Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Jermell Jones is a 41-year-old Florida man who was arrested in July 2025 while working as the mascot for Chuck E. Cheese in Tallahassee. He was taken into custody in full costume during a children’s birthday party after surveillance linked him to using a woman’s child-support debit card to make fraudulent charges.

Elizabeth Wettlaufer is a Canadian former registered nurse who confessed to murdering eight elderly patients and attempting to kill six others between 2007 and 2016 in long-term care homes in southwestern Ontario.

Todd Davis, the co-founder and CEO of LifeLock, became famous in 2007 for publicly displaying his real Social Security number in ads to prove confidence in his company’s identity-theft protection service. But the stunt backfired when his identity was stolen at least a dozen times, exposing flaws in LifeLock’s system.

Pedro Rodrigues Filho was a Brazilian serial killer who claimed to have murdered more than 100 people- most of them other criminals.

Ted Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, was a Harvard-educated mathematician who abandoned academia to live in a remote Montana cabin, and between 1978 and 1995 carried out a nationwide bombing spree targeting universities, airlines and individuals he believed were advancing technology.

Joran van der Sloot whose criminal history includes the 2010 murder of 21-year-old Stephany Flores Ramírez in Lima, Peru- he was convicted and sentenced to 28 years in prison for the crime. He first came to international attention as the prime suspect in the disappearance of 18-year-old Natalee Holloway in Aruba in 2005.

Jeremiah “The Bull” Evans was a Utah-based entrepreneur who, between July 2019 and July 2022, ran a fraudulent investment scheme through his company Alpha Influence, LLC, claiming to sell clients stakes in automated stores.

Heather Mack is an American woman convicted of conspiring to murder her mother, Sheila von Wiese-Mack, during a 2014 vacation in Bali. Heather had secretly used her mother’s credit card to fly her boyfriend, Tommy Schaefer, to Bali, and the two exchanged messages plotting her mother’s death.

James Hogue is an American impostor and career con man best known for infiltrating elite institutions by assuming false identities. 

Gina Champion-Cain is a former San Diego business executive who orchestrated what is considered one of the largest woman-led Ponzi schemes in U.S. history. Beginning around 2012, she raised hundreds of millions of dollars from investors by promising to use their funds to make high-interest loans to individuals seeking California liquor licenses—funds she claimed would be held in escrow. In reality...

Mark Acklom is an English conman and fraudster who for decades used false identities and elaborate scams to swindle large sums from victims, often posing as a wealthy Swiss banker or even an MI6 agent.

James and Suzanne Agnew, a couple from Lakewood, Colorado, were arrested in July 2025 after authorities discovered the decomposed body of 64-year-old James O'Neill in their home. The Agnews allegedly kept O'Neill's body under a deflated air mattress for nearly 18 months following his death.

Mark Hofmann is a former document dealer and convicted murderer from Salt Lake City, Utah, known for perpetrating one of the most elaborate forgery schemes in American history. In the early 1980s, Hofmann created and sold numerous forged documents related to the history of the Latter-day Saint (LDS) movement

Michael Swango is a former American physician and convicted serial killer believed to have caused the deaths of up to 60 individuals across the United States and Zimbabwe.

Tilly Smith, a 10-year-old British schoolgirl, saved approximately 100 people from the Indian Ocean tsunami while vacationing with her family at Mai Khao Beach in Phuket, Thailand. Two weeks prior, she had learned about tsunamis in her geography class, including the warning signs such as the ocean frothing and receding. Recognizing these signs on the beach, she urgently alerted her parents, who th...

Sture Bergwall, formerly known as Thomas Quick, was a Swedish man who, in the 1990s, confessed to over 30 murders across Scandinavia, leading to his conviction for eight of them. These confessions were obtained during therapy sessions at a psychiatric institution, where he was treated for personality disorders and heavily medicated.

Latarian Milton became an internet sensation at age 7 in 2008 after taking his grandmother’s Dodge Durango on a joyride through Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. During the escapade, he caused significant property damage, including hitting parked cars and mailboxes. When interviewed by local news, Milton infamously stated, “I want to do hood-rat stuff with my friend,” which quickly went viral. Despite...

Arno Funke, known by his alias "Dagobert," was a German extortionist who gained notoriety in the late 1980s and early 1990s for his inventive and non-violent blackmail schemes. A failed cartoonist and sign painter, Funke turned to crime in 1988, planting bombs in luxury department stores in Berlin and demanding ransoms.

Lou Pearlman was a music producer and manager who rose to prominence in the 1990s by creating and managing successful boy bands such as the Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC. However, behind his musical empire lay one of the largest and longest-running Ponzi schemes in U.S. history.

Thomas Chan is a Canadian man from Peterborough, Ontario, who was convicted in 2018 for the 2015 stabbing death of his father, Dr. Andrew Chan, and the assault of his father's partner, Lynn Witteveen. The incident occurred after Thomas consumed a large quantity of magic mushrooms and meditated to enhance the hallucinatory effects.

Jan-Erik Olsson was a Swedish convict who, on August 23, 1973, attempted to rob the Kreditbanken in Stockholm's Norrmalmstorg Square. During the robbery, he took four bank employees hostage and demanded the release of his former cellmate, Clark Olofsson, who was serving a prison sentence at the time. The Swedish authorities agreed to his demand, and Olofsson was brought to the bank to assist i...

On July 7, 2016, Micah Xavier Johnson, a 25-year-old Army Reserve veteran, carried out a sniper attack during a protest in Dallas, Texas, resulting in the deaths of five police officers and injuries to nine others.

Neil Hopper, a 49-year-old former NHS vascular surgeon from Truro, Cornwall, was sentenced to 32 months in prison after admitting to self-inflicting injuries that led to the amputation of both his legs. In 2019 Hopper used dry ice to damage his legs, necessitating their removal. He then falsely claimed to insurers that his amputations were due to sepsis, resulting in fraudulent payouts.

In 2011, Dan Saunders, a 29-year-old bartender from Wangaratta, Australia, discovered a glitch in the National Australia Bank's ATM system that allowed him to withdraw money beyond his account balance.

The Shaggs were a rock band formed in 1965 by sisters Dorothy ("Dot"), Betty, and Helen Wiggin in Fremont, New Hampshire. Their father, Austin Wiggin Jr., believing his mother's palm reading had foretold their musical success, insisted they form a band. Despite lacking musical training or interest, the sisters practiced daily under his strict supervision. In 1969, they recorded their...