True Murder: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History

It’s all a lighthearted nightmare on the MORBID podcast. Hosted by Alaina Urquhart and Ash Kelley, Morbid is a full dose of true crime with a splash of comedy. Join us all month long as we celebrate 5 years of MORBID with a special anniversary series, a festive edition of listener tales, and more surprises to come. Listen to Morbid wherever you get your podcasts: Wondery.fm/MB_TM Hey Prime Members...

David Kulczyk’s eighth book, Deadly California is another tome of off the wall murders, accidents and robberies gone wrong that have happened in California. With true crime tales stretching from 1912 to 1964, occurring in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Northern and Southern California, and Sacramento. Unforgettable stories such as When Sally Shot Harry; Double Murder on O Street; Keller...

Late one evening in the summer of 1922, Henry Wilkens burst through the doors of the emergency room covered in his wife’s blood. But was he a grieving husband, or a ruthless killer who conspired with bandits to have her murdered? To find out, the San Francisco police turned to technology and a new machine that had just been invented in Berkeley by a rookie detective, a visionary police chief, and...

On an unseasonably warm April evening in 2001, the headless body of a tiny girl was found discarded in a makeshift dump site in the woods on the southeast side of Kansas City, Missouri. One long night turned into four long years for Sgt. David Bernard and the Kansas City Police Department’s 1020 Squad. They followed 1,500 leads, had a replica of the child’s head sculpted from her skull, and ultima...

No other event in the last fifty years is shrouded in myth like the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. Today, we remember this moment for the 76 people, including 20 children, who died in the fire; for its inspiration of the Oklahoma City bombing; and for the wave of anti-government militarism that followed. What we understand far less is what motivated the Davidians’ enigmatic lea...

From real-life "Mafia Survivor" Frank Dimatteo, the gripping account of the life and crimes of the most feared mafia boss of all time: Carmine “Lilo” Galante, the prime mover behind the legendary French Connection. The brutal and blood-stained true story of one of the most feared bosses in American Mafia history, who rose from tenement street thug to notorious hit man to a prime mover behind the l...

On a spring afternoon in 1985 in Gary, Indiana, a fifteen-year-old girl kills an elderly woman in a violent home invasion. In a city with a history of racial tensions and white flight, the girl, Paula Cooper, is Black, and her victim, Ruth Pelke, is white and a beloved Bible teacher. The press swoops in. When Paula is sentenced to death, no one decries the impending execution of a tenth grader. Bu...

Chris Thomas is not yet thirty years old when he finds himself managing the immense pressure, eccentric personalities, and extenuating circumstances of an international story, where one small misstep could adversely impact the search for a missing teenager and the reputation of her family. Now, twenty years later, Thomas takes readers behind the scenes, providing new details, perspectives, and com...

On December 9, 2001, Kathleen Peterson was found dead at the bottom of a staircase in her Durham, NC home. Her scalp was laced with deep incisions, and her blood was strewn from outside to inside the house. The sinister truth of that night turned her murder into North Carolina's most enigmatic criminal case, capturing media attention across the globe. Police zeroed in on Kathleen’s husband, Michae...

M'Linda Kula is very familiar with this SECRET SANTA and the many links that tie him to JonBenet Ramsey. Each link is carefully explained within this book, to lead from one connection to the next between JonBenet and the SECRET SANTA. Follow the pieces of the puzzle to find out who this SECRET SANTA is and how this chameleon was able to evade the authorities. Included within is a pair of governmen...

The Angel Makers is a true-crime story like no other—a 1920s midwife who may have been the century’s most prolific killer leading a murder ring of women responsible for the deaths of at least 160 men. The horror occurred in a rustic farming enclave in modern-day Hungary. To look at the unlikely lineup of murderesses—village wives, mothers, and daughters—was to come to the shocking realization that...

From his cell on Death Row in Florida, confessed serial killer Danny Rolling started writing and illustrating this novel about the Daggerman Sicarius in 1999, seven years before his 2006 execution for the five murders he committed in 1990. Drawing on years of research, Rolling follows zoologist Sir Winser Ashmole to the African island of Mauritius, to assist Dr. Borgum Konoff in saving endangered...

On Christmas Night 1996, six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey was murdered in her family’s home in Boulder, Colorado. A ransom note was found in the home, but it was hours before her father, John, found her body in the basement. She had been strangled with a garrote and her skull was fractured. The media sensationalized the tragic death of the “child beauty queen” and public speculation and rumors ran ram...

On a cold morning in December 1960, 60-year-old Laura Mutch was found strangled behind a house in downtown Erie....At a time when the Gem City was at its peak, including a triumphant run for the coveted 'All-American City' award, the murder created a pandemonium. As the investigation progressed, attacks on women in and around the city of Erie continued, sending citizens - and seasoned investigator...

Actors, musicians, TV personalities, and other public figures in the spotlight aren’t always who they appear to be. You might be surprised by just how many have led nefarious, double lives, and have become infamous criminals! Power, status, and a rich lifestyle aren’t barriers to criminal behavior. Yes, people from all walks of life commit crimes. But the people featured here are not your typical...

What happens when ordinary people, in real-life murder clubs, set out to investigate crimes, both recent and cold cases? The Netflix hit Don’t F**k with Cats was based on the 2012 Montreal murder of thirty-three-year-old Lin Jun by his porn-star boyfriend, Luka Magnotta. Previously Magnotta had anonymously posted videos of himself killing kittens. This spurred horrified Facebook sleuths into worki...

John Edward Swindler never learned to read or write and instead became a bona fide criminal at the age of fifteen. His crimes quickly advanced from car theft to arson. At three hundred pounds, with long, fuzzy red hair and pimply skin, his appearance was so frightening that he intimidated fellow inmates into performing crimes from their jail cells. He sodomized other convicts, who dared not refuse...

A Civil War veteran who perpetrated one of the most ghastly mass slaughters in the annals of U.S. crime. A nineteenth-century female serial killer whose victims included three husbands and six of her own children. A Gilded Age “Bluebeard” who did away with as many as fifty wives throughout the country. A decorated World War I hero who orchestrated a murder that stunned Jazz Age America. While othe...

Internationally known legal ethics professor Richard Zitrin's work as a trial lawyer placed him on the front lines of fighting systemic racism, pervasive elitism, and injustice against individuals in the legal system. In Trial Lawyer, he shares details of the most compelling cases he's encountered and exposes the dilemmas he faced throughout his one-of-a-kind career. The profound, the consequentia...

Hosted by Ash Kelley and Alaina Urquhart from the hit show Morbid. When 90-year-old Laurence Pilgeram drops dead on the sidewalk outside his condo, you might think that’s the end of his story. But, really, it’s just the beginning. Because Laurence and others like him have signed up to be frozen and brought back to life in the future. And that belief will pull multiple generations of the Pilgeram f...

No body means no crime, which makes this the perfect murder. Doug Stewart even has an ironclad alibi. He's been seen hundreds of miles away when his lovely wife, Venus, vanishes. What better plan could any murderer hope for? But Doug's forgotten one thing: the power of a mother's love. Venus' mother believes her daughter's husband lured her outside. They fought. He won. Venus' mom wants her daught...

On January 7, 1994, residents of the Berkshire Hills woke up to a typical snowy winter day in the majestic woods of Western Massachusetts. The quaint New England towns, the idyllic scenery and the people who lived there could have stepped out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Rocked as imaginable evil converged on them, a pall would be cast over the region and its inhabitants for years to follow. Tha...

The incredible story of a 1958 murder that ended with the last woman to ever be executed in California—a murder so twisted it seems ripped from a Greek tragedy. Deborah Larkin was only ten years old when the quiet calm of her California suburb was shattered. Thirty miles north, on a quiet November night in Santa Barbara, a pregnant nurse named Olga Duncan disappeared from her apartment. The myster...

Murder is the most vile crime known to man. It can be triggered by love or money or sex. Those are the three big ticket items for homicide. But people are strange. They will kill for the most obscure and ridiculous of reasons. In 30 years covering murder, Brad Hunter has discovered each one has its own flavour. Cops and friends can be stunned by the evil lurking within a seemingly ordinary man or...

The western suburbs of Chicago were being terrorized by a serial rapist and murderer in the 1970s and 1980s. Bruce Lindahl was a psychotic rapist and killer who preyed on girls and young women for almost a decade. He managed to escape detection because he did not leave his rape victims alive. But in 1980, he kidnapped and raped Debra Colliander in Aurora, Illinois. She escaped before he could murd...