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Join hosts Katie and Whitney for a different kind of true crime podcast. You can start with season 1, The Puppet Master and the Prince of Darkness, a deep dive into the most bizarre murder case you've never heard of. Or start with season 2, which covers a different stranger-than-fiction story each week. This bingeworthy show combines meticulous research with a refreshing mix of comic relief and seamless storytelling. There's plenty of room around the campfire--come help us roast murderers an ...
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As Abe Lincoln once said—or possibly some guy named Peter Drucker, depends on who you ask—the best way to predict the future is to create it. But for a lot of us humans, that’s a little too loosey-goosey. We’re not big fans of the unknown, and we tend to seek out people who claim they can tell us what to expect from the future. Americans, for examp…
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Some of the easiest people on the planet to fool are those who have a real high opinion of their own brains based on very little evidence. A classic con-artist trick is to make the mark think they’re the one in charge, they’re the one making the decisions. They don’t realize they’ve been taken until their bank balance is empty and they’ve signed aw…
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On June 10th, 1983, the decomposing body of a well-dressed man was found in a desolate canyon near Los Angeles. John Doe #94 would soon be identified as missing variety show producer Roy Radin. He'd last been seen after meeting with a mysterious woman in a gold dress. Her name was Lanie Jacobs. Jacobs and Radin were obsessed with becoming Hollywood…
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When we left you at the end of Part 1, fourteen year old Steven Stayner had escaped from seven years of captivity and abuse at the hands of child predator Kenneth Parnell—and he’d rescued Parnell’s next intended victim, a little boy named Timmy White. The story made international headlines, and Steven Stayner became his hometown’s living legend. It…
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In classic literature—and in soap operas, too—there are a lot of families who become lightning rods for misfortune. Sometimes it really strains your suspension of disbelief—like, come on, one family could never go through this much tragedy. But every now and then, a family just seems to be haunted by something sinister. From February through July o…
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In Part One, we met high-powered millionaire Ted Ammon and his…let’s say “eccentric” soon-to-be-ex-wife Generosa. When we left off, the Ammons were embroiled in a vicious divorce and a struggle over Ted’s wealth and custody of their twin children. Generosa, staying at the ritzy Stanhope Hotel, was renovating a townhouse and had just met a young ele…
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As much as most of us might try to live easy, conflict-free lives, sometimes you just can’t avoid an uncomfortable interaction. Maybe an unpleasant neighbor gets in your face about nothing at all, maybe someone behind a counter gives you all kinds of attitude, it’s more or less inevitable that sooner or later, someone will throw some grit into the …
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Monsters in folklore are easy for us to comprehend. You can only kill a werewolf with a silver bullet, to stop a zombie for good, you have to destroy its brain, and vampires can’t enter your home without your permission. They also have pretty straightforward motivations. Werewolves: Animalistic rage. Zombies: Brains. Vampires: Blood. Human monsters…
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We tend to cover strange cases on our show. We seek them out, because we find that there are always interesting lessons to be learned there. But when it comes to weird, some cases are in a category all their own. Like a pair of high school students so upset about a grade that they plot the brutal murder of their Spanish teacher…and a mother so obse…
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The philosopher and all-round barrel of laughs Albert Camus wrote, “To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.” Like any good philosophical quote, you can interpret it in a few ways. To not worry overly much about other people’s opinion of you can be a healthy lesson to learn, for example. But the main character in this week’s case woul…
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In the depths of the dark net, tech journalist Carl Miller makes a disturbing discovery: a secret Kill List targeting hundreds of innocent people on a murder for hire website. When the police decide not to investigate, Carl is thrown into a race against time to warn those in danger and uncover the truth about the people who want them dead. From Won…
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There’s an old saying: Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy? The answer, for most of us, is obvious. We want to be happy. And sometimes, that means compromising. Not getting exactly what we want. Not winning. But for some people, the only thing that can make them happy is conquest. They’ll always choose being right—always choose winn…
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For thousands of years, human beings have sought spiritual connection and enlightenment. A lot of us are seekers by nature, we want to know why we’re here and what—if anything—comes next. Sometimes it can seem like most of humankind is walking around with their heads in the sand, and we don’t wanna be one of those people. We want to chase after the…
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Like a lot of fairy tales, early versions of “Little Red Riding Hood” were quite a bit different from the story most of us heard growing up. There was no heroic huntsman with an axe, there was no tricking the wolf into a well. At the end of the tale, girl and grandmother were both devoured, and the only happy-ever-after was for the wolf. For most o…
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Psychologist Rolio May said, “Hate is not the opposite of love. Apathy is.” Over the course of the last three episodes, we’ve discussed how apathy paved the way for a horrific criminal to wreak havoc on the women of Vancouver. Willie Pickton was only allowed to continue his crimes, to rack up the number of bodies he did, because the government and …
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Once an avalanche starts, there’s nothing that can be done to stop it. You can prevent them, you can prepare for them, but by the time you start to hear the ice cracking, it’s almost always too late. The case of Willie Pickton feels a little bit like an avalanche. For the past two episodes, the people in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside have been hear…
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When we last left off, Willie Pickton was just starting his reign of terror over the women of the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. Nancy Clark was missing, along with several other women, whose disappearances would never be solved. The Pickton farm was quickly becoming a criminal headquarters, thanks to Dave Pickton’s infatuation with the Hell’s Ang…
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In his book, Encyclopedia of Murder and Violent Crime, Eric Hickey wrote about a type of victim that he called, “the Less Dead”. These are people that are seen by the media or law enforcement as having less value than others. Usually sex workers, drug addicts, houseless people, and sexual or racial minorities. The case we’re discussing today is abo…
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Adults like to think of kids as the embodiment of innocence—and in a lot of ways, they are. But…remember what it was like to actually be a kid? Did other kids seem innocent to us then? Not so much. The playground could be a battle zone. Gym class could be Lord of the Flies. Kids have strong, complicated emotions just like we do, but without the imp…
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In Part One last week, we introduced you to the strange world of Marcel Petiot, doctor, failed politician, and serial killer in wartime Paris. The horrific discovery of dismembered bodies at Dr. Petiot’s mansion had triggered a massive manhunt, and we’re going to pick up the police investigation now in Part Two of “The People’s Monster.” Note: Kati…
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There aren’t many darker places to be than in a city occupied by an enemy during a brutal war, living without freedom, in constant fear, and with little or no recourse to justice. For a crime to be able to shock even people living under those conditions, it has to be something truly terrifying, and that is what the people in Paris during World War …
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Sometimes, danger comes in hot, with blazing red flags and alarm bells so loud they drown out everything else. Plenty of warning signs to activate the fight or flight instinct, put us on guard. But that’s not always the way it happens. Sometimes, danger slinks in silently, coiling itself around us without us even noticing, until it’s already around…
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It’s kind of hard to pin down what the first slasher movie was. Do you start with “Psycho” in 1960? Go even further back? But there’s no real doubt when the genre blossomed—the 1970s. And that makes sense, because the 1970s was also when the shocking crimes of serial killers really permeated the national consciousness. You ask someone to name a ser…
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Like most American Millennials, I was subjected to Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or DARE. It was the typical kind of “Drugs Are Bad, mmmkay?” sort of thing. Police officers would come to school and show 2nd graders pictures of smoker lungs and suggest that everyone and their mom would be peer pressuring you to smoke weed and/or crack, which was …
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Obsession can be a good thing. An obsessed athlete can spend hours practicing to be the best they can be, an obsessed collector can find joy and community in the thrill of the hunt, or obsession can drive an artist to explore the human condition in a way that moves everyone that sees their art. But obsession can veer into something darker if the ob…
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