The Unlovely Truth

If you feel like you could have done a better job as a mom, and I’m pretty sure we all feel that way sometimes, I’ll guarantee you you did a better job than Diane Downs. If watching an episode of Hoarders makes you feel pretty good about how clean your house actually is - listening to this episode will make you feel like Mother of the Year. This is Season 4, Episode 22. Our book this week is Small...

Imagine a man who sees himself as so incredibly righteous that even the small town Baptist church that he founded might be a bit too liberal for him. That was Dr. John Huntington Story of Lovell, Wyoming. The town had a population of just under 2500 people and one traffic light. It also had a monster who molested hundreds of women and girls as young as three years old. More than 20 years after the...

Can you imagine experiencing a devastating trauma, having to tell all of the hurtful details to strangers, only to face judgment, criticism and even blame? Too often, that’s what rape victims go through. It’s not just the criminal court system. What if when you tried to have criminal charges brought, your attacker sued you in civil court? We are going to investigate a shocking true crime story to...

For two years, twin brothers Chris and Jeff George along with their friend Derik Nolan, ran the largest pain clinic in the United States. They didn’t really care about alleviating people’s pain. They cared about the profits selling opioids could make. Florida’s laws didn’t address the fact that none of the men had any medical training to help addicts. They had no training in counseling to help add...

Are the top true crime podcasts necessarily the most ethical? I read an interesting survey the other day that said that the top two reasons that people listen to podcasts are for entertainment and education. The bottom reason, kind of sadly I think, is for encouragement and inspiration. I will try to give you all of those things on my podcast! That survey made me rethink about looking at true crim...

Are you ready to learn how to turn fear into fuel if you find yourself in a sketchy situation? This topic can positively impact every single person on the planet - I truly believe that. My guest is Tony Blauer. Coach Blauer has been in the martial art, self-defense, defensive tactics, and combatives industry for over four decades. He founded Blauer Tactical Systems (BTS) in 1985 and it has grown i...

Do you ever ask yourself this: why do I watch the news anymore? TV, print media, and social media make it seem like violent crime is happening all around us, all the time. What irks me is that once the shock factor is over, so few voices are giving us information about how to respond when tragedy does land at our doorstep. Today’s guest is going to do just that. Each of us who is a parent knows wh...

We tend to trust people who are in positions of power, or who hold down jobs that are service oriented like a doctor, a pastor, or a therapist. Amy Nordhues trusted her therapist. Everyone in her community loved him. Her friend raved about him. He was an elder at the church she was attending. Amy didn’t know it, but he was also very, very dangerous. Our book this week is Preyed Upon: Breaking Free...

We’ve all been startled by the noise on our phones when an Amber alert is issued near where we are. You’ve probably also heard of Silver alerts, but what about Blue Alerts, Camo Alerts, Clear Alerts or even Feather Alerts? Me neither, so let’s investigate what they all mean. Sharing alerts is an easy way to be a Person of Impact. Even if you don’t personally have a connection to any alerts that yo...

Cult Leader Warren Jeffs was on the run. Stories of abuse from former members of the FLDS were coming to light, including some which could bring criminal charges. In 2006, Warren made the FBI’s Most Wanted List. Even in hiding, Warren was continuing to collect young wives. One of his latest was only 12 years old. We are wrapping up our deep dive into The Witness Wore Red by Rebecca Musser. She’s a...

Have you ever brought up a concern in your church, only to be labeled as an enemy of the faith? Do your leaders exhibit a troubling lack of humility? Are you sure you would recognize spiritual abuse if you saw it? Our book this week is The Witness Wore Red by Rebecca Musser. She’s an author, activist, mom, and was the 19th wife of Rulon Jeffs, Warren Jeffs’ father. This is part 2 of a three-part d...

If you had been told all through your childhood that people outside your faith are plotting to hurt you, you might feel safer sticking close to people who believe just like you do, even if you knew that at least some of what you are being taught is wrong. Would you have the courage to leave it all behind, have your family and friends disown you, and become, in the words of men like Warren Jeffs, a...

For many years, a set of remains found in Yosemite National Park were known as Summit Meadow Jane Doe. Just over a year ago, genetic genealogy revealed that the remains belonged to a woman named Patricia Hicks. Just 27 years old when the last credible sighting of her is recorded, Patricia had moved to Merced, California, after her marriage ended. Like a lot of us, she wanted a fresh start - but th...

When a loved one is in prison, you’re serving a sentence of your own. The experience can break you, or shape you. Learn how today’s guest was able to overcome a system seemingly designed to tear families apart and have it ultimately bring hers closer together. Our book this week is My Incarcerated Life, and our guest is the book’s author, Qiana Riley-Jones. Qiana is a wife, mother, military vetera...

If you Google the words “Domestic Violence Statistics”, you’ll find some very sobering information. Did you know that according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV) , 1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men have been victims of severe physical violence (and they give the examples of being beaten, burned, or strangled) by an intimate partner in their lifetime? I worked for a short time i...

It’s hard enough for me to imagine having a missing loved one. Can you? Then picture finding out that a serial killer has been operating where and when your loved one went missing. That’s the scenario we have for this week’s case. Authorities may never know exactly how many victims this killer had, but a new coroner investigating the case is determined to identify as many of the known remains as h...

We’ve all heard about the Long Island Serial Killer, but there are so many more true crime stories there. Did you know that Long Island is the home of roughly 40% of the entire population of New York State? With that many people living there, it’s no wonder that it has a lot more unsolved murders and missing persons cases than we know. We’re going to talk about one unsolved murder and one missing...

Digging into a family search is no longer just for families tracing their own ancestry. It’s now a crime fighting tool, used by experts in the fast-growing field of forensic genealogy. I’m really going to be geeking out today because this stuff fascinates me. I’ve done quite a bit of research into my own family tree, and to see these techniques used to help solve crime is nothing short of amazing....

I didn’t know that it takes about four pounds of pressure to pull the trigger on a 9 mm handgun, did you? I read that that’s like the pressure in a firm handshake. That’s not all that much, especially when someone is holding a 9 mm handgun to your head. If you found yourself in that situation, what would you do to survive? Our book this week is “Four Pounds of Pressure: A Memoir of Rape, Survival,...

Murder by poisoning has been a popular method of getting rid of someone for centuries. As life insurance policies became more commonplace, arsenic was given the nickname “the inheritance powder”. And who else would have easier access to other, more exotic poisons than people in the medical field. Like a nurse. Our case this week comes from the book An Almost Perfect Murder, by Gary C. King. Let’s...

Most people in Lincoln, Illinois, didn’t lock their doors in the 1970’s. They weren’t worried about murderers roaming around. Mike Hartnett and his wife arrived in town to work at Lincoln College, a private junior college. Both were ready to counsel Lincoln’s students and they wondered how much trouble there could possibly be in this peaceful looking small town in 1972. If they’d only known, who k...

Jim Duckett was a lot of things to a lot of people - father, son, brother, uncle, friend, horse lover, good listener, veteran and more. That’s why it’s so hard to understand how he came to be tied to a chair in his bathroom, bloodied and tortured to death on Nov. 10, 2008, in Shelbyville, KY. Well, it’s hard to understand for most of us. But somebody out there knows exactly what happened. It’s bee...

Capital punishment is a hotly debated topic among Christians, and rightly so. Both the old and new testaments talk about it being within the government’s rights. But let me know if you are aware of any verses that condone private citizens executing a man when the government isn’t doing it fast enough for them. This week we are wrapping up the case of The Santa Claus Bank Robbery, an amazing book b...

Early release programs for convicted felons are controversial, and always have been. It’s a delicate balance to try to alleviate prison overcrowding yet keep the public safe. Marshall Ratliff, Henry Helms, and Robert Hill had all served time in Texas’ Huntsville Prison. If they hadn’t all been given what the public felt were light sentences with early release, would those who died during the Santa...

What are you supposed to do when your plans go horribly wrong? You can give up and make the best of how things have turned out, or you can dig in and keep trying. That’s what our four would-be bank robbers from last week decided to do, but no matter what they did, things just kept getting worse. Crime certainly didn’t pay for them. If they hadn’t had so much bad luck, they wouldn’t have had any lu...