Wicked and Grim: A True Crime Podcast

Seventeen year old Ellie Gould had just ended a three month relationship with her boyfriend when, the following morning, someone arrived at her family home while she was alone. Hours later, her father walked into the kitchen and discovered a horrifying scene, while the person responsible had already begun destroying evidence, creating false explanations, and attempting to hide what had happened. W...

The man the world would come to know as the Kansas City Butcher didn't simply kill his victims, he studied them. Hidden inside an ordinary home in Kansas City's Hyde Park neighborhood, Robert Berdella spent years imprisoning vulnerable young men, meticulously recording their torture with handwritten notes and hundreds of Polaroid photographs before dismembering their bodies in an attempt to erase...

The man the world would come to know as the Kansas City Butcher didn't simply kill his victims, he studied them. Hidden inside an ordinary home in Kansas City's Hyde Park neighborhood, Robert Berdella spent years imprisoning vulnerable young men, meticulously recording their torture with handwritten notes and hundreds of Polaroid photographs before dismembering their bodies in an attempt to erase...

In 1932, the Australian government made a decision so unbelievable it still sounds like satire today, it deployed soldiers armed with machine guns to wage war against an estimated 20,000 emus that were invading their land.  What began as a desperate attempt to save struggling farmers during the Great Depression quickly spiraled into one of the most bizarre and embarrassing military operations in m...

On October 21, 1978, twenty year old pilot Frederick Valentich departed Melbourne on what should have been a routine flight to King Island. Just minutes after passing Cape Otway, he radioed air traffic control to report a strange object flying around his aircraft before uttering the chilling words, "It's not an aircraft," moments before radio contact was lost forever. Despite an extensive four-day...

Forty eight hours after stealing more than a million dollars in drugs, cash, jewelry, and firearms from a powerful Los Angeles drug kingpin, members of the Wonderland Gang were attacked inside their own home. And by the time police arrived, four people had been beaten to death,one had been left permanently disabled, and the trail of evidence led through the criminal underworld of Hollywood, straig...

A 54 year old retired Navy intelligence officer meets a 24 year old ballerina at a political fundraiser. Then thirteen days later, they got married. What follows is a story filled with allegations of abuse, claims of poisoning, a failed ballet company, years of bitter custody litigation, psychological evaluations, restraining orders, and a marriage that seemed to be unraveling from the very beginn...

For more than twenty years, Joachim Kroll operated undetected across western Germany, murdering women and children while investigators struggled to connect the crimes. During that time, multiple innocent people were accused, several took their own lives under the weight of suspicion, and dozens of detectives unknowingly searched for the wrong man. In this episode, we examine the full story of Joac...

For more than twenty years, Joachim Kroll operated undetected across western Germany, murdering women and children while investigators struggled to connect the crimes. During that time, multiple innocent people were accused, several took their own lives under the weight of suspicion, and dozens of detectives unknowingly searched for the wrong man. In this episode, we examine the full story of Joac...

For nearly two hours on June 4, 2004, police officers, state troopers, and emergency responders watched helplessly as an armored bulldozer tore through the small mountain town of Granby, Colorado. Inside the machine was 52 year old Marvin Heemeyer, a welder and muffler shop owner who had spent years feuding with local officials, business owners, and members of the community before transforming a 4...

In October 1974, nineteen year old Arlis Perry walked into Stanford Memorial Church and never came home. What investigators discovered the following morning would become one of California's most infamous unsolved murders, spawning decades of theories, false leads, and speculation while the killer remained hidden in plain sight. For forty four years the case sat cold, until a breakthrough in DNA te...

In June 2004, a routine school day in Sasebo, Japan, ended in tragedy when 12 year old Satomi Mitarai was lured from her classroom and murdered by her classmate with a box cutter. As investigators dug deeper, they uncovered a friendship that had quietly fallen apart and evidence suggesting the attack had been building beneath the surface for days. What began as a shocking murder inside an elementa...

In March 1998, a respected Brisbane veterinarian was found brutally murdered inside the veterinary clinic beneath her home, launching an investigation that would expose bitter feuds within an animal welfare organization, a mysterious appointment involving a missing Siamese cat, and a trail of forensic evidence unlike anything Australian courts had seen before. As detectives worked to identify Kath...

In April 2009, a young woman named Julissa Brisman was found bleeding in the doorway of a luxury Boston hotel room after a violent struggle with a client she met through Craigslist. Just four days earlier, another woman had been tied up and robbed inside a nearby hotel by a man matching the exact same description. As investigators raced to stop what appeared to be an escalating pattern of violence...

Hidden deep in the mountains of Chattooga County, Georgia, there once stood a bizarre handmade castle known as Corpsewood Manor, it was a candlelit home filled with occult artwork, gargoyles, rumors of Satanism, and stories that spread through the surrounding towns for years. The men living there had abandoned modern society to build an isolated life deep in the woods, but by December of 1982, the...

Hidden deep in the mountains of Chattooga County, Georgia, there once stood a bizarre handmade castle known as Corpsewood Manor, it was a candlelit home filled with occult artwork, gargoyles, rumors of Satanism, and stories that spread through the surrounding towns for years. The men living there had abandoned modern society to build an isolated life deep in the woods, but by December of 1982, the...

In November of 1987, a young family living in a trailer outside Ina, Illinois was preparing to move away from the growing violence spreading through their community. Keith and Elaine Dardeen were raising their three year old son Peter and expecting another baby within weeks when something unimaginable happened inside their home. Police discovered Elaine, Peter, and the newborn infant beaten to dea...

In June 1998, eight year old Robbie Middleton was attacked in the woods behind his Texas neighborhood,. He was then doused in gasoline, and set on fire in what investigators would later describe as one of the most horrifying attacks they had ever seen. Burned over nearly 99 percent of his body, Robbie somehow survived and spent the next thirteen years enduring more than 150 surgeries while the per...

Seven year old Athena Strand disappeared from outside her family’s home in Paradise, Texas on November 30, 2022, only minutes after a FedEx driver delivered a package containing her Christmas present. Within hours, investigators uncovered a disturbing trail involving truck recordings, GPS data, conflicting statements, and evidence that suggested Athena had been abducted alive. The investigation qu...

Between January 1969 and January 1971, three women were murdered inside their own homes across Southwestern Ontario Canada, with their cases unfolding with no clear connection at the time. Each scene pointed to the same kind of controlled, violent attack. However without shared systems or forensic tools, investigators were left working each case in isolation as leads quickly dried up. It would ult...

On June 20, 1994, emergency services in Dunedin New Zealand received a call from 22 year old David Bain reporting that his entire family had been shot dead inside their home. Within days, he went from the sole survivor to being charged with five counts of murder, setting off a case built on conflicting timelines, contested forensic evidence, and two completely different explanations of what happen...

In March 1989, 21 year old pre-med student Mark Kilroy disappeared during a spring break trip to Matamoros, Mexico after being separated from his friends for just a few minutes. But what initially operated as a standard missing person case quickly escalated into an international investigation involving U.S. and Mexican authorities.  As the search intensified, it led to the discovery of a place cal...

She looked like a harmless little old lady. She was a soft spoken landlady in Sacramento who took in elderly, disabled, and mentally ill tenants who had nowhere else to go. But inside her home, she controlled their money, intercepted their mail, and in many cases, they quietly disappeared while their Social Security checks continued to be cashed. Then when a missing person report led police to dig...

In July 2016, 17 year old Mike Mansholt arrived in Malta for a solo trip after deciding to extend his stay beyond an initial visit with his girlfriend. Over the following days, he explored the island independently, keeping in contact with his family as he moved from place to place. Then on the morning of July 18, he left his hotel, rented a mountain bike, and sent a final message home describing t...

In 1971, 16 year old Stephen Spahalski killed a man in Elmira, New York and was sent to prison, in a case that seemed shocking but contained. But nearly two decades later, in Rochester, a different story was quietly unfolding. Between 1990 and 2005, four people would be murdered in separate incidents, each one investigated on its own, each one going unsolved, and none of them connected at the time...