True Crime Brewery

It was a beautiful day on the California coastline when 20-year-old Deana Wild agreed to take a day trip to Big Sur with older couple Virginia and Billy Joe McGinnis. This is a popular tourist spot, but the cliffs are dangerous with unstable earth near the edge and the rocky Pacific coast below. Deana didn’t feel well that day but Virginia convinced her to walk along the cliff’s edge and pose for...

When 50-year-old multi-millionaire Bill McLaughlin answered 25-year-old Nanette Johnston’s classified ad back in 1991, he had no idea what he was getting himself into. The ad was directed at “wealthy men only” and Nanette described herself as a “classy, well-educated woman” who “knows how to take care of her man.” Clearly, Nanette was looking for a sugar daddy. Divorced and lonely, it seemed like...

When Jan Roseboro’s husband Michael found her unconscious and bleeding in their new swimming pool, there was no reason to suspect him of anything nefarious. Even though his 911 call was unusual, it wasn’t proof of a crime. But then a motive for murder was discovered: Michael’s lover, Angela Funk. When Angela’s computer and phone records were examined, thousands of romantic and lustful messages wit...

Since Dick and I are away this week, we decided to put out this ad-free TCB Premium episode, from July, 2020, for all of our listeners today! This is just one of dozens of ad-free episodes available with a premium subscription! Here are the show notes: Faith Hedgepeth was just 19-years old when she was violently murdered in her off-campus apartment. Faith was popular and outgoing, with plans to be...

Doctor Josephakis “Joe” Charalambous had a thriving family practice when he became obsessed with 15-year-old Shelley Joel. Shelley, along with other members of her family, was his patient. Shelley’s parents were alarmed when the doctor began buying her gifts and calling her at home. He was obsessed with her, speaking of little else. And they soon came to believe that the doctor brainwashed Shelley...

In the early morning of February 10, 1992, Robin Lee Row’s two-story duplex in Boise, Idaho, was engulfed in flames. Robin wasn’t home that morning. She had spent the night at a friend’s house after a fight with her husband, Randy Row. But at 3am, Robin had a premonition of the fire. She woke her friend at 5:30 am and they drove together to the duplex to check on Robin’s children. Joshua, 10-years...

Police were surprised by Barbara Stager’s lack of emotion when her 40-year-old second husband, Russ Stager, died from an accidental gunshot wound to his head. Within days, Barbara called her insurance company to cash in on Russ’s life insurance policy. She would collect her money and life would go on for her and her children. That’s what she believed. To the untrained eye, Barbara looked like an i...

Tyler Hadley’s parents were trying to get the 17-year-old to make better decisions in his life. Since his early teens, he had been using drugs, stealing, and showing a fascination for violence. His mother Mary Jo loved her son fiercely, never giving up on him and describing him as a sensitive boy. As he sunk into depression and sullenness, she worried that he would hurt himself. But when asked, sh...

Kathleen Folbigg has lived a life filled with tragedy. As a child, her father murdered her mother, leaving her to grow up in foster care. But Kathleen seemed to have overcome her difficult past when she married her husband Craig and they set out to start a family. In 1989, Kathleen’s infant son Caleb died. This death was followed by the deaths of three more of her children in 1991, 1993, and 1999....

Divorce and child custody battles can be brutal, but they rarely end in murder. In February, 2002, Alan Bates and his wife Terra were excited to pick up his two daughters from the home of his ex-wife, Jessica McCord. His relationship with Jessica had been acrimonious since the divorce, but he loved his girls and would not give up on them. The couple was planning to take the girls to his parents’ h...

The Schenecker family home was in a nice neighborhood; the kind of place couples choose to raise a family. Julie, her husband Parker, and their two children, Calyx and Beau, seemed to be living the good life in their spacious home located on a cul-de-sac in a gated community. But on January 28, 2011, the city of Tampa and surrounding communities were reminded that appearances can be deceptive and...

William Bradford Bishop, Jr., was born and raised to succeed. With classic good looks, cultured parents, and a Yale education, he expected a lot out of life. As an adult, he married a beautiful woman who gave him three healthy sons. They travelled the world, eventually settling into a Maryland suburb. Bishop built a career with the U.S. State Department, working in military intelligence. In his es...

Jennifer Cave and Colton Pitonyak had their addiction to drugs in common, but they were otherwise two very different people. Jennifer was known as a caring person who tried to help everyone she met. Pitonyak was a drug dealer with a growing propensity for violence. In August of 2005, when Jennifer didn’t show up for her new job working for a law firm in Austin, Texas, her employer called Jennifer’...

Ellen Boehm’s husband left her for another woman, abandoning his three children without visitation or financial support. With only her secretarial job to support them, Ellen had to move her children out of the family home and into an apartment building. Money was tight, but Ellen had some strange priorities that made it tighter. She was crazy about professional wrestling and she travelled to atten...

In the spring of 2005, brother and sister Shasta and Dylan Groene were just normal kids, out playing in their yard in their bathing suits. Neither they nor their parents had any way of knowing that a violent pedophile was watching them. Joseph Duncan III, recently paroled, had been trolling the area, looking for fresh victims. He likely knew that this would be his last chance to live out his horri...

On November 26, 2001, the fire department of Cantonment, Florida, was called to the burning home of Terry King. Terry was dead in his reclining chair, but he had not been overcome by smoke. He had been bludgeoned to death. Once the fire was extinguished, concerns turned to Terry’s two sons, Derek, 13, and Alex, age 12. Fortunately, they had not been victims of the fire, but where were they? It too...

Graduate student Annie Le disappeared from her lab at Yale University just five days before her wedding. When she was first reported missing, investigators theorized that she had cold feet and had likely run off for some time alone. But Annie’s family and friends didn’t believe Annie would do that. She was very much in love with her fiancé and she was excited about the upcoming nuptials. Join us a...

In September, 2015, 25-year-old Jack Taylor was found dead in the graveyard of St. Margaret’s Church in East London. Jack was not the first young man to be found dead under unexplained circumstances, all within a few hundred yards of each other. It was initially believed that these deaths resulted from drug overdoses, but Jack’s death led the police to find a more sinister cause. A killer had lure...

How much are your loved ones worth to you? Priceless, right? You cannot put a dollar amount on a person’s life. Not so for Karl Karlson. There were so many tragedies and coincidences in his life that his second wife suspected him of two murders and several instances of insurance fraud. In fact, she became convinced enough to record her conversations with Karlsen. Join us at the quiet end for Cashi...

Kathy Stobaugh married the wrong man. Once she realized her mistake, she did everything right in order to set off on a better course. She worked full-time, went back to college, and accomplished her dream of being a kindergarten teacher. Saving her money, she rented a new house and moved there with her two children. But her husband, Charles, was not going to let her get away so easily. On December...

On the morning of Friday, August 16, 1996, Marissa Moody brought her 6-year-old son to the impressive home of Janet and Perry March to have a play date with 5-year-old Sammy March. The March family seemed like the picture-perfect family, but Marissa never felt comfortable around Perry March. He was intimidating and snubbed her at every opportunity. Janet March, 33-years-old, was an accomplished ar...

In 2006, 33-year-old Mechele Linehan was visited by the Alaska police regarding a 1996 murder. Back then, Mechele had been working as an exotic dancer. The murder victim was a former client named Kent Leppink. But, in 2006, Mechele was a professional woman married to a physician and raising a young daughter in Washington state. Her arrest was shocking to the people in her community. Join us at the...

When 16-year-old Patricia Columbo took a job in a soda shop next door to a pharmacy, no one even imagined that she and the 36-year-old married pharmacist Frank DeLuca would become involved in a sexual relationship. But that’s exactly what happened. Over the next four years, Patricia’s parents tried to talk some sense into her. First, Deluca moved Patricia into his family home with his wife and fiv...

On July 5, 2003, 37-year-old Florida bartender Sandra Rozzo was shot in her own garage before she could even get out of her car. Sandra, known by her friends as Sandee, was a hard worker, a good friend, and a devoted mother to her young daughter. The idea that someone would want her dead was difficult to comprehend. There was one man with a motive: 36-year-old Tracey Humphrey. Humphrey was an ex-b...

Elaine O’Hara of South Dublin, Ireland, spent her life looking for love. Because of mental health issues, Elaine spent many of her years in the St Edmundsbury Hospital, receiving psychiatric treatment for depressive disorder, self-harming behaviors, and three suicide attempts. As a result, she missed the usual social milestones of dances, dating, and boyfriends. In her twenties, she began to meet...