True Crime Campfire

Fantasy is part of being human. Sometimes we all need to tell ourselves stories, escape from the ordinary everyday. We spend luxurious amounts of time and money on this--in daydreams, books, movies, games, music—it’s something both quintessentially human and tantalizingly magical to give ourselves over to fantasy. And most of us have no trouble knowing where to stop. For those of us who haven’t fi...

Chameleons are known for their ability to change color. Some species can achieve incredibly intricate, beautiful colors and patterns. Most people believe chameleons change color in order to blend in with their environments and make themselves less visible to predators, but that’s a misconception. In reality, they change their colors according to mood—reinventing themselves at their own whims. Peop...

The human brain is an exquisitely complex organ, and it’s capable of some pretty bizarre stuff. Take couvade’s syndrome, otherwise known as sympathetic pregnancy—where a non-pregnant partner is so in tune with their pregnant one that they start showing signs of pregnancy themselves: morning sickness, weight gain, mood swings. I can relate to this—whenever my husband has a kidney stone, I always fe...

Imagine waking up each morning with a knot in your stomach—a sense of creeping dread. Imagine knowing that there is someone out there who is obsessed with you in the most unhealthy way imaginable. You are their full time job, the sole focus of their life. They’re always lurking there. Thinking of new ways to force their way into your most private spaces. They may call or text you incessantly. They...

We all roll our eyes at a spoiled brat—that kind of kid who, no matter how much they have, can never get enough. The kid who snatches toys out of other kids’ hands. For that kid, it’s all about ME. What *I* want is all that matters, all that’s real. Good thing we all outgrow that as adults, right? Ha. Yeah. Well, turns out, some of us don’t. Today we’ll learn about two guys who never aged out of t...

Pride. When it’s channeled right, it’s a good thing. Pride in our accomplishments, or those of our loved ones, is great. But it’s not for nothin’ that pride is one of the seven deadly sins. When it goes unchecked, ya see, it tends to create a particular kind of tunnel vision. A lens through which you can only see what you want to see, and anything that doesn’t fit within that view becomes too thre...

Women, campers. Make no mistake about it—we can be assholes too. And when women kill, we tend to get creative about it. Today’s episode is a two-pack of stories. Stories about women who seemed to have it together—loving husbands, great kids, beautiful homes. But underneath that “Live Laugh Love” exterior, storms were a-brewin’. Jealousy. Resentment. Greed. A lust for freedom. Both of these women s...

In part 1, we introduced you to Bob and Jane Bashara, a Grosse Point power couple with a picture perfect marriage on the outside—not so picture perfect on the inside. Not only had Bob run his real estate business into the ground, forcing Jane to forego retirement and carry the family’s financial weight by herself—Bob was also deeply into the BDSM scene, something Jane had no interest in, and he wa...

Power and control. For some people, it’s the most important thing in the world—an essential element of any relationship. If they’re going to get involved with you, there’s a price of admission. If you want to be with them, you have to give them the reins to your life. And there’s an interesting thing about that: Some of these people, despite their constant obsession with controlling their partners...

They say that truth is stranger than fiction. We can forget that sometimes when we see some outrageous viral story on Reddit and decide it must be fake—just a writing exercise, right? Isn’t that what people always say? And sometimes it’s true. But the thing is, it’s been proven true countless times over the centuries—weird shit happens every day. Especially when a particular human failing rears it...

How well do we know the people in our lives? Our coworkers, our friends, the loved ones we sleep next to at night? Everyone decides for themselves how much to share about their private lives. Some of us are over-sharers, posting screenshots of our breakup texts and lunches. Others are closed books, only sharing personal info on a need-to-know basis—and even then, reluctantly. But it’s an almost un...

In part 1, we introduced you to Mark Twitchell. Aspiring filmmaker—though he’s stealing from his own production company and making up outrageous lies to lure investors…New husband and father—though he’s cheating on his wife and showing little interest in fatherhood…And Dexter wannabe. As Twitchell got more and more engrossed in “Dexter” and started researching psychopathy, an “epiphany” began to t...

The builders of the Titanic were so sure they’d crafted an unsinkable ship that—in addition to bragging about it all over the media, they opted not to include enough lifeboats to rescue all the passengers in the event of a problem. We all know how that worked out. In Greek mythology, Icarus needed to get off the island of Crete—so he crafted wings out of feathers and wax so he could fly himself on...

Most parents will tell you that parenthood is one of the greatest joys in life. And for most parents, that’s undoubtedly true. Having a child is an intense experience in both joyful times and bad, and it tends to change you in ways you can’t possibly anticipate. A parent’s love is eternal and unconditional, and it goes without saying that there’s pretty much nothing a child can do that a parent ca...

In Part 1, we introduced you to Cherrylle Dell, a beautiful and manipulative woman whose ex-girlfriend, Nancy Fillmore, says murdered her ex husband Scott. Scott’s had died a couple of years earlier after drinking a bottle of wine laced with antifreeze, and the circumstances of his death led police to rule it a suicide. Now, Nancy was at the Killaloe, Ontario police station claiming it was murder....

Fire is an awesome force. If you don’t take steps to keep it under control, it can rip through the landscape with a fury that’s almost surreal to behold. And once in a great while, you find a person like that—every bit as relentless and indiscriminate as a wildfire, and every bit as determined to devastate anything that tries to get in the way. Just like fire, these people can be beautiful, captiv...

There are few things more irresistible, more frustrating, more fascinating than an unsolved mystery. Today, we have three of them for you: One modern, two vintage. Each of these stories is terrifying and disturbing in its own way. For each, the answer lies tantalizingly just out of reach. We have to admit that we can never know it for sure. But we doubt you’ll be able to resist the lure of these m...

In Part 1, we told you about the horrific bombing murder of Marcus Toney. Before he was murdered, Marcus had recently been the victim of identity theft, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. And he, his attorney, and the private investigator he’d hired to look into the theft, suspected his estranged wife Lisa and her mysterious new boyfriend, whose name Marcus didn’t know. We know, thou...

Identity. The core of who we are. For some of us, we’re connected to it from our earliest days onward. Our interests may change, but our core never does. For others, identity is more fluid. We may change because of the people we encounter, the things we experience, the lessons we learn. Some of us are never in any doubt about who we are. For others, it’s a lifelong journey to find out. But whichev...

In part 1, we introduced you to a trio of Dungeons and Dragons loving nerds: Chris, Bart, and Neal. All kids who had great potential: Smart, talented, well loved by their families, friends, and teachers. But these three guys each had a dark side, and that darkness was soon to culminate in the worst murder and attempted murder a small North Carolina community has ever seen. Join us now for part 2 o...

Nerds are usually pretty harmless. We know, because we are nerds. More often than not, we’re just smart people who are passionate about our interests. Gaming, or comics, or sci fi, or putting on cool costumes and going to cons. Most of us don’t want any trouble. But once in a while, as we’ve seen on this show once before, you get yourself a bad nerd. Join us for a chilling story of greed, fantasy,...

Aung San Suu Kyi once said, “It is not power that corrupts, but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it, and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.” In this episode, we’ll tell you the story of a man who was desperately afraid of losing the stranglehold he had on his little domain, and a woman who was afraid of what he’d do if she didn’t help him keep it....

Greed can come in many forms. It’s not always about money. Some of us get greedy for attention, or drama, or sweets, or sex. In fact, there are probably as many faces of greed as there are people. But because we tend to think of greed as an insatiable hunger for money, it can be easy for the other kinds to fly right under our radar. And that can make us vulnerable. In the story we’re about to tell...

We all like to think we’d see a scam coming. We all like to think we’d never get got. We’re more familiar these days than we’ve ever been with catfish and Nigerian princes and “arrest warrants” supposedly issued for us based on our social security numbers. That last one never fails to crack me up. But although we might be pretty savvy when it comes to these classic cons, there’s one place where we...

In part 1, we introduced you to Mark and Julie Jensen, two opposite personalities whose initially loving relationship had descended into a toxic mess of abuse and mistrust. Mark had become cold and distant, and Julie felt trapped, afraid that if she tried to leave him, Mark would make good on his threats to take away the kids and “make her look crazy” to the courts. When we left you, unbeknownst t...