True Murder: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History

John Crutchley seemed to be living the American Dream. Good-looking and blessed with a genius level IQ, he had a prestigious, white-collar job at a prominent government defense contractor, where he held top secret security clearance and handled projects for NASA and the Pentagon. To all outward appearances, he was a hard-working, successful family man with a lavish new house, a devoted wife, and a...

It was planned to look like a suicide. But even in the best-laid plans, evidence is left behind… Jocelyn Branham Earnest was found dead on the floor of her living room in Forest, Virginia. By her side was a gun and a suicide note—typed, lacking a signature, and with one fingerprint on it. A fingerprint apparently belonging to Jocelyn’s estranged husband… Wesley Earnest was a respected high school...

Murder in Suburbia features the stories of more than 20 murder cases that have happened in the quiet streets of Australia’s suburbs and small towns. These stories show that the most brutal and harrowing events can happen in any street or neighbourhood. Featuring contemporary cases as well as some shocking historical murders, Murder in Suburbia proves you should never say ‘it could never happen her...

In Why We Love Serial Killers, Drew University criminology professor Scott Bonn, PhD, simultaneously examines the public’s and media’s fascination with the monsters among us and the ways in which that attention impacts them. He writes about serial killers’ behaviors and the research—from the FBI’s original work to more recent models—that informs the law enforcement professionals charged with profi...

In this Notorious USA collection, Death of a Cheerleader, New York Times bestselling author Gregg Olsen and true crime journalist Kevin M. Sullivan write about notorious crimes in the Bluegrass State. In a scene right out of Hitchcock’s “Rear Window,” a young woman vanishes from a beach on a summer day and a neighbor views the abduction through his telescope. A newly wed disposes of his bride but...

1982: Oregon businessman Phil Champagne, age 52, dies in a tragic boating accident off Lopez Island. He is survived by one ex-wife, four adult children, an octogenarian mother, and two despondent brothers. Phil didn't know he was dead until he read it in the paper. All things considered, he took it rather well. So did Phil's brother, Mitch, the beneficiary of a 1.5 million dollar policy on Phil's...

The remote farming community of Murdock, Nebraska, seemed to be the least likely setting for one of the heartland's most ruthless and bloody double murders in decades. In fact, the little town had gone more than a century without a single homicide. But on the night of Easter 2006, Wayne and Sharmon Stock were brutally murdered in their home. The murders garnered sensational frontpage headlines and...

For years David Elliot Penton stalked elementary schools and playgrounds looking for young girls from low-income neighborhoods to abduct, rape and murder. He thought of them as "throwaway kids"-hardly missed, and soon forgotten, except by those who loved them. He was every parent's worst nightmare. The bogeyman they warned their children about ... the fiend who lurked outside bedroom windows. Chri...

The story of one of the nation's most notorious wrongful convictions, that of Steven Avery, a Wisconsin man who spent eighteen years in prison for a crime he did not commit. But two years after he was exonerated of that crime and poised to reap millions in his wrongful conviction lawsuit, Steven Avery was arrested for the exceptionally brutal murder of Teresa Halbach, a freelance photographer who...

On a sunny September morning in 1930, six men entered the Lincoln National Bank in Nebraska's capital city armed with revolvers and Thompson submachine guns. In eight minutes they emerged with more than 2.7 million dollars, the largest take of any bank heist in history. A nationwide search for the bandits would lead Nebraska authorities through the rough, gangland streets of Chicago and East St. L...

Charles Lucky Luciano is one of the most researched, discussed and dissected American mobsters of all time. His name has become synonymous with NY City's high drama gangland days of prohibition bootlegging, the information of the infamous five families, and controversy over his alleged Last Testament. However, there exists many fascinating and lurid tales and theories regarding Lucky's rise and fa...

For the past forty years, Charles Manson has languished in prison for his participation in the Manson family murders of 1969. He is America’s icon of evil, the one who brought down the curtain on the 1960s. He has never been a quiet inmate, however. From his unbridled outbursts of rage to his tender acts of generosity, he makes his presence felt to everyone around him. He inspires awe in other inm...

Violent crimes in America have become an epidemic within the past decade or so, with more juvenile offenders taking to the streets, homicide and murder rates have skyrocketed, as science does their best to study the minds of America's most horrific killers. Amanda Seaton would like to invite you to delve into the world of crime and forensics, as she provides an analysis of those violent crimes com...

The True American tells the story of Raisuddin Bhuiyan, a Bangladesh Air Force officer who dreams of immigrating to America and working in technology. But days after 9/11, an avowed "American terrorist" named Mark Stroman, seeking revenge, walks into the Dallas minimart where Bhuiyan has found temporary work and shoots him, maiming and nearly killing him. Two other victims, at other gas stations,...

She was hired to nurse them back to health...instead, she took their lives. For months, the DaVita Dialysis Center in Lufkin, Texas had been baffled by the rising number of deaths and injuries occurring in their clinic. In April alone, they’d rushed thirty-four patients to the hospital. But no one expected such a horrific cause to be behind it all. Kimberly Clark Saenz was a well-liked licensed vo...

Beekman Place, once one of the most exclusive addresses in Manhattan, had a curious way of making it into the tabloids in the 1930's: “SKYSCRAPER SLAYER,” “BEAUTY SLAIN IN BATHTUB” read the headlines. On Easter Sunday in 1937, the discovery of a grisly triple homicide at Beekman Place would rock the neighborhood yet again—and enthrall the nation. The young man who committed the murders would come...

"For years he stalked elementary schools, neighborhoods and playgrounds looking for young girls to abduct, rape and murder. As though invisible, he brazenly struck in broad daylight, pulling children into his van or cars, or he crept into homes in the dead of night to carry away little girls while their families slept. He was the bogeyman they warned their children about disguised as the friendly...

The story begins with Bert, a gentle, unassuming street person who mumbled to himself and talked to trees. He wasn't an alcoholic, but he hung out at a detox center in Sacramento, where a volunteer named Judy took an interest in him. Judy was overjoyed when she found a home for Bert with a silver-haired grandmother, Dorothea Puente, who ran a tidy boarding house in a blue-and-white Victorian. Litt...

A tragic suicide, a likely murder, wrongful imprisonment, and gripping courtroom scenes draw readers into this compelling story giving them a frightening perspective on justice corrupted and who should be accountable when evidence is withheld. Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice is the true story of the strong-arm, illegal, and unethical tactics used by headline-grabb...

 Karen Wolfe Churgin walked her dogs on April 18, 1990, on her remote wooded property on Chebacco Road. The veterinarian spotted a white sphere obstructing a drainage ditch.  When she reached to dislodge it, she reeled back in horror. She immediately called the police. “I saw something in the woods that looked like a punched-in volleyball,” Karen told the Beverly Times on April 25, 1990. “I looked...

The Sicilian Mafia: A True Crime Travel Guide is the first book of its kind in any language: the ultimate Cosa Nostra experience. Since 2006, author Carl Russo has photographed Mafia hotspots on the Italian island of Sicily: where  murders happened, where the godfathers lived and their victims buried. From the sunbaked fishing villages of the Mediterranean to the darkest alleys of Palermo, western...

A Voice out of Nowhere delves deep into the mind of a psychotic killer. In this tragic true story about one young man's harrowing descent into madness and murder, A Voice out of Nowhere offers a rare glimpse inside the workings of a criminally disordered mind. In the narrative style of non-fiction novels like In Cold Blood and Columbine, best-selling author Janice Holly Booth draws from court tran...

(Aired March 12th but due to audio problems-new interview)  Gary Skogen’s tour in Vietnam (1971–72) was the best year of his life. Living with fellow CID investigators in an isolated hooch overlooking the South China Sea at the U.S. base at Chu Lai, Skogen enforced military drug laws during his working hours and yet managed to pursue a life of perfect hedonism—far from the farm life in southwester...

Dayton Leroy Rogers, was known in Portland, Oregon as a respected businessman and devoted husband and father. But at night he abducted women, forced them into sadistic bondage games, and thrilled in their pain, terror and mutilation. His murderous spree was stopped only after-in plain view, he slashed to death his final victim...and when a hunter accidentally stumbled onto the burial grounds of se...

Nanette Johnston Packard, a sexy divorcee, liked to meet men at the gym and through personal ads. Soon after she began dating millionaire Bill McLaughlin, he moved her and her kids into his bay-front home in Newport Beach. But one man was never enough for Nanette...Eric Naposki, her NFL linebacker lover, fulfilled Nanette's wilder cravings. Together they schemed to make her fiance's fortune their...