Red Tree Crime

A sixteen-year-old boy calls his girlfriend to say he misses her, kisses his mother goodnight, and walks into a rainy November evening. He is never seen again. Nearly three decades later, the Isle of Wight still holds its darkest secret. On November 2, 1996, Damien Nettles left his home in Cowes after negotiating a midnight curfew with his mother Valerie [citation:6]. The six-foot-four teenager wi...

A young French au pair left home to chase a dream in London. She ended up tortured, starved, and burned on a garden bonfire while her murderers barbecued chicken nearby. This is the horrific story of Sophie Lionnet. In 2017, 21-year-old Sophie moved to Wimbledon to work as a live-in nanny for fashion designer Sabrina Kouider and her partner Ouissem Medouni [citation:1]. What should have been a fre...

A first-grade teacher found dead on her kitchen floor with twenty stab wounds. A knife protruding from her chest. The door locked from the inside. And a medical examiner who changed his ruling after a closed-door meeting with police. On January 26, 2011, twenty-seven-year-old Ellen Greenberg was discovered by her fiancé Sam Goldberg in their Philadelphia apartment [citation:1][citation:2]. She had...

A teenager walks home from a school dance. He never arrives. The next morning, children playing in a vacant lot find his body—bound with rope, eyes and mouth taped shut [citation:3]. For forty-one years, a pact of silence protects his killers. A broken vow finally brings them down. On September 26, 1969, fifteen-year-old John McCabe attended a dance at the Knights of Columbus hall in Tewksbury, Ma...

She looked like someone's sweet grandmother. White hair. Soft wrinkles. A gentle smile. Behind that mask lived a monster who butchered her victims, boiled their heads in pots, and may have fed human flesh to neighborhood children. Tamara Samsonova, known as the Granny Ripper and Baba Yaga after the terrifying witch of Slavic folklore, was arrested in July 2015 when police caught her on CCTV carryi...

An eighteen-year-old college freshman went for a jog with her German shepherd on a quiet Friday afternoon. Her dog returned hours later alone. Three days after Thanksgiving 1989, Mandy Stavik's nude body was found in the Nooksack River. She had been raped and drowned [citation:1][citation:2]. The killer would remain free for nearly three decades. For years, the case sat cold. Then in 2017, a brave...

A law professor shot in his own garage. A family dynasty with unlimited money. And a conspiracy that took eleven years to fully unravel. On July 18, 2014, Florida State University law professor Dan Markel dropped his two young sons at preschool, went to the gym, and returned home to find death waiting in his driveway [citation:3]. Two men from Miami, Sigfredo Garcia and Luis Rivera, had followed h...

Brushes tapping against a mirrored vanity. The soft click of a setting spray. A bride looking at her reflection, wondering if she will cry before the vows or after. In this episode, I walk through a wedding day get ready with me routine, focusing on the makeup that will last through tears, champagne, dancing, and at least a hundred photographs. From primer to powder, from foundation that photograp...

A lonely teenager creates a fictional spy to order his own murder. A gullible friend believes every word and agrees to stab him to death in an alleyway. In the early 2000s, two teenage boys from Greater Manchester, known only as Mark and John, met in a local internet chat room [citation:2]. John, a bright 14-year-old grammar school student who was confused about his sexuality and struggling with f...

A young woman found dead on a Scottish beach. Police ruled suicide within hours. Her body told a different story. On December 4, 2005, 30-year-old Annie Börjesson was discovered face down on Prestwick Beach, fully clothed, with her passport and packed bags nearby [citation:1][citation:3]. She had been planning to fly home to Sweden for Christmas. She had paid her rent, packed library books to retu...

A mother vanishes. Her phone keeps texting for years. The woman pretending to be her is the one who put her in the ground. On November 13, 2012, Cari Farver spent the night with her new boyfriend Dave Kroupa in Omaha, Nebraska. He kissed her goodbye and went to work. She was never seen again [citation:6]. What followed was a three-year nightmare: thousands of cruel texts, a house fire, a shooting,...

A fibreglass pole. Three generations bludgeoned to death in their beds. Fires set to hide the evidence. And a conviction so controversial that twenty-five years later, Wales is still divided. On June 27, 1999, firefighters in the quiet Swansea Valley village of Clydach made a gruesome discovery. Mandy Power, 34, her bedridden mother Doris Dawson, 80, and Mandy's daughters Katie, 10, and Emily, 8,...

A killer who bragged about his murders. A father and son who hacked off ears and drove nails into eyes. A gang that microwaved a child. Scotland has seen depravity that defies belief. In the 1950s, Peter Manuel murdered at least nine people, confessed in poetry, and conducted his own defense with arrogance[citation:7]. In 2023, Andrew Innes buried a mother and toddler under his kitchen floor after...

A young man is found alive inside a home where his girlfriend lies dead. Police interrogate him for hours as the prime suspect. But Ryan Waller was not a killer. He was a victim with a bullet lodged in his brain. On December 23, 2006, 18-year-old Ryan Waller and his 21-year-old girlfriend Heather Quan were at home in Phoenix, Arizona, when Larry Carver and his son Richie arrived seeking revenge fo...

A house sitting job. A boyfriend who left too soon. Two classmates hiding in the basement with masks and knives. And a horror movie obsession that turned deadly real. On September 22, 2006, 16-year-old Cassie Jo Stoddart was house sitting for her aunt and uncle in Pocatello, Idaho [citation:1]. Her boyfriend Matt Beckham visited, and two classmates, Brian Draper and Torey Adamcik, stopped by to wa...

A family lunch. A beef Wellington. And a poison so lethal that three guests were dead within a week. The cook said it was an accident. The jury said it was murder. In July 2023, Erin Patterson invited her estranged husband's parents, aunt and uncle to her home in Leongatha, Australia [citation:3]. She served them beef Wellington pastries. Within days, Don and Gail Patterson and Heather Wilkinson w...

A detective sat across from a smiling woman who had just described her son's bruises as falling off a cushion. Then he read the pediatrician's report aloud. The mask dropped. The monster spat in his face. The interrogation was over. In North London, Detective Jon Wedger confronted Tracey Connelly, the mother of 17-month-old Peter, a boy who would later be known as Baby P. Connelly had been called...

A Russian dominatrix. A slice of poisoned cheesecake. And a doppelgänger who woke up days later with her identity stolen and a killer still on the loose. In August 2016, Viktoria Nasyrova visited the Forest Hills home of Olga Tsvyk, a 35-year-old eyelash technician who looked strikingly similar to her [citation:1]. Both had dark hair, the same skin complexion, and both spoke Russian. Nasyrova brou...

A young mother vanished days before Christmas. Her husband smiled for the cameras and pleaded for her return. He had already strangled her, dismembered her body, and scattered her remains across an English seaside town. On December 16, 1998, 21-year-old Lynsey Wilson Quy disappeared from her home in Southport, England [citation:1]. Her husband Mitchell Quy launched a public campaign claiming she h...

A retired couple. A janitor who seemed helpful. And a murder that took seventeen years to solve because the killer was hiding in the maintenance closet. Russell and Shirley Dermond were found dead in May 2014 at their home on Lake Oconee in Georgia. Russell was decapitated in the garage. Shirley was missing. Her body was discovered weeks later floating in the lake. Investigators found no forced en...

A wealthy family. A mysterious murder. A disappearance at sea. And a young man accused of killing both his grandfather and his mother before dying in a jail cell awaiting trial. In December 2013, 87-year-old real estate magnate John Chakalos was found shot to death in his bed. His grandson Nathan, then 19, was the last person to see him alive. Nathan had purchased a rifle matching the murder weapo...

A grey beard. A friendly smile. A neighbor who seemed like the kindest man on the block. But behind the gentle face of a grandfather was a predator who strangled women who reminded him of his ex-wife. Adolph Laudenberg was a cab driver in Los Angeles during the 1970s who used his job to find vulnerable victims. He picked up lonely, alcoholic or ill women, then bound, raped and strangled them [cita...

A wedding. A marriage. A murder. And a trail of evidence that led investigators from the altar to the killer. In this episode, I uncover a chilling case featured on The New Detectives, the groundbreaking Discovery Channel series that aired from 1996 to 2004 and inspired the creation of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation . The series revolutionized forensic science television, showing viewers how inves...

A beloved elementary school principal. A CSI exhibit in Las Vegas. And a husband found shot dead in an almond orchard. The surveillance footage that caught the killer would take three years to fully unravel. On August 25, 2013, Todd Chance left his Bakersfield home in his black Ford Mustang, telling his wife Leslie he was going to a gun show [citation:10]. Hours later, his body was discovered in a...

A successful farming family. A sudden disappearance. And a week-long odyssey that left two of them in psychiatric care and Australia asking: what were they running from? On August 29, 2016, Mark, Jacoba, and their three adult children fled their Silvan farm, leaving behind phones, passports, credit cards, and even car keys in ignitions [citation:2]. They drove 800km through the night, convinced so...