True Crime Campfire

We all think of charm and good looks as a good thing, right? Something we all wish we had goin’ on. But for some people, a silver tongue and a knockout bod are nothing more than tools to help them hurt and manipulate. Tools that make it easier for them to wreak six kinds of havoc on the lives of everyone they meet. Some people are just forces of destruction, determined to take everything they can...

Few things are more devastating than a loved one going missing. On The Vanished podcast from Wondery, host Marissa Jones tells stories of missing persons that have gone overlooked by mainstream media. In a recent episode, Marissa looks into the disappearance of James Foster Chance. The 48-year-old man from Texas went missing in March of 2021. Devastated and without any leads, James’ family began s...

Marriage. It might not be for everybody, but for a lot of us, it’s great stuff. You get to join up with your best friend, the love of your life, somebody you can just be you around, somebody who feels like home. And of course most of us begin that journey with a wedding: a beautiful ceremony where you pledge to hang together for better or worse, then throw down and join your best buds for some cak...

Since it's Thanksgiving, we're giving you a sneak peek at one of our Patreon subscriber exclusive episodes this week! This one is the story of one of New York City's most notorious murders: A beautiful, privileged young woman brutally strangled in Central Park after a night out with friends. The crime initially looked to be sexually motivated, but the experienced detectives felt something was amis...

Veteran journalist Joe Nocera’s neighbor in the Hamptons was a therapist named Ike. Ike counted celebrities and Manhattan elites as his patients. He’d host star-studded parties at his eccentric vacation house. But one summer, Joe discovered that Ike was gone and everything he’d thought he’d known about his neighbor -- and the house next door -- was wrong. From Wondery, the company behind Dirty Joh...

Parenthood, or so we hear, is full of a kind of transcendent joy, the kind you can only experience by watching your offspring learn and grow. That is, when they’re not making you want to hop in the car and keep driving until you run out of road. There are some ups and downs, for sure. But you’ll hardly ever find a parent who wouldn’t do almost anything for their kids. Notice we said “almost” anyth...

In 1997, a 26 year old woman named Sarah Smith went in for a routine breast augmentation procedure. It should have been an easy, outpatient surgery for this healthy young woman, but it didn't turn out that way. Sarah went into cardiac and respiratory arrest on the operating table, slipped into a coma, and died a few days later. Investigators soon discovered that Sarah wasn't the first of cosmetic...

Killer Psyche is a new weekly true crime podcast from Wondery that explores the minds behind infamous killers and criminals. They cover high-profile cases that have shocked the world, and host Candice Delong uses her five decades of experience as a clinical psychiatric nurse and FBI Criminal Profiler to dissect the motivations and behaviors of the most terrifying felons in history. In a recent epi...

In 1998, South Yorkshire residents Howard Walmsley and his wife Kathy were on top of the world. After years of financial struggle as they tried to get Howard's painting and decorating business off the ground, they finally hit a stroke of luck: Howard won the lottery. Kathy was thrilled at the thought of being able to get out from under their bills, take a lavish holiday, and spoil their friends an...

In 1997, 20-somethings Anu Singh and Joe Cinque were an up and coming young couple--Joe a successful civil engineer, Anu a law student at Australian National University, both smart and gorgeous. From the outside looking in, they seemed to be on top of the world. But there was a storm brewing behind the scenes. Anu was becoming more and more obsessed with a myriad of health problems that no doctors...

It’s one of the most haunting murder cases you’ll ever hear about, and it takes place in a small town in Israel. Tair Rada was only 13-years-old when her body was found inside a locked bathroom stall. She was viciously murdered during a school day, and yet no one saw or heard a thing. The police arrested the janitor, Roman Zadorov, and he eventually confessed, but this was far from being the end o...

For our third annual Halloween special, we have the gorgeous and talented Shelby Scott, velvet-voiced host of Scare You to Sleep, a podcast that, while beautifully produced and hugely entertaining, might just make you wet yourself a little bit. Just a little bit, no big deal. It’s worth it. Shelby’s show is the gold standard in horror podcasts, but she’s also a true crime buff. So since it’s Hallo...

When we left you at the end of part 1, taxidermy enthusiast, landlord and former bullfighter Charles Albright had begun living a double life. By day, a loving and gentlemanly boyfriend, a considerate friend and a fun-loving softball teammate. By night, a regular in the red-light districts of Dallas—sometimes kind and generous to the sex workers he encountered, sometimes cruel and sadistic. And in...

A small town cop known as “GI Joe” is gunned down in a swamp in the summer of 2015 and quickly becomes a martyr in the national media. But when a dogged investigator and his team set out to get justice, they uncover unsettling secrets about Joe, the local police department, and the village of Fox Lake. From Wondery, the makers of The Shrink Next Door and Dr. Death comes the third season of Over My...

In the early 90s, the city of Dallas was thrown into a nightmare. Women started turning up murdered, with a bizarre signature facial mutilation unlike anything detectives had ever seen before. As fear grew in the streets, the killer moved confidently among his pool of potential victims—savvy but vulnerable women who had turned to sex work to survive. No one could have predicted that the predator t...

In the winter of 2002, Dennis White suddenly found himself in a bizarre predicament. His prominent Long Island psychiatrist, Dr. Richard Karpf, seemed to be unraveling: showing up to appointments looking disheveled and distracted. Dennis was concerned about the doctor he'd come to trust over the past six years. But he had no way of knowing what would happen when, one afternoon, he offered Dr. Karp...

Few things are more devastating than a loved one going missing. On The Vanished podcast from Wondery, host Marissa Jones tells stories of missing persons that have gone overlooked by mainstream media. She gets the story from friends and family of the missing person, and frequently talks with law enforcement and others close to the case. This is just a preview of The Vanished, but you can listen to...

This week, we're giving you a sneak peek at another one of our Patreon-exclusive episodes! This was our patrons-only from July. Usually we just do regular TCC episodes for our Patreon extras, but sometimes we like to mix things up and do something different. For this episode, we decided to let Katie take a dive into her very favorite pool--weird internet drama. We bring you two true crime-adjacent...

Nineteen year old Martre Coles was an aspiring artist with dreams of designing video games and making a life with his girlfriend Ashlynn. He'd had a rough few years since the sudden death of his mom, but things started looking up in the spring of 2017, when he found out he'd been accepted to a prestigious art and design program at Florida's Full Sail University. Martre was ready to leave home and...

In the fall of 2011, Jason Hachmeister came home to find his 58 year old mother, Sheila, brutally murdered on her bedroom floor. Detectives quickly discovered that Sheila had been living something of a double life over the past few months, chatting with a much-younger online boyfriend who seemed almost too good to be true. She had also been seeing another boyfriend in real life--one her family muc...

Gallaudet University is one of the world’s most prestigious schools for the deaf and hard of hearing. For the gifted few who pass the exclusive admissions process, Gallaudet is an oasis—a center of learning, a place of infinite possibilities, a home away from home. It’s a place where they can celebrate deaf culture, network with some of the best minds in the country, and feel a deep sense of belon...

A big Halloween party at an apartment complex in Redmond, Washington. Themed rooms and costumed partygoers. But by the end of the party, one of the hosts is dead. The police look to the partiers as the prime suspects: was it the guy in the devil mask, the bank robber, the construction worker? As investigators comb through forensic evidence, witness testimony, DNA, and even consult with a psychic,...

So, campers, today we’re excited to have a special guest with us. I’m sure most of you are familiar by now with the “Dirty John” story, either because of the six-part LA Times podcast or the TV series with Eric Bana and Connie Britton. They tell the story of con man and serial predator John Meehan, who seems to have devoted his entire life to using and abusing other people, especially women, to sa...

There’s a Latin phrase, “Fortune favors the bold.” Con artists understand that better than anyone, I think. It always takes some degree of boldness to do what they do, from Bernie Madoff’s billion dollar Ponzi scheme to the three-card Monte guy on the street. But once in a while, we get ourselves a true master of the art—a con artist so audacious, so arrogant, so bold that they leave everyone they...

In 1930s Philadelphia, men all over town were dying—some in strange accidents, and some of a swift, excruciating illness. Their widows were devastated, of course—but it being the Great Depression and all, they were somewhat comforted by the substantial payouts they received from their late husbands’ life insurance plans. In medical examiners’ offices across the city, one death certificate after an...