True Crime Today | Daily True Crime News & Interviews

The Supreme Court said the prosecution went "far too long and far too deep" into Alex Murdaugh’s financial crimes at the first trial. They singled out testimony with "zero probative value" on motive that existed only to make Murdaugh look like someone who takes advantage of the helpless. Any retrial has to be leaner. The question is whether lean is enough. Eric Fadds brings his prosecutorial exper...

A former Chief Justice of South Carolina evaluated Becky Hill’s jury conduct and concluded Alex Murdaugh wasn’t prejudiced. Five sitting Supreme Court justices looked at the same record and said she applied the wrong legal standard entirely. The conviction is gone. Eric Fadds brings his experience as both a former prosecutor and current defense attorney to the question of how that happened. The co...

James Lasdun spent years investigating the Murdaugh case for The New Yorker and his book The Family Man . This interview covers it all — the manipulation patterns that started long before the murders, the evidence that was kept from the jury, and the psychology that finally explains how a father kills his own family. The book reveals that the boat crash narrative may have been built after the fact...

Why didn’t she just leave? The question gets asked in every domestic violence case, every coercive control prosecution, every murder where the warning signs were visible to everyone except the person inside the relationship. The answer the public settles on almost always blames the victim. Psychotherapist Shavaun Scott has a different answer — one grounded in neuroscience, clinical experience, and...

The defense has seen the FBI reports. They’ve seen the forensics. They’ve seen whatever is in the autopsy report the Miami-Dade medical examiner won’t release to the public. And after reviewing all of it, they’re not asking for more time. Anna Kepner’s trial starts June 1. Timothy Hudson, the sixteen-year-old stepbrother accused of killing Kepner aboard the Carnival Horizon, signed a written waive...

The window between deciding to leave and actually being gone is the most dangerous place a person can stand. Most people do not know that. Most people think the decision is the breakthrough — that once you have made up your mind, the hardest part is over. The data says the opposite. Maggie Murdaugh had reportedly already made that decision. According to reports, she had met with an attorney. She w...

After a jury convicted her unanimously on every count — including the fatal poisoning of her husband Eric Richins — Kouri Richins sent a message from jail to an unidentified "admirer." She promised to expose the judge, the prosecutors, the investigation, and Eric's entire family. She said they "picked the wrong one." And she signed off with a winking emoji and a threat: "They haven't seen anything...

When Y-STR DNA testing revealed that the genetic material at the yogurt shop crime scene belonged to an unknown male — excluding all four accused men and over 130 other tested individuals — it should have been the end. Instead, it was the beginning of a 17-year limbo. Travis County DA Rosemary Lehmberg dismissed the charges against Springsteen and Scott in 2009 but issued a public statement affirm...

You walk out the door of a Twelve Tribes compound with nothing. No bank account. No driver’s license. No work history. No understanding of how to rent an apartment, apply for a job, or file a tax return. The community you just left reportedly considers you dead. And there is no system waiting to catch you. In this episode, Tony Brueski examines the aftermath of leaving the Twelve Tribes — the grou...

The most dangerous kind of erosion leaves no bruises and makes no noise. It works through small compromises that feel reasonable in the moment and catastrophic only in retrospect. And it can last decades without the person inside it ever realizing what has happened. This episode puts two cases side by side. Asa Ellerup was married to Rex Heuermann for 27 years and says she had no knowledge of the...

She could name it. She told police her husband was grooming her. She took legal action. And according to the timeline, she went back. The assumption most people carry — that awareness is protection, that seeing the trap means you can escape it — collapses the moment you look at what happened to Mica Miller. A federal indictment alleges John-Paul Miller cyberstalked his estranged wife for 528 conse...

The trial proved guilt. It never explained how. James Lasdun's The Family Man does what no other Murdaugh book has attempted — it uses decades of criminal psychology research to build a framework for understanding how Alex crossed the line from liar and thief to the killer of his own wife and son. The book places Alex alongside documented family annihilators. Jean-Claude Romand faked a medical car...

The Richard Allen appeal has moved into its final procedural stretch. The defense filed its reply brief at the end of April. The motion for oral arguments was filed alongside it. The case is now fully briefed. Three judges at the Indiana Court of Appeals are reading the record. A decision is coming. This is what is actually on the table. The defense's reply brief identifies a van timeline contradi...

Federal agents boarded eight cruise ships in San Diego between April 23rd and 27th. According to CBP, 27 crew members were allegedly involved in exploitation material. Ten came from the Disney Magic — the single largest group from any ship, 37 percent of the entire operation. Disney’s official response called it “a very small number.” A passenger on the Disney Magic watched her family’s head serve...

Kouri Richins has been sentenced to Life Without Parole after a Utah jury found her guilty of murdering her husband, Eric Richins, by poisoning him with fentanyl. She faces consecutive sentences for the other four charges. The sentencing marks a major conclusion in a case that captivated true crime audiences across the country. Prosecutors argued Richins killed Eric for insurance money and financi...

Description: The trial is over. The conviction is on paper. And yet, inside that courtroom at sentencing, Kouri Richins' defense team argued as if the fight was nowhere close to finished. Defense attorney Wendy Lewis opened by addressing what the court couldn't ignore — the absence of remorse. Her answer was direct: Richins can't express remorse for something she maintains she didn't do. Lewis als...

Richard Allen's appeal is fully briefed. The reply brief landed at the end of April. The motion for oral arguments was filed behind it. The State of Indiana has not joined that motion. Three judges at the Indiana Court of Appeals are now reading the full record with no further paper coming. This is the procedural posture that determines whether the Delphi conviction survives. Not a press conferenc...

The conviction told us what happened. The victim impact statements told us who was lost. Kouri Richins has been sentenced to [INSERT SENTENCE] after a jury found her guilty of murdering her husband Eric with a fatal dose of fentanyl in March 2022 — a crime prosecutors argued was driven by debt, insurance money, and cold calculation. That part of the case is done. What happened in that sentencing c...

The 2001 and 2002 trials in the yogurt shop murders case are a case study in how criminal prosecution can produce convictions without physical evidence. Robert Springsteen and Michael Scott were convicted of capital murder based solely on confessions that both men maintained were coerced. No DNA, fingerprints, or forensic evidence of any kind connected either man to the crime scene. The prosecutio...

She was supposed to be neutral. Instead, she told jurors not to be fooled by the defense, coached them to scrutinize the defendant’s body language, and wanted a guilty verdict to sell her book. The South Carolina Supreme Court has unanimously reversed Alex Murdaugh’s convictions for killing his wife Maggie and son Paul, finding that former Colleton County Clerk Becky Hill’s interference denied him...

Gene Spriggs built the Twelve Tribes into a movement spanning four continents, approximately forty communities, and at least thirty-three Yellow Deli locations. He reportedly controlled what his followers ate, wore, read, and believed. He assigned marriages and forbade divorce. His teachings on race have been documented by the SPLC as white supremacist. And then his wife allegedly broke the one ru...

Indiana has a theory for why Richard Allen confessed to the Delphi murders while sitting in solitary confinement at Westville. According to the State's appellate brief, Richard Allen found religion in his cell. He had a spiritual awakening. He decided to come clean. What the defense has documented is something else entirely. A man who lost 45 pounds in solitary. A man who tore up his legal mail. A...

According to Richard Allen's reply brief, Indiana investigators interviewed an alternative suspect in the Delphi murders, then allegedly recorded over the tape of that interview. His weapon was never collected. His phone was never searched. And at trial, the judge ruled that presenting him as an alternative suspect was speculative. The defense's response to that ruling is a question. How is anythi...

The jury convicted Alex Murdaugh. But they never saw the full picture. James Lasdun's The Family Man reveals evidence that prosecutors chose not to present — and it raises questions that still don't have answers. The complete SLED timeline from June 7th shows Alex in phone contact with men with criminal records hours before the murders. He deleted his call log from that entire week. Cousin Eddie t...

The procedural and legal questions across the D4VD, Nancy Guthrie, and Duggar cases reveal how alleged institutional failures compound regardless of the type of case. Tony Brueski and Robin Dreeke address the legal complexity, the alleged investigative missteps, and the systemic patterns that connect all three. The D4VD segment addresses federal jurisdiction questions — alleged interstate transpor...