Scams, Money, & Murder

John Wayne Gacy seemed like your ordinary neighbor. But underneath the surface, he was hiding urges he couldn't explain: ones that started in a Las Vegas funeral home basement, and ended with a body buried under his own house. In the first part of our 3-part series on John Wayne Gacy, Katie Ring traces the childhood that shaped him, and the double life he kept carefully hidden. Follow America's Mo...

In 2012, Omaha mechanic Dave Kroupa met Liz Golyar on a dating app...a connection that would spiral into years of relentless stalking, arson, and murder. And when Dave began seeing Cari Farver, she vanished overnight, and a torrent of threatening messages began arriving in her name. As the harassment escalated from digital terror to a house fire, investigators slowly realized the truth was far dar...

Dan Wozniak was a charming, talented actor in Southern California with big dreams and a wedding on the horizon, but his finances were falling apart and his taste for the spotlight far outpaced what his life could actually afford. Rather than face the truth, he began to lie, manipulate, and scheme, building a fantasy of the life he wanted on a foundation of deception. In the spring of 2010, that sp...

Alexis Linkletter and Sabrina Deana Roga break down four unsettling Reddit stories of creeps hiding in plain sight. A woman finds her sister's husband has written a novel confessing his obsession with her. A cousin's "innocent" DMs turn into a scam that nearly costs her her family. A wife discovers her husband's friend group has a disturbing party tradition — and that he's known about it all along...

On July 3, 2015, 35-year-old Crystal Rogers was supposed to have a date night with her boyfriend. The following morning, she was missing. Two days later, her car turned up abandoned on Kentucky's Bluegrass Parkway. There was a flat tire, keys in the ignition and her purse was still inside. But there was no Crystal. What followed was a decade of investigation, an FBI takeover, grand jury battles, a...

During the Cold War, the CIA quietly turned modern art into a weapon. Convinced that America needed to prove its cultural superiority over the Soviet Union, the agency secretly promoted abstract expressionist painters like Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning as symbols of American freedom. Through a front group called the Congress for Cultural Freedom and a network of fake foundati...

A lakeside camping trip ends in blood. A quiet cabin becomes a house of horrors. And the killers were never caught. Heidi Wong tells the real stories that inspired Friday the 13th and The Strangers: the true tales of isolation, fear, and murder that haunt horror’s most famous cabins. For more follow Twisted Tales wherever you listen to podcasts: https://pod.link/1839058226 If you’re new here, don’...

In February 1957, a little boy was found dead in a cardboard box in the woods outside Philadelphia. His photo ran in newspapers across the country. Nobody came forward. Nobody knew his name. In the first part of our 3-part series on the Boy in the Box, Katie Ring takes you back to the afternoon he was found, the autopsy that revealed a short and painful life, and the investigation that had every r...

Ivan Milat grew up in a volatile Sydney household surrounded by weapons, abuse, and fourteen siblings. By his teens, he was already hurting animals, and allegedly...people. After a series of robberies, a sexual assault, and a faked suicide, Milat walked free from every charge and used steady road work to move unseen through Australia's most isolated stretches of highway. This episode traces how ye...

In 1922, six members of the same family were found murdered on their isolated farmstead in the Bavarian countryside, killed one by one with a pickaxe. In the days before their deaths, the family had noticed strange and frightening signs: footprints in the snow, footsteps in the attic, and the unshakable feeling that someone was watching them. But they never made it out alive, and their killer was...

What begins as a Reddit post about infidelity becomes something far more disturbing. A husband discovers his wife has been secretly communicating with their neighbor, and when he finally decides to leave, the story takes a horrifying turn. Alexis Linkletter walks Sabrina Deana-Roga through the original thread, the warning signs hidden in plain sight, and the devastating news that followed. It's a...

On March 19, 2004, 17-year-old Brianna Maitland finished her shift at the Black Lantern Inn in Vermont and drove into the night. An hour later, her car was seen backed into an abandoned farmhouse on a rural stretch of Route 118. When police got there, they found her belongings still inside. But there was no crash, no struggle, and no Brianna. Two decades later, investigators have never publicly na...

In January 1996, the small Brazilian city of Varginha became the center of one of the most famous UFO stories in South American history. Multiple witnesses, including three young women, reported seeing a strange creature with a large head and red eyes lurking in the streets, while others claimed the military had captured one or more living beings and recovered a crashed craft. As soldiers reported...

Step beyond the screen and into the real-life terror behind The Conjuring Universe. Heidi explores the Perron family’s decade-long haunting in a Rhode Island farmhouse and the sinister origins of Annabelle the Doll. From ghostly apparitions to demonic encounters, these true horror stories prove that reality can be far scarier than fiction. If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Scams, Money, &...

In 1998, a self-proclaimed genius named Keith Raniere launched a self-help company outside Albany, New York, and thousands of people handed over their savings, their schedules, and their secrets to be part of it. In the first of our 3-part series on NXIVM, Katie Ring traces the origins of Keith Raniere: the ordinary suburban man who fabricated an entire identity, built a pyramid scheme, and partne...

For this episode, Vanessa and Dr. Engels are joined by Alexis Linkletter, co-hose of Crime House's newest show Crimes of Reddit. In 1968, a young couple was shot dead in the Italian countryside while their six-year-old son slept in the back seat: a crime that quietly launched one of Italy's most haunting serial killing sprees. For over a decade, a gunman stalked couples parked in remote areas outs...

Robert Telles was a rising political star in Las Vegas—until journalist Jeff German exposed the truth. In Part 1, we uncover Telles’s history of manipulation, sexual misconduct, and the paranoia that turned one reporter into a threat he couldn't ignore. Follow Murder: True Crime Stories for Part 2 of this episode: https://pod.link/1745145932 If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Scams, Money,...

What happens when jealousy, manipulation and betrayal cross the line into criminal behavior? Sabrina Deana-Roga brings Alexis Linkletter three shocking true crime relationship stories from Reddit. A husband discovers the disturbing truth behind his wife’s secret harassment campaign, a woman learns that her boyfriend has been conducting horrifying experiments on her, and a man receives a friend req...

On February 10, 1984, 10-year-old Kevin Collins left basketball practice at St. Agnes School in San Francisco and began the short, familiar walk home through the Sunset District. Multiple witnesses recalled seeing him speaking with an unknown man near a schoolyard. He never made it home. Despite one of the largest searches in San Francisco history — roadblocks, helicopters, hundreds of volunteers...

According to the Bible, the Ark of the Covenant was a gold-covered chest built to hold the Ten Commandments, an object of such immense divine power that it could level cities and strike down anyone who touched it. Then, sometime after the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem, it vanished from history. For thousands of years, the question of what happened to it has fueled legends and obsess...

When Dathan was five, his kindergarten class released helium balloons with letters inside as a sweet lesson about connecting with strangers. But someone found his balloon... and never stopped watching him. For nearly a decade, this person photographed Dathan from the shadows, infiltrated his neighborhood, and ultimately targeted his best friend. For more follow Twisted Tales wherever you listen to...

At 7pm on a February night in 2004, 21-year-old Maura Murray crashed her car on a dark New Hampshire road and told a passing driver she was fine. Eleven minutes later, police arrived. The car was still there. Maura was gone. No footprints in the snow. No sign of where she went. In the first part of our 3-part series, host Katie Ring is joined by Crimes of Reddit hosts Sabrina Deana-Roga and Alexis...

For this episode, Vanessa and Dr. Engels are joined by Alexis Linkletter, co-hose of Crime House's newest show Crimes of Reddit. In 1968, a young couple was shot dead in the Italian countryside while their six-year-old son slept in the back seat: a crime that quietly launched one of Italy's most haunting serial killing sprees. For over a decade, a gunman stalked couples parked in remote areas outs...

Young couples disappeared or were found murdered along a scenic stretch of highway. The crimes unfolded across multiple locations. Fear grew as authorities struggled to connect the dots. Follow Murder: True Crime Stories for Part 2 of this episode: https://pod.link/1745145932 If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Scams, Money, & Murder to never miss a case! To hear episodes ad-free, subsc...

Sabrina Deana-Roga brings Alexis Linkletter three of Reddit's most disturbing stalker stories, and with zero knowledge of what's coming, Alexis reacts in real time. One man is stalked by his ex at his own wedding. Another discovers someone has been secretly breaking into their apartment and moving things around. And a third shares their story of being stalked and catfished...with an ending nobody...