True Crime 48 Hours

Killer Calls Police from Outside the Station to Claim His Crimes: The Zodiac Killer Case of Betty Lou Jensen, David Arthur Faraday, Darlene Ferrin, Michael Mageau, Bryan Hartnell, Cecilia Shepard, and Paul Lee Stine December 20, 1968: two teenagers shot dead on a rural road near Lake Herman, California. Seven months later, the killer calls the police station from a payphone fifty meters away, clai...

The night Eric disappeared with Leslie: The murder of Leslie Palacio Leslie Palacio's last transmission was a text message to her sister at 3 a.m. on August 29, 2020: "I have something important to tell you." She never did. Hours later, a neighbor's camera recorded Eric Rangel removing a lifeless body from his home while his father José helped him load it into a truck. In this episode, we explore...

The night Mario didn't come back: mystery in Madrid: The homicide of Mario Biondo May 30, 2013, apartment on Magdalena Street, Madrid. A domestic worker opens the door and finds the Sicilian cameraman hanging from a shelf with a scarf around his neck. The police close the case within hours: suicide. But ten years later, an Italian judge will say something very different. In this episode, we explor...

Girl Found Burning in Bathtub While Three Adults Walk Free: The Death of Victoria Martens A ten-year-old girl arrives home from school on August 23rd, 2016, and never leaves the apartment alive. Hours later, firefighters discover her body submerged and burning in a bathtub in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Three adults lived in that apartment. None were convicted of killing her. In this episode, we reco...

The open door of the Michigan killer: The murder of Kevin Bacon On the night of December 23, 2019, Kevin Bacon went on a Grindr date and disappeared. When the police arrived at the suspect's home, he opened the door without resistance, knowing that Kevin's body was hanging from the basement ceiling. How did a man with a history of prior complaints manage to stay free long enough to commit a docume...

Passersby Find Female Torso in Shopping Cart at Three AM: The Murder of Susan Leiden At 1:45 in the morning on March 3, 2022, a shopping cart abandoned at the intersection of Pennsylvania and Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn contained a mutilated female torso. The discovery would unravel a case of homicide and dismemberment that exposed a system's fatal miscalculation about an eighty-one-year-old man r...

Man Searches for Missing Girl He Buried Weeks Earlier: The Serial Murders of Penny Davis and the Hoffman Family A hiker discovers a human jawbone in a rural valley, and within weeks, a double homicide shakes a quiet Washington town. The man arrested had a documented history-a prison file from 1989 explicitly predicting he would become a threat to the community. No one acted on it. The investigatio...

The Notebook that Condemned the Killer: The Murder of Patrick de la Cerda in Deltona, Florida. A man wrote down every detail of his plan: the exact address, the dog's name, how to hide fingerprints. Then he threw it in the trash without destroying it. Patrick de la Cerda was shot four times on February 27, 2018, and the crumpled pages of the blue notebook became the most devastating forensic evide...

The dog that accused the killer of Florencia: The murder of Florencia Aranguren in Búzios, Brazil A recently arrived Argentine woman in Brazil disappears four days after landing. Her dog stays by her body, covered in blood, on the beach. The impossible: during the court hearing, the animal's reaction against the suspect was presented as identification evidence. In this episode, we explore how a ma...

Killer Signs His Murders With Letters Police File Away as Pranks: The Serial Homicides of Wolfgang Abel and Marco Furlán November 1980. A letter arrives at an Italian newspaper signed "Ludwig" describing three unsolved murders with classified details no one outside the crimes could know. The police read it, note the impossible accuracy, and dismiss it as a hoax. Over the next four years, Ludwig wi...

System Releases Him Thirteen Months Before He Murders Three: The serial murders of Nicole Paterson, Margaret Josephine Mack, and Mersina Halvagis September 1996. A man with sixteen documented sexual assault convictions walks free from a Victorian prison. Psychiatric records flag him as high-risk. No one stops him. Thirteen months later, a woman is found dead with injuries Australian forensic scien...

The carpet that disappeared: Diomedes and the buried secret: The homicide of Doris Adriana Niño In the early morning of May 15, 1997, a man in a yellow sweater throws a body wrapped in a raincoat into a thicket on the outskirts of Bogotá. Three farmers see everything. But when the police arrive, no one asks about the carpet that disappeared from the apartment where it all happened. In this episode...

Man Feeds Two Women Into Industrial Shredder in Basement: The double homicide of Adriana Joiosa and Lidia Hernández Freshly painted walls, the smell of bleach, and in the center of the room, an industrial shredder with remnants of flesh and bone. When investigators opened the basement door in Majadahonda, Madrid, they discovered evidence of two women who had vanished without a trace-one five years...

No body, no forgiveness: the murder that Tucumán could not solve: The disappearance and murder of Beatriz Argañarás On July 31, 2006, a 45-year-old teacher leaves her home for work and disappears without a trace. Blood splatters in a freshly painted apartment, a car filled with fuel, and text messages would be enough to convict two women of murder, but the body would never be found. How do you pro...

Man Reads FBI Manual and Decides to Become Serial Killer That Year: The Murders of Peter Walker, Christopher Donn, Perry Bradley III, Andrew Collier, and Emmanuel Spiteri London, spring 1993. Five men vanish from the same gay bar within twelve weeks. All are found bound, gagged, strangled-scenes so clean they seem unconnected. Then the killer calls the police himself, unprompted, demanding recogni...

The fall that wasn't: murder in Pergamino: The qualified homicide of Iván Ortiguera A 16-year-old teenager falls from the seventh floor in Pergamino, Argentina. Four witnesses declare that he committed suicide. But the autopsy reveals something impossible: he had facial fractures prior to the fall. How does someone commit suicide who was already unconscious? What seemed like a desperate jump was a...

Couple Crosses Six States Leaving Eight Dead in Fifty-Three Days: The Murder Spree of Alton Coleman and Debra Brown On May 29, 1984, nine-year-old Bernita Wyatt vanished from Kenosha, Wisconsin. Within weeks, her disappearance would trigger the largest federal manhunt of the decade, spanning six states and involving 150 agents. The question investigators could not answer: how did the killers alway...

Natalia's refrigerator: crime in Posadas: The murder of Natalia Samaniego On September 10, 2018, neighbors in Posadas detect a putrid smell and call the police. Agents find Juan unconscious next to pills and alcohol. Inside the refrigerator gifted by his mother as a housewarming present: the body of Natalia, wrapped in a blanket. A letter signed in blood is addressed to "Mr. Lucifer." Was it a sui...

Victoria disappeared at school: eight years of hidden suffocation. The Homicide of Victoria Mafra Natalini A 17-year-old teenager goes to the bathroom on a school trip and never returns. Her body is found 1.5 kilometers away, in the opposite direction, face down with her arms intertwined. The official autopsy closes the case as "natural causes." But eight years later, private experts hired by her...

Mother Walks Alone Through Moscow Shops and Finds the Baby Killer: The Serial Murders of Natasha Denisyuk Fall 1977. Five babies vanished from storefronts across Moscow, each three months old, each taken in seconds. The Soviet state imposed total silence-no newspapers, no broadcasts, no public warning. Mothers received no alert. Yet one woman, Valentina Mamina, whose daughter barely survived an ab...

Daughter Opens Garage and Finds Her Father's Victims Hidden for Decades: The Serial Murders of Manfred Adolf Seil A daughter inventories her deceased father's garage in Frankfurt and discovers three metal barrels. Inside them, human remains preserved by cold storage for eleven years. The man she knew as a landscape architect and jazz musician was about to become the center of one of Germany's most...

Three impossible meters: The fall of Stefanie Magón: The unsolved death of Stefanie Rocío Magón Ramírez A Colombian model falls from a rooftop in Mexico City on July 30, 2016, but her body appears three meters from the building, in a fetal position, with fractures that defy all logic of free fall. Authorities declare homicide, then deny it without explanation. In this episode, we explore the foren...

Boy Writes Down License Plate as Killer Leaves the Scene: The Capture of Richard Ramírez, the Night Stalker August 1985. A thirteen-year-old observes an orange Toyota fleeing a brutal attack in Mission Viejo. He writes down the license plate. That single act-a detail so small it could have been forgotten-becomes the only solid evidence that will stop a serial killer who has terrorized Southern Cal...

The obsession that ended in blood: Yuka and Luna in Kabukicho: The stabbing of a lovestruck influencer. One early morning in May, a 21-year-old girl stabbed her boyfriend while he was sleeping, left him bleeding on the floor, lit a cigarette, and waited for the police smiling. She had spent over $8,000 to monopolize the host who obsessed her. The impossible: thousands turned her into a tragic hero...

Police Doubted the Bones Until the Killer Sent Her Photograph: The Serial Murders of Mari Kono A box arrived at a Saitama family's doorstep containing ten baby teeth, underwear, and sandals-the remains of their missing four-year-old daughter. When investigators publicly questioned whether the bones were authentic, the killer responded with something no detective expected: a photograph of the corps...