolen from her workplace. After finding him dead in their La Jolla apartment, she staged the scene to resemble her favorite movie, American Beauty, by sprinkling red rose peta...

Kay Young and Katherine Mock are two Missouri women convicted of a murder-for-hire plot involving the death of Young's husband, Melvin Griesbauer, in 2006.

On New Year’s Eve 2018, U.S. Army Sergeant Tyrone Hassel III was fatally shot in an ambush in his father's driveway in Michigan while on holiday leave. Investigators later discovered that his wife, Kemia Hassel, also an active-duty soldier, had orchestrated the murder with her lover and fellow soldier, Jeremy Cuellar, so they could continue their extramarital affair.

Randall Dale Adams was wrongfully convicted of murdering a Dallas police officer in 1976 and sentenced to death, spending over 12 years in prison despite being innocent. His case gained national attention through Errol Morris’s 1988 documentary, The Thin Blue Line, which exposed suppressed evidence and perjured testimony, revealing the real killer was David Harris.

Ryan Wedding, a former Canadian Olympic snowboarder who competed in the 2002 Salt Lake City Games, transitioned from professional athletics to becoming one of North America's most wanted drug kingpins.

Jonathan Gerlach, a 34-year-old former metalcore vocalist from Ephrata, Pennsylvania, was arrested in January 2026 for a massive grave-robbing spree that officials described as a "horror movie come to life." Following a months-long investigation and an anonymous tip, police caught Gerlach leaving the historic Mount Moriah Cemetery with a burlap sack containing human remains.

In February 2008, facing massive debt and a Medicare fraud conviction, 40-year-old Lake Barrington contractor Ari Squire hatched a plan to fake his own death to collect on a $5 million life insurance policy. He lured 20-year-old Justin Newman to his home with the promise of a high-paying construction job, then murdered him and staged a horrific scene in his garage.

Kulthum Akbari is an Iranian serial killer arrested in 2023 who confessed to murdering her 82-year-old husband and 13 men over a twenty-year span, though investigations suggest she may have killed over 20 men through a scheme involving multiple fraudulent marriages. Operating in Sari, Iran, between 2001 and 2023, Akbari targeted elderly husbands, marrying them before killing them.

John Hinckley Jr. became infamous in 1981 when he attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan outside the Washington Hilton Hotel, shooting Reagan and three others, including Press Secretary James Brady, who was left permanently disabled. Hinckley later said he carried out the attack in a delusional effort to impress actress Jodie Foster, with whom he had become obsessed after watching the fi...

Lance Armstrong was a professional cyclist who won the Tour de France seven times from 1999 to 2005 after recovering from testicular cancer. For years, he denied allegations that he used performance-enhancing drugs. In 2012, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency concluded that Armstrong had participated in a long-running doping program involving substances such as EPO, testosterone, and blood transfusions,...

This is the story of Martin Bryant and the Port Arthur Massacre.

Eric Conn, once self-proclaimed as the "Mr. Social Security" of eastern Kentucky, orchestrated the largest Social Security fraud in United States history, totaling over $550 million in redirected government funds. Between 2004 and 2011, Conn utilized a network of bribed officials- including an Administrative Law Judge and complicit doctors- to systematically approve thousands of fraudule...

Heather Stephenson-Snell was a professional psychotherapist and leader of an all-female biker gang who became obsessed with revenge after her former partner, Adrian Sinclair, ended their relationship to be with another woman, Diane Lomax. Following an 18-month campaign of harassment, she drove from York to Radcliffe on Halloween night in 2003 disguised in a "Scream" mask and ghostly whit...

In 1981 in Kansas, Melinda Raisch became the center of a deadly love triangle that ended in brutal betrayal. Unhappy in her marriage to David Harmon, Raisch began an affair with Mark Mangelsdorf, and together the two conspired to eliminate Harmon rather than pursue divorce.

In early 2017, William "Billy" Boyette and accomplice Mary Rice led law enforcement on a violent, week-long manhunt across the Florida Panhandle and South Alabama. The spree began on January 31 with the double homicide of Boyette's ex-girlfriend and her friend in Milton, Florida, followed by two more fatal shootings during carjackings and home invasions in Alabama and Beulah, Florida...