True Crime Campfire

Some of the scariest people we’ve covered on this show were cursed with a grandiose sense of entitlement—the sense that if they see something they want, they should be allowed to just take it, whether that something is a new watch or a fellow human being. The self-centeredness is bad enough, but when you couple it with rage…especially the kind brought on by copious amounts of steroids…you’ve got t...

In 2012 and 2013, two women disappeared. They didn’t have a whole lot in common: One was a teenager on the west coast, the other a midwestern mom of seven. But both would fall under the spell of a poisonous man who had become a master at manipulating the vulnerable for his own twisted ends. Sources:CBS News: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/former-wisconsin-cop-charged-in-suitcase-murders/USA Today: h...

Two of the closest bonds a person can have are with a spouse and with a child. Ideally, in the first you're a loving partner, and in the second, a guide and a caregiver. Of course, real life doesn't always match the ideal, and both of those relationships can get twisted and strange. Sometimes your spouse and your child can even become the deadliest enemies. Join us for a bizarre story of lust, gre...

Imagine growing up in a spectacular mansion, with access to the kind of wealth and connections most of us can only dream of. But although you’re surrounded by material riches, you’re in a social vacuum—eating alone in your bedroom every night, wandering the grounds of your family estate with only the wildlife as company. This was the life of John Du Pont, the youngest heir to the famously wealthy...

The Rolling Stones told us “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” but some people DO get what they want…just not necessarily what they need. This week’s story is about a woman with a tempestuous life who got just what she wanted—wealth, stability, and love—and then took a wrecking ball and smashed it all into pieces. This one has some strange twists and turns! Sources:CNN's Vengeance: Killer Millio...

We all live our daily lives in our own little spheres. We have our work, our families, our friends, all the million little things that keep us moving from one day to the next. We sometimes think about the world beyond that stuff—like, haven’t we all walked down a crowded street and wondered about the strangers we passed? About their inner lives, their secrets? Whether we’ve ever unknowingly walked...

People will do crazy things for desire. From the earliest human tales and histories to stories you can read in your newspaper today, there have been a never-ending number of crimes and betrayals committed because someone started getting hot under the collar. People will risk their relationships, their happiness, their lives for desire. Sometimes they’ll even risk the safety of their nation. And th...

As most of you probably know, this week is the Thanksgiving holiday here in the U.S., and Katie and I both have family stuff to do—people to see, pies to bake. So we took the week off from our regularly scheduled programming. But because we love you and we didn’t want you to miss out on a new episode, we decided to pick out one of our old Patreon-exclusive episodes from 2022. You’ll get a fun epis...

How many times have we seen it—a rich and/or powerful person gets in some kind of hot water, and all it takes is a quick “Do you know who I AM?” to fix it? I don’t really get why people are so dazzled by money and pedigree, but it seems to be a constant theme throughout history—and it’s as alive today as it’s ever been. So it’s not a big surprise that some people who lack money and connections dec...

For most of us, it’s kinda hard to grasp the life of a professional criminal. Only a tiny percentage of it is turf wars and whackin’ dudes. Most people who make a living from crime live just like the rest of us do: They go to the grocery store, they take their kids to school, they worry about money being tight. But, unlike most of us, when things get REALLY tight, there’s always the chance of a bi...

Some of y’all may be too young to remember, but in the days before email, getting a handwritten letter in the mail was fun. Somebody had taken the time to write out a message just for you and sent it through time and space. It could be from an old friend, a lost love, or a secret admirer. You couldn’t wait to get inside and discover what was so important that it needed to be personally drafted for...

It’s Halloween again, time to scare you all into submission. And this year, we’ve decided to bring in some reinforcements to do that. An expert in the art of the scare, with one of the best horror podcasts out there: Nina Jones from Twisted Mirror. We’ve chosen two true stories that will have you sleeping with one eye open, wondering what dark secrets might be lurking in your seemingly friendly ne...

Tristan Redman is a journalist who doesn’t believe in ghosts. But weird things happened in his teenage bedroom – weirder than normal. When, years later, he discovers subsequent occupants of his family home say they have been visited by the ghost of a faceless woman, he’s curious. It just so happens that the house Tristan grew up in is right next door to the house where his wife’s great grandmother...

In the 1820s, the city of Edinburgh was shaken to its core by a series of callous murders. Behind the killings was a story of death, greed, and willful blindness that provided the coldest possible answer to the question, “What is a human life worth?” Join us for the story of Scotland's most infamous serial killers. Sources:Alanna Knight, Burke & Hare: Scotland’s Serial KillersR. Michael Gordon, Th...

Follow MrBallen’s Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge the first 8 episodes, early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. The human body is a miracle. But when it’s not working, it can be the stuff of nightmares. On this new series from master storyteller MrBallen, we’re sharing medical horror stories and diagnostic mysteries that are surgicall...

In July of 1990, the headless, handless body of a young woman named Beverly McGowan was found in a canal near St. Lucie, Florida. As they began their investigation, detectives had no way of knowing that they were embarking on one of the strangest cases of their careers—the twisting, turning story of a consummate con woman, killer, and master of disguise…a criminal so skilled at deception that she...

It’s October, folks. The season of mystery. So this week, to kick off our favorite month of the year, we’ve picked two of the most iconic unsolved cases in American history: both cases where the basic fabric of everyday life was threatened. Where the things we take for granted as safe—over the counter medicine and air travel—suddenly couldn’t be trusted. Both of these cases rocked the country to i...

We’ve had a pretty heavy summer on TCC, haven’t we? Nazis and Norwegian black metal murders, and those last two cases were gnarly. So we thought maybe this week, you’d appreciate something a little lighter—something just for fun. So we decided to talk about hoaxes. Sometimes hoaxes are hilarious, like the time Sir Arthur Conan Doyle pranked five of his friends by sending them all an anonymous lett...

When we left you at the end of Part 1, former Mormon golden boy Taylor Helzer had decided on two disciples who would aid him in his weird scheme to bring about a planet-wide spiritual awakening through a network of self-help groups fueled by sex and drugs, a plan he called Transform America. These disciples were his quiet younger brother Justin, and Dawn Godman, a vulnerable young woman convinced...

For fifteen years you could call a private number in Manhattan and anonymously apologize for anything. It was called The Apology Line. This is the story of the phone line and the man at the other end who became consumed by his own creation. He was known as “Mr. Apology.” As thousands of callers flooded the line, confessing to everything from shoplifting to adultery, drug dealing, to murder, Mr. Ap...

Being part of a society means that for the most part you follow its rules, often without thinking about it at all. And those rules, those strictures of what is right and wrong, good or bad, are frequently dumb and sometimes awful—human societies are not utopias, after all, they’re messy and loud and full of argument. But some shared consensus on the boundaries of behavior is necessary if people ar...

When we left you at the end of part 1, married couple BJ and Erika Sifrit had decided to take a break from their demanding schedule of selling scrapbook supplies and burgling local businesses and drive down to Ocean City, Maryland for a little vacation…join us now for part 2 of this chilling true story. Sources:Cruel Death by M. William PhelpsA&E's "American Justice," episode "Thrill Kill Couple"I...

In May of 2002, a couple on vacation went missing from the beach town of Ocean City Maryland…and what began as a missing persons investigation soon morphed into one of the most bizarre, most disturbing double murder cases in the area’s history. The killers’ names weren’t a mystery for long. They were a young married couple with their whole lives ahead of them. The puzzle was their motivation to br...

In Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” Scrooge’s nephew says of his uncle, “His wealth is of no use to him. He don’t do any good with it. He don’t make himself comfortable with it.” Those of us who aren’t staggeringly wealthy might have happy daydreams about how much fun we’d have if we won the lottery, but a lot of the people who devote their lives to making as much cash as possible seem incapa...

When Mike Williams vanishes on a hunting trip, the authorities suspect he was eaten by alligators but the true predators who took Mike may lurk much closer to home. The mystery of Mike’s disappearance might have faded from memory, if it wasn’t for one woman’s tireless crusade. From Wondery, comes a new season of Over My Dead Body; a story about an obsessive love affair, a scandalous secret and a m...