True Crime Odyssey

On January 2nd, 2018, a nineteen-year-old University of Pennsylvania sophomore slipped out of his parents' house in Lake Forest, California, to meet up with a former high school classmate. He left without his wallet, his glasses, or his keys. He never came home.Blaze Bernstein was everything you'd want a kid to be. A pre-med student at an Ivy League school, the managing editor of a culinary magazine, a gifted writer who once said that writing gave him his voice. He was the oldest of three children in a tight-knit Jewish family, the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, and a young man who was just beginning to live openly and authentically as a gay man.The person he went to meet that night was Samuel Woodward, a former classmate from the Orange County School of the Arts. What Blaze didn't know was that Woodward had become a trained member of the Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi terrorist organization that specifically targeted LGBTQ and Jewish people. He didn't know about the hate diary, the encrypted chat rooms, or the training camp in Texas. He didn't know that Woodward had brought a knife and a skull-faced terrorist mask to their meetup that night. This episode covers the full story. Blaze's life and the family that shaped him. Woodward's radicalization from a troubled kid in a homophobic household to a committed domestic terrorist. The seven-day search that gripped Orange County. The rain that uncovered a shallow grave. The arrest, the evidence, and the six agonizing years it took to bring this case to trial. The testimony that exposed a killer's lies. And the verdict that finally held him accountable. It also covers what came after. How the Bernstein family turned the worst moment of their lives into a movement called Blaze It Forward, and how a nineteen-year-old kid who loved food, writing, and people left a legacy that hatred could never erase. This is a difficult one. But it's a story that deserves to be heard.

On December 27th 2010, Georgia State Trooper First Class Chadwick LeCroy pulled over a car with a broken taillight on Bolton Road in northwest Atlanta. It should have been routine. Instead, it became the first fatal shooting of a Georgia trooper in thirty-five years.The man behind the wheel was Gregory Favors, a thirty-year-old career criminal with eighteen prior arrests stretching back to 1998. He'd been convicted of drug charges, weapons violations, forgery, and obstruction. He was on active probation in Cobb County. And he should have been in prison. This episode digs into everything that went wrong before that night. The rocket docket system that fast-tracked felonies and handed out lenient sentences to clear overcrowded jails. The July hearing where a prosecutor asked for four years and a judge gave sixty days. The December thirteenth release when no officer showed up to testify and a known flight risk walked free on a signature bond. The missed court appearance the morning of the murder that should have triggered a bench warrant. We examine the finger-pointing between District Attorney Paul Howard, Mayor Kasim Reed, APD Chief George Turner, and Chief Judge Cynthia Wright. We look at the failed push for Chad's Law and the reforms that came too little, too late.And we remember the man behind badge 744, the trooper who spent his whole life dreaming of wearing the uniform and finally got his chance at thirty-six years old.This is the story of a death that didn't have to happen. 

This one is personal because I knew and worked alongside Trooper Chadwick LeCroy when I was an Atlanta Police Officer. Chad and I served together in Zone 2, and later I had the privilege of working with him when he joined the elite Georgia State Patrol Nighthawks DUI Task Force. He was one of the good ones – the kind of officer you wanted backing you up, the kind of man who made the badge mean something. On December 27th, 2010, Chad was murdered during what should have been a routine traffic stop. He pulled over a broken taillight on Bolton Road in northwest Atlanta. The driver was Gregory Favors, a thirty-year-old career criminal with eighteen prior arrests and ten felony convictions. Favors fled, crashed his car, and when Chad approached on foot – without drawing his weapon – Favors fired three shots through the passenger window. One bullet struck Chad in the neck. He died in the ambulance on the way to Grady Memorial Hospital. But here's what makes this case so infuriating: Gregory Favors should have been locked up. He'd been arrested just seventeen days earlier and was out on a nineteen-thousand-dollar bond despite pretrial services recommending he be held without bail. Three times in 2010, the system said he was too dangerous to release. Three times, judges ignored those recommendations. On the morning Chad was killed, Favors missed his court hearing. He should have been in jail, but instead he was free to murder a good man. The investigation was swift – dashboard camera footage captured everything. Favors stole Chad's patrol car, dumped it on Gun Club Road, and was arrested by Atlanta PD officers. After nearly four years of legal proceedings, he pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty and received life without parole plus fifty-five years.Chad LeCroy was the first Georgia State Trooper killed by gunfire in thirty-five years. He left behind his wife Keisha, sons Bret and Chase, and a law enforcement family that still feels his loss. A bridge over the Chattahoochee River now bears his name, and a scholarship in his memory helps new troopers get their education.This is the story of how system failures cost a hero his life, and why there really are no such things as "routine" traffic stops.In memory of Trooper First Class Chadwick Thomas LeCroy, Badge #744. End of watch: December 27, 2010.

If you listened to Tuesday's episode covering the cold hard facts of the Ottis Toole case, you know the basics. His horrific childhood in Jacksonville's Springfield neighborhood. His partnership with Henry Lee Lucas. His six confirmed murder convictions. His confessions to the Adam Walsh killing. But the basics only scratch the surface of one of the most mishandled investigations in American criminal history.This episode of The Redacted Report digs into the dark corners that mainstream coverage leaves out. We expose the Jacksonville detective who was removed from the case after allegedly feeding Toole information about the Walsh murder in exchange for a promised book deal. We examine the controversial Luminol photograph that a retired detective claims shows Adam Walsh's face etched in blood on Toole's car floorboard, and why critics say the image was manipulated to show something that was never really there.We reveal the disturbing 1988 letter Toole sent to John and Revé Walsh demanding five thousand dollars in exchange for telling them where their son's body was buried. We play excerpts from the recorded prison phone calls between Toole and Lucas where the two killers casually discussed cannibalism and compared notes on their crimes. We revisit the seventeen-year-old Sears security guard whose decision to kick a group of children out of the store may have placed six-year-old Adam Walsh directly in the path of a predator.We also investigate the Jeffrey Dahmer connection that the Hollywood Police Department never adequately addressed. Two credible eyewitnesses independently identified Dahmer as a man they saw at the Hollywood Mall the same day Adam disappeared. Dahmer was living in South Florida at the time and had access to a blue van matching witness descriptions. When FBI Agent Neil Purtell interviewed Dahmer about the case, Dahmer's response haunted him for years.This episode examines why the case was closed using an exceptional clearance rather than an actual prosecution, what that administrative maneuver really means, and why Police Chief Chad Wagner admitted at the press conference that the magic wand piece of evidence simply does not exist.We discuss the other suspect nobody remembers, a man named Edward James who reportedly confessed to a cellmate and had new seat covers installed in his car weeks after the murder.The Ottis Toole case is a study in tunnel vision, lost evidence, competing agendas, and a justice system more interested in closing files than finding truth.

Ottis Elwood Toole claimed to have murdered over one hundred people. While that number remains disputed, what we know for certain is horrifying enough. Six confirmed kills. A partnership with fellow serial killer Henry Lee Lucas that terrorized the American South. And quite possibly the most infamous child murder in American history. Born in Jacksonville, Florida in 1947, Toole emerged from a childhood so brutal it defies comprehension. Sexual abuse by his father starting at age five. A mother who dressed him in girl's clothing and paraded him around as the daughter she wished she'd had. A grandmother who took him on midnight trips to rob graves. Every adult in his life either exploited him or looked the other way.None of that excuses what he became.Toole drifted through the 1970s leaving a trail of suspicion across multiple states. He was a suspect in murders in Nebraska and Colorado before fleeing back to Florida each time. In 1976, he met Henry Lee Lucas at a Jacksonville soup kitchen, and the two formed a killing partnership that would span years and cross state lines.But it was the 1981 murder of six-year-old Adam Walsh that would make Toole's name infamous. Toole confessed to abducting the boy from a Hollywood, Florida Sears store, then recanted, then confessed again. This pattern continued for years while the Hollywood Police Department systematically lost every piece of physical evidence that could have secured a conviction. The bloodstained carpet from his car. The machete. The car itself. All gone.Toole died in prison in 1996 without ever being charged in the Walsh case. It took until 2008 for police to officially name him as Adam's killer. This episode examines how a man with a lengthy criminal history and an IQ of 75 managed to evade justice for so long. We explore the systemic failures that allowed him to keep killing, the victims whose names deserve to be remembered, and the legacy of one father's grief that changed how America searches for missing children. The Jacksonville Cannibal is a story about monsters. But more importantly, it's a story about the cracks in our system that allow monsters to thrive.

Earlier this week, you heard the facts about Susan Smith. You heard about the burgundy Mazda rolling into John D. Long Lake. You heard about Michael and Alex. But this episode goes deeper into the details that didn't make the nightly news.We start with Susan's father Harry, who shot himself in the driveway when Susan was six years old, just hours after telling her he loved her. We examine the arrival of stepfather Beverly Russell, a pillar of the community, a Christian Coalition leader, and a predator who began sexually abusing Susan when she was fifteen and continued until just weeks before the murders.We reveal that Susan's mother Linda knew about the abuse and chose to stay with Beverly anyway.We uncover Susan's suicide attempt at eighteen, when she reported the abuse to hospital staff and was sent back into the same home with almost no follow-up care. We trace her troubled marriage to David Smith, the affairs on both sides, and the pressure cooker of her relationship with Tom Findlay, the wealthy man's son who told her explicitly that her children were the obstacle to their future together.We break down the night of October twenty fifth, including the desperate phone calls Susan made searching for Tom, and the fact that she had visited that same boat ramp the night before. We examine the six minutes the car floated while Susan stood on the shore. We expose the lie about the traffic light at Monarch Mills, a sensor-activated light that couldn't have been red without another car present to trigger it.We explore the nine days of deception, Susan's bizarre behavior at parties, her continued calls to Tom Findlay, and the question she asked a reporter that revealed everything: "Did I come across as believable?"We cover Beverly Russell's extraordinary courtroom testimony admitting to years of abuse, and the jury's controversial decision to spare Susan's life.This is the full story. The uncomfortable truths. The redacted details that help explain, though never excuse, how a mother could do the unthinkable.

On the night of October 25, 1994, Susan Smith stood on a boat ramp at John D. Long Lake in Union, South Carolina, and made a choice that would horrify the nation. She released the emergency brake on her burgundy Mazda Protégé and watched it roll into the dark water with her two sons still strapped in their car seats.Three-year-old Michael and fourteen-month-old Alex drowned in that lake while their mother ran to a nearby house and told a lie that would captivate America for nine days. Susan claimed a Black man had carjacked her at gunpoint and driven away with her children. She wept on national television, clutched her estranged husband David's hand, and begged for the safe return of her boys. The whole country searched for a phantom kidnapper while Michael and Alex lay dead at the bottom of that lake, one hundred and twenty-two feet from shore.In this episode, we trace Susan Smith's troubled life from the beginning. Her father Harry Vaughan killed himself when she was just six years old, leaving wounds that never healed. Her stepfather Beverly Russell, a prominent Republican and Christian Coalition member, began molesting her when she was fifteen and continued a sexual relationship with her into adulthood. Susan attempted suicide at thirteen and again at seventeen.She married David Smith at nineteen, already pregnant, and their marriage was plagued by mutual infidelity from the start.When Susan set her sights on Tom Findlay, the wealthy son of her boss at Conso Products, she believed he was her ticket to a better life.But Tom sent her a Dear John letter just eight days before the murders, telling her that while she had many good qualities, he did not want children. In Susan's fractured mind, her boys became obstacles to the happiness she craved.We examine the investigation that unraveled Susan's lies, from the traffic light that could not have turned red at an empty intersection to the polygraph that showed the highest level of deception when she was asked if she knew where her children were. We cover Sheriff Howard Wells obtaining her confession at a local church, the recovery of the boys' bodies with one small hand pressed against the car window, and the trial that exposed every dark corner of Susan's life. The jury convicted her in just two and a half hours but ultimately spared her from the death penalty. She was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after thirty years. Her time behind bars has been marked by affairs with prison guards, drug use, and self-mutilation. In November 2024, she faced her first parole hearing, where David Smith appeared wearing his sons' photograph and pleaded with the board to keep her locked up. They unanimously denied her release.This is the story of Michael and Alex, two innocent boys who deserved so much better than the fate their mother chose for them. And it is a story that still haunts America more than thirty years later.

On July 27, 1981, six-year-old Adam Walsh vanished from a Sears department store at the Hollywood Mall in Hollywood, Florida. Two weeks later, fishermen discovered his severed head in a drainage canal near Vero Beach. His body was never found. This case would transform America's approach to missing children forever, but the question of who actually killed Adam Walsh remains deeply contested to this day. In this episode of The Redacted Report, we go beyond the official narrative to explore the details that rarely make it into documentaries and news specials. We examine the seventeen-year-old security guard whose fateful decision to remove rowdy kids from the store left Adam alone and vulnerable in an unfamiliar parking lot. We dig into the explosive allegations that emerged during the Sears lawsuit, including claims made under oath by Adam's godfather Jimmy Campbell about a four-year affair with Revé Walsh and the family's alleged drug use. We trace the bizarre confession carousel of convicted serial killer Ottis Toole, who admitted to the murder dozens of times only to recant repeatedly, and whose partner Henry Lee Lucas was proven to be in a Maryland jail cell on the day of the abduction. We also investigate the controversial Jeffrey Dahmer theory championed by journalist Arthur Jay Harris and witnesses Willis Morgan and Bill Bowen, who independently identified Dahmer as the suspicious man they saw at the Hollywood Mall that day. Dahmer was living in Miami Beach at the time, working at Sunshine Subs just twenty minutes from where Adam disappeared, and had access to a blue van matching witness descriptions. Former FBI agent Neil Purtell, who interviewed Dahmer in prison, believes the serial killer's cryptic statement that "anyone who killed Adam Walsh could not live in any prison, ever" was essentially a coded admission of guilt. We examine the catastrophic failures of the Hollywood Police Department, including the lost bloodstained carpet from Toole's Cadillac, the missing machete, and the destroyed vehicle that might have provided the DNA evidence needed for a conviction.We question the controversial Luminol photograph that retired detective Joe Matthews compared to the Shroud of Turin, which critics dismiss as forensic pareidolia. And we explore how Police Chief Chad Wagner's 2008 decision to close the case through "exceptional clearance" satisfied the Walsh family but left many investigators and witnesses unconvinced.Through it all, we trace Adam's extraordinary legacy, from the Missing Children Act of 1982 to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to America's Most Wanted to the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006. John Walsh transformed unimaginable grief into systemic change that has protected millions of children and led to the capture of over twelve hundred fugitives.This is the Adam Walsh case as you've never heard it before. The official story says Ottis Toole was the killer. The evidence says something far more complicated.

On July 27, 1981, six-year-old Adam Walsh vanished from a Sears department store in Hollywood, Florida, and America was never the same. This episode of The Guilty Files Podcast examines one of the most infamous child abduction cases in American history, tracing every devastating detail from that summer afternoon at the Hollywood Mall to the sixteen-year investigation that would ultimately point to drifter and serial killer Ottis Toole.We explore the catastrophic failures in evidence handling that allowed a prime suspect to escape justice for decades, the heartbreaking discovery along the Florida Turnpike that confirmed every parent's worst nightmare, and the unprecedented transformation of a grieving father into America's most relentless victims' rights advocate.John Walsh channeled unimaginable loss into a crusade that created America's Most Wanted, helped establish the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and fundamentally changed how law enforcement responds to missing children cases across the United States.This true crime deep dive covers the investigation, the confessions, the controversies, and the lasting legacy of legislation born from tragedy, including the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act and the nationwide AMBER Alert system. From cold case breakthroughs to the modern fight against child predators, Adam's story remains a defining moment in American criminal justice history. Contains detailed discussion of child abduction, homicide investigation, and serial killer psychology.

In this episode, we go beyond the sanitized headlines and Netflix documentaries to examine the Ted Bundy case you were never supposed to know about, including the suppressed files, the buried reports, and the institutional failures that allowed one of America's most prolific serial killers to operate for years longer than he ever should have.We begin with Bundy's troubled origins at the Elizabeth Lund Home for Unwed Mothers, his violent grandfather Samuel Cowell, his grandmother's severe mental illness and electroconvulsive treatments, the family secret that made him believe his mother was his sister, and the chilling incident where three-year-old Ted placed butcher knives around his sleeping aunt's body while smiling.We examine the haunting case of eight-year-old Ann Marie Burr, who vanished from her Tacoma home in 1961 when Bundy was just fourteen years old and lived less than two miles away with a paper route through her neighborhood, and we discuss why the 2011 request to compare Bundy's DNA to evidence from that case was denied because his biological samples had been destroyed.We explore Bundy's work at the Seattle Crisis Clinic from 1971 to 1974, where he sat beside future true crime author Ann Rule taking calls from suicidal individuals while perfecting the manipulation techniques he would later use to lure women to their deaths, and we reveal his own admission that he learned how to sound caring even when he wasn't.We dive deep into the mathematics of murder and why the official victim count of thirty to thirty-six is almost certainly a fraction of the real total, with some investigators estimating the true number could exceed one hundred, and we examine the lost years between 1969 and 1973 when Bundy traveled extensively and left virtually no documented trail while young women matching his victim profile disappeared along the East Coast.We expose the systematic failures that allowed Bundy to keep killing, including Elizabeth Kloepfer's five separate reports to law enforcement that were ignored because detectives dismissed her as a hysterical woman, the nine months it took Utah authorities to arrest him after Carol DaRonch escaped his car with a handcuff still attached to her wrist, and the cross-jurisdictional catastrophe where police departments in four states refused to share information with each other. We reveal the truth behind both escapes, including the suspected accomplice inside the Aspen courthouse whose personnel file conveniently disappeared, the 1976 jail inspection report that identified the exact security weakness Bundy exploited in Glenwood Springs, and the fifteen-hour head start he received because holiday weekend staffing cuts reduced cell checks from hourly to every other hour.We uncover Bundy's carefully buried political career as a rising star in the Republican Party, his work on the Rockefeller presidential campaign, his security clearance to serve as a driver and bodyguard for Governor Daniel Evans, and how the party quietly scrubbed his employment records from their archives after his arrest.We examine what the jury never heard about the Chi Omega massacre, including how the bite mark evidence almost didn't exist because the attending physician failed to photograph the marks before they faded, the discrepancy in Nita Neary's eyewitness account that the defense never challenged, and the troubling theory that Kimberly Leach wasn't an aberration but a return to Bundy's true preference for younger victims. We analyze the death row interviews and the information Bundy provided about dump sites and victims that was never followed up by law enforcement, his manipulation of the Green River Killer investigation for his own benefit, and how his final interview with James Dobson blaming pornography contradicted everything he'd told forensic psychiatrists for years.We discuss the mystery of Carole Ann Boone's pregnancy on death row and the evidence that guards were bribed to allow physical contact during visits, the discredited science of bite mark analysis that formed the foundation of his Chi Omega conviction, and why the destruction of Bundy's DNA samples has prevented closure for families across the country whose daughters disappeared during the years he was active.We close with the questions that remain unanswered, the dump sites that were never searched due to budget cuts and political pressure, the hitchhiker victims along Interstate Five that were never officially linked to him, and the uncomfortable truth that many of the same institutional failures that allowed Bundy to kill for years still exist in our law enforcement system today.This episode contains discussions of violence, sexual assault, and crimes against children that some listeners may find disturbing.

In this episode, we take an unflinching look at one of the most notorious serial killers in American history. Theodore Robert Bundy murdered at least thirty women across seven states during the 1970s, and his case forever changed how we understand the nature of predatory violence.This is the complete story of Ted Bundy, from his troubled beginnings to his final moments in Florida's electric chair. We open on a summer afternoon at Lake Sammamish State Park in Washington State, where a handsome young man with his arm in a sling approached woman after woman, asking for help with his sailboat. Two of those women would never be seen alive again, and their disappearances would mark a turning point in one of the largest manhunts in Pacific Northwest history.The story begins in 1946 at the Elizabeth Lund Home for Unwed Mothers in Burlington, Vermont, where a young woman named Louise Cowell gave birth to a son she could not publicly claim as her own. We explore the elaborate family deception that followed, with Ted being raised to believe his grandparents were his parents and his mother was merely his older sister. We examine the household dynamics in Philadelphia, including accounts of his grandfather Samuel Cowell's violent temper, and we follow the family's cross-country relocation to Tacoma, Washington, where Louise would eventually marry a hospital cook named Johnnie Bundy.From there, we trace Ted's development through childhood and adolescence. We look at his struggles to connect with peers, his early fascination with violence and true crime, his nighttime prowling through neighborhoods, and the petty thefts that taught him he could take what he wanted without consequence. We follow him to the University of Washington, where he reinvented himself as a charming political operative and met the wealthy young woman whose rejection would send him spiraling into darkness. The heart of this episode chronicles Ted Bundy's years of murder. Beginning with the attack on Karen Sparks in January 1974 and the disappearance of Lynda Ann Healy just weeks later, we document the wave of terror that swept through the Pacific Northwest as young women vanished from college campuses and public spaces. We cover each known victim, the circumstances of their disappearances, and the desperate efforts of investigators who were working without the benefit of modern forensic tools or computerized databases. We examine the critical turning point at Lake Sammamish, where multiple witnesses saw the same man approaching women and where a composite sketch finally gave investigators something to work with. We reveal how Ted Bundy's own girlfriend reported her suspicions to police and how his name was lost in a pile of thousands of tips.The narrative follows Bundy to Utah, where he enrolled in law school and immediately began hunting again. We cover the murders of Nancy Wilcox, Melissa Smith, Laura Aime, and Debra Kent. We give particular attention to the attack on Carol DaRonch, the young woman who fought back and escaped, providing investigators with their first surviving witness who could identify her attacker. We then trace the crimes into Colorado and Idaho, documenting the murders of Caryn Campbell, Julie Cunningham, Denise Oliverson, Lynette Culver, and Susan Curtis. We explore how investigators across multiple states were slowly beginning to connect the dots, recognizing patterns that suggested a single killer was responsible for disappearances spanning thousands of miles. The capture of Ted Bundy receives detailed attention, beginning with the routine traffic stop by Utah Highway Patrol Sergeant Bob Hayward that revealed a car full of disturbing items. We cover Bundy's conviction for the kidnapping of Carol DaRonch and his extradition to Colorado to face murder charges.Two full chapters are devoted to Ted Bundy's escapes from custody. The first escape came when he leaped from a second-story window of the Pitkin County Courthouse in Aspen, leading authorities on a six-day manhunt through the Colorado mountains. The second escape was even more audacious, with Bundy sawing through the ceiling of his cell and walking out the front door of the Garfield County Jail on the night of December 30th, 1977. We follow Bundy to Florida, where he committed his most violent attacks. The Chi Omega sorority house massacre is covered in detail, documenting how Bundy killed two young women and severely injured three others in a span of minutes. We also cover his final victim, twelve-year-old Kimberly Leach, who was abducted from her junior high school in Lake City just weeks later.The legal proceedings receive thorough examination. We cover the groundbreaking Miami trial, one of the first to be televised nationally, where Bundy represented himself and was ultimately convicted based on eyewitness testimony and forensic bite mark evidence. We also cover the subsequent trial for the murder of Kimberly Leach and the failed insanity defense.The episode concludes with Bundy's nine years on death row, his eventual confessions to investigators, and his execution on January 24th, 1989. We examine his final interview with Dr. James Dobson, in which he blamed his crimes on pornography, and we consider the complicated legacy he left behind.Throughout this episode, we keep the focus where it belongs, on the victims. We name every known victim and honor their memory, reminding listeners that behind the sensational headlines were real women whose lives were cut short by a predator who exploited their trust and kindness.The Ted Bundy case fundamentally changed American law enforcement. It contributed to the creation of the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program and helped establish the modern science of criminal profiling. But perhaps its most important legacy is the warning it provides.Evil does not always announce itself. Sometimes it comes with a warm smile and a request for help. Trust your instincts. If something feels wrong, it probably is.

On September 20, 1988, nineteen-year-old Terra Leigh Calico set out on her morning bike ride along Highway 47 in Valencia County, New Mexico. She never came home. In the nearly 37 years since her disappearance, this case has become one of America's most haunting unsolved mysteries, defined by a chilling Polaroid photograph discovered in a Florida parking lot and decades of whispered accusations that have never led to justice. But the story most people know is only part of the truth. In this episode of The Redacted Report, we pull back the curtain on the facts that never made it into the official narrative. We examine evidence that was lost, destroyed, or never properly collected, including a suitcase containing telephone wire found during a drug investigation at a nearby motel and later destroyed by a detective.We explore persistent rumors of a pink bicycle and underwear with Terra's initials that were allegedly found but never logged as evidence, and we reveal the shocking truth about the Walkman and cassette tape pieces that were analyzed and determined not to belong to Terra at all. This episode takes a hard look at witnesses who were overlooked or ignored, including a pivotal eyewitness who reported seeing a group of four or five young men and one woman waiting in Terra's path on the morning she vanished. That witness is now dead, their full account lost to time. We also examine the story of a man named Ishmael who came forward, was placed under hypnosis, identified a suspect from a photo lineup, and then was abandoned by the detective who was supposed to follow up with him. We explore the chilling connection to David Parker Ray, the Toy Box Killer, who was born in Belen and whose family had a ranch near where Terra disappeared. Ray closely resembled the composite sketch of the man seen following Terra, but FBI investigators ruled him out based on his meticulous record-keeping, which contained no mention of Terra Calico. With Ray eliminated as a suspect, investigators turned their attention to local young men who allegedly knew Terra and had been harassing her for months before she vanished.The episode delves deep into the mysteries surrounding the Polaroid photographs, including the famous Port Saint Joe image and two additional photographs found in California and on an Amtrak train. We examine the phone number written on the spine of the V.C. Andrews novel in the photograph, which yielded 300 possible combinations and 57 valid phone numbers, none of which produced any leads. We discuss the beach sighting of a young woman matching the photograph being given verbal orders by several men, and we address Marilyn Manson's claim that he used to drop similar staged photographs in Florida as pranks. We reveal the threatening notes that were left on Terra's car for months before her disappearance, notes that were dismissed as high school antics and have since disappeared from the evidence record. We examine the case of Debra Lansdell, a 29-year-old woman from nearby Peralta who vanished on September 21, 1985, almost exactly three years before Terra and nearly to the exact day.The episode covers the breakthrough that came in October 2020 when the Rocky Mountain Information Network completed a two-year analysis of the case and recommended pursuing loose ends that had never been fully explored. We discuss the sealed search warrant executed in September 2021 and the June 2023 announcement that law enforcement believes there is sufficient evidence to submit the case to the District Attorney's Office for potential charges. We examine the statute of limitations problems that complicate prosecution and the ongoing search efforts, including the September 2025 mine shaft investigation that employed fly traps designed to attract insects that feed on human remains.This is a story about more than just one missing woman. It is a story about systemic failures, about evidence that was mishandled or destroyed, about witnesses who were ignored, about a community that may have known the truth for decades and chosen to remain silent. It is a story about families who waited their entire lives for answers and died without ever receiving them.The FBI reward of $20,000 remains in place. Anyone with information about this case is encouraged to contact the Valencia County Sheriff's Office at 505-866-2400 or submit tips online at tips.fbi.gov.After 37 years, the truth is still out there. Someone knows what happened on Highway 47 that September morning. This episode is a call to finally break the silence.

On 09/20/1988, 19-year-old Tara Leigh Calico left her home in Belen, New Mexico, for her daily bike ride along Highway 47. She never returned. Nearly four decades later, her disappearance remains one of the most haunting and controversial missing persons cases in American history.This episode of The Guilty Files traces Tara's life from her childhood and active years at Belen High School to her studies in psychology at the University of New Mexico–Valencia Campus. We examine the morning she vanished, including her final conversation with her mother and witness reports of a light-colored 1953 Ford pickup truck following closely behind her pink Huffy bicycle.We explore  the infamous Polaroid photograph found 9 months later in Port St. Joe, Florida, showing a bound young woman and a boy in the back of a white cargo van. Conflicting expert analyses—from Scotland Yard, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the FBI—only deepened the mystery. We examine long-standing local theories, allegations of a cover-up involving prominent families, and former Sheriff Rene Rivera's 2008 claim that Tara was accidentally struck and killed by local teenagers. We also explore a disturbing deathbed confession alleging Tara's body was hidden by the son of the sheriff in office at the time.The episode honors the tireless efforts of Tara's parents, who died without answers, and highlights the work of investigators and advocates who continue to push for the truth. It concludes with the 06/2023 announcement by Valencia County authorities that the case has been submitted for prosecutorial review. As of 2025, no charges have been filed, and the identities of those believed responsible remain sealed.

On April 20th, 1999, two seniors walked into Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado and committed what was then the deadliest school shooting in American history. Thirteen innocent people lost their lives that day, and the images of terrified students fleeing with their hands raised became seared into America's collective memory. The mainstream narrative has been told countless times, dissected in documentaries, and dramatized in films.But that narrative, the one carefully curated and presented to the public for over twenty five years, is incomplete. In some cases, it's outright false.In this episode of The Redacted Report, we pull back the curtain on one of the most scrutinized yet poorly understood tragedies in modern American history.This isn't speculation or conspiracy theory. This is documented fact drawn from official reports released years after the shooting, from lawsuits that forced the disclosure of buried evidence, from investigative journalists who spent years digging through the wreckage of a botched investigation, and from the families of victims who refused to accept the official story.We begin more than a year before the shooting, when a mother in Littleton discovered a website that chilled her to the bone. Eric Harris wasn't just posting the typical angst of a disaffected teenager. He was posting detailed bomb-making instructions, writing about his desire to kill, and making specific death threats against named individuals. When that mother and her husband went to the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office with printouts and documentation, a deputy took the complaint seriously enough to draft a search warrant for the Harris residence. Had that warrant been executed, investigators would have found pipe bombs and detailed journals planning a massacre. But the warrant was never executed. It was drafted, reviewed, and then it disappeared into the bureaucratic void.For years after the shooting, officials denied it ever existed. They were lying. We examine the catastrophic failures of law enforcement on the day of the shooting, focusing on the tragic death of teacher Dave Sanders. Shot at approximately 11:26 in the morning, Sanders was dragged into a science classroom where students put a sign in the window reading "1 bleeding to death" and called 911. They were told help was coming. But SWAT teams didn't reach that classroom until approximately 3:00 in the afternoon.For three and a half hours, a wounded man lay bleeding while hundreds of law enforcement officers stood outside the building following protocols designed for situations completely unlike what they were facing. Sanders died from wounds that might have been survivable with prompt medical attention. We delve into the infamous basement tapes, the recordings Harris and Klebold made in the weeks before the shooting that were viewed by select officials but hidden from the public for over a decade before being destroyed in 2011. Those tapes reportedly contained statements about who knew about the killers' plans, where they obtained their weapons, and admissions that would have raised serious questions about whether others should have faced charges. Whatever was on those recordings is gone forever, destroyed by officials who claimed they were acting on mental health advice but who had already demonstrated a pattern of concealing their own failures. We dismantle the myths that the media created in the aftermath of the tragedy. The Trench Coat Mafia narrative that led to a nationwide crackdown on goth fashion and industrial music. The bullying explanation that provided a comforting but largely inaccurate cause for the violence. The story of Cassie Bernall, the alleged Christian martyr who said yes when asked if she believed in God, a powerful story that became a rallying cry for evangelical Christians but that the evidence suggests probably didn't happen the way it was told.These myths served various agendas, but they were largely wrong, and they prevented a more accurate understanding of what actually occurred.We explore the fact that the shooting was supposed to be the sideshow. Harris and Klebold built ninety nine improvised explosive devices, including two twenty pound propane bombs placed in the cafeteria and timed to detonate during the busiest lunch period. If those bombs had worked, the death toll wouldn't have been thirteen. It would have been in the hundreds.The massacre we remember was their backup plan, what they did when their primary plan failed. This level of premeditation demolishes the narrative of bullied kids who snapped and raises serious questions about how two teenagers could build a small arsenal without anyone noticing.We document the systematic cover up that followed the shooting. The draft search warrant that officials claimed didn't exist until it was discovered years later. The files that were sealed. The deputies who were instructed not to discuss their prior investigations. The sheriff who called grieving parents liars when they tried to tell the truth. The district attorney who never convened a grand jury. The evidence that was destroyed. The officials who retired with their pensions intact while no one was ever held accountable.We examine the controversial question of Eric Harris's psychiatric medication and what role, if any, it may have played in his violence. We explore what this case reveals about the limitations of mental health treatment and the ability of skilled manipulators to fool therapists, counselors, and parents alike. And we consider the legacy of Columbine more than twenty five years later. The lessons that were learned and the lessons that weren't. The reforms that were implemented and the reforms that should have been.The patterns of institutional failure and cover up that we've seen repeated in tragedy after tragedy since that April morning in 1999. Thirteen people died at Columbine High School. They were Cassie Bernall, Steven Curnow, Corey DePooter, Kelly Fleming, Matthew Kechter, Daniel Mauser, Daniel Rohrbough, Rachel Scott, Isaiah Shoels, John Tomlin, Lauren Townsend, Kyle Velasquez, and Dave Sanders. They deserved better from the people who were supposed to protect them.They deserved the truth. And they deserved to be remembered not as symbols or martyrs or victims of a myth, but as real people whose lives were cut short by violence that might have been prevented.This is The Redacted Report. The truth is out there, even when they don't want you to find it.

April 20, 1999 changed everything we thought we understood about safety, about schools, and about the capacity for violence within our own communities. In this episode of The Guilty Files, we take a comprehensive and unflinching look at the Columbine High School massacre, cutting through decades of misinformation to separate fact from myth in one of the most misunderstood crimes in American history. Nearly everything the public believes about Columbine has been shaped by early media errors, cultural panic, and narratives that simply do not hold up under scrutiny. The so-called Trenchcoat Mafia was never a factor. The idea that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold targeted jocks or Christians has been largely debunked. The widely circulated story that Cassie Bernall affirmed her faith moments before her death did not occur as it was later told. And perhaps most critically, Columbine was never intended to be a traditional school shooting. It was designed as a mass bombing meant to collapse the cafeteria and kill hundreds, potentially surpassing the Oklahoma City bombing as the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history.The shooting was a contingency plan, carried out only after the bombs failed to detonate.This episode traces the full arc of the crime from beginning to end. We examine the backgrounds of both perpetrators not to glorify them or grant the infamy they sought, but to understand the warning signs that were missed and the systems that failed. Eric Harris, a military child who moved frequently before settling in Littleton, Colorado, maintained a website filled with threats and bomb-making instructions that were known to authorities and never acted upon.Dylan Klebold, a gifted local student, struggled with severe depression and suicidal ideation that was documented in private journals but went unrecognized until after the attack. We follow the eleven months of planning that led up to April 20, including the alarming ease with which two teenagers obtained four firearms and constructed ninety-nine explosive devices. We examine the gun show loophole that allowed an eighteen-year-old honors student to purchase weapons for her underage friends, along with the illegal sale of a TEC-DC9 handgun by a twenty-two-year-old seeking quick money.At the center of the episode is a minute-by-minute reconstruction of the day itself, built from the official Jefferson County Sheriff's Office timeline, witness testimony, surveillance footage, and forensic evidence. From Eric Harris purchasing propane tanks at a Texaco station that morning to the forty-nine minutes of violence that left fourteen people dead and twenty-four wounded, we document exactly what happened and when.But this episode does what too much coverage of mass violence fails to do. It centers the victims. Rachel Scott, whose writings on compassion inspired the global movement Rachel's Challenge. Daniel Rohrbough, a fifteen-year-old freshman who never had a chance to escape.  Dave Sanders, the beloved teacher and coach who saved more than a hundred students before being shot and left to bleed to death for over four hours while help failed to reach him. Kyle Velasquez, Steven Curnow, Cassie Bernall, Isaiah Shoels, Matthew Kechter, Lauren Townsend, John Tomlin, Kelly Fleming, Daniel Mauser, and Corey DePooter. Each had a future, a family, and a life that mattered. We also honor Anne Marie Hochhalter, who was paralyzed during the attack and whose death in February 2025 was ruled a homicide by the Jefferson County Coroner, bringing the final death toll to fourteen. We examine the catastrophic failures in the law enforcement response, including the contain-and-wait protocol that kept officers outside the school for more than an hour after the attack began. Dave Sanders was alive for hours, tended to by students as a sign in the window read “One bleeding to death.” Police snipers saw it. Dispatch communicated with people in the room. Help still did not arrive in time. His daughter later won a $1.5 million settlement against Jefferson County, and his death helped fundamentally change how police across the country respond to active shooter situations.The episode also dismantles the myths that emerged in the immediate aftermath. The Trenchcoat Mafia narrative. The revenge fantasy. The blame placed on video games and musicians. The Cassie Bernall martyrdom story. We explain what the FBI's psychological analysis actually concluded about Harris and Klebold and why the truth, while less sensational than the myths, matters far more.Finally, we examine the lasting impact of Columbine more than twenty-six years later. The lawsuits and settlements. The evolution of school security. The gun control debates that surged and faded. Sue Klebold's memoir and her advocacy for mental health awareness.And the phenomenon researchers now call “The Columbine Effect,” with more than seventy subsequent attacks directly inspired by or linked to what happened that day. This is not an easy episode. It is long, detailed, and emotionally heavy. But it is also an episode that refuses to give the perpetrators the notoriety they sought. Instead, it remembers the dead, honors the survivors who turned trauma into purpose, and acknowledges a community that stood together under the words  “We Are Columbine.”If you take anything from this episode, let it be the names of the fourteen people who should have been allowed to grow old. Say their names. Remember their stories. That is how we push back against the darkness.Content warning: This episode contains detailed discussions of violence, death, and suicide. Listener discretion is advised.

On September fifth, nineteen eighty two, twelve year old Johnny Gosch walked out of his West Des Moines home before dawn to deliver newspapers and vanished without a trace. His case changed America forever, leading to the first missing child on a milk carton and landmark legislation that transformed how we handle abducted children.But the story most people know barely scratches the surface of what really happened.In this episode of The Redacted Report, we dig into the buried facts, the covered-up connections, and the questions that powerful people have spent four decades trying to silence.We begin with Police Chief Orval Cooney, the man tasked with finding Johnny. What most people don't know is that Cooney had a violent past, including a nineteen fifty one assault conviction. Just months before Johnny disappeared, eighteen of his own officers went on record accusing him of brutality, harassment, and drinking on duty. When volunteers searched for Johnny, witnesses say Cooney climbed onto a picnic table and told everyone to go home, calling the missing boy a damn runaway. He stonewalled the family at every turn until his sudden death in two thousand three, just as a lawsuit was about to expose what he knew. Then there's the newspaper itself. Johnny delivered papers for the Des Moines Register, the same company that employed Frank Sykora, who admitted to molesting at least seven paperboys, and Wilbur Millhouse, a former circulation manager found with a list of twenty two hundred boys' names when he was arrested. Millhouse reportedly told people for years that he knew who took Johnny and why. We examine the chilling prediction made two months before thirteen year old Eugene Martin vanished in nineteen eighty four. According to Noreen Gosch, a private investigator warned her another paperboy would be taken the second weekend of August on the south side of Des Moines. She passed this information to authorities. They did nothing. Eugene disappeared exactly when and where predicted. The episode explores the proof of life that emerged after Johnny's abduction. A confirmed sighting in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where investigators said a boy crying for help was positively identified as Johnny. A dollar bill with his authenticated signature surfacing in Sioux City three years later. Signs that Johnny was alive, somewhere, trying to send a message. We dive deep into the Franklin Credit Union scandal and the testimony of Paul Bonacci, who claimed he was forced to participate in Johnny's kidnapping. Bonacci knew physical details about Johnny that weren't public knowledge. A federal judge ruled his testimony truthful and awarded him one million dollars in a civil judgment. Yet police never interviewed him about the Gosch case.he investigation into Franklin led to tragedy. State investigator Gary Caradori was collecting evidence, interviewing witnesses, building a case against powerful people. On July eleventh, nineteen ninety, his plane came apart in midair over an Illinois cornfield. He and his eight year old son were killed. His briefcase of newly obtained evidence was never recovered. A documentary about the scandal called Conspiracy of Silence was pulled from the Discovery Channel before it could air. We trace the trafficking network run by John David Norman, a career predator whose operations spanned decades. His thirty thousand customer index cards were sent to the State Department and destroyed. His associate Phillip Paske worked for John Wayne Gacy. Investigators following witness testimony found an abandoned Colorado ranch with a hidden underground chamber and children's initials carved into the walls. The episode covers Noreen Gosch's claim that Johnny visited her in nineteen ninety seven, fifteen years after his disappearance, and the mysterious envelope of photographs left on her doorstep in two thousand six showing bound and gagged children, one of whom she believes is her son. Johnny Gosch would be fifty five years old today. No arrests have ever been made. No body has ever been found. The West Des Moines Police Department still refuses to release their complete case file. Someone knows what happened that September morning. Someone drove the blue Ford Fairmont. Someone flicked that dome light three times. And someone has kept this secret for over four decades. This is the story they buried. This is The Redacted Report.

On September 5, 1982, 12-year-old paperboy Johnny Gosch left his West Des Moines home before dawn to deliver the Des Moines Register—and never returned. His red wagon was found two blocks away, still loaded with undelivered papers. Witnesses reported Johnny speaking with a stocky man near a blue two-toned car, and another man seen trailing him moments later. Within minutes, Johnny vanished.In this episode, we dig into one of America's most chilling missing-child cases—and the fallout that changed the country. We reconstruct Johnny's last morning, then unravel an investigation marked by early missteps and delays that fueled Noreen Gosch's relentless campaign for reform. Her advocacy helped end mandatory waiting periods for missing-child cases through the Johnny Gosch Bill and contributed to the broader national push that led to the creation of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. We also examine the haunting pattern of other Des Moines-area disappearances, including paperboy Eugene Martin in 1984 and Marc Allen in 1986—cases still unsolved and often viewed through the same lens of fear and possibility. The story takes darker, more controversial turns: the testimony of trafficking survivor Paul Bonacci, who said he was forced to participate in Johnny's abduction and later won a civil judgment after a federal judge found his account credible; Noreen's claim that an adult Johnny visited her in March 1997; and the disputed photographs left at her home in 2006. We lay out what's alleged, what's documented, and why the case remains so fiercely debated.Finally, we cover Noreen Gosch's updated allegations naming John David Norman and Phillip Paske as potential perpetrators—claims that remain unproven but continue to shape public theories about the case. As of 2025, Johnny Gosch has been missing for more than 43 years. No arrests. No confirmed sightings. Just a family still searching and a case that refuses to die.

This episode of The Redacted Report takes a hard, clear-eyed look at the Golden State Killer case, not by retelling the headlines everyone already knows, but by sitting in the uncomfortable spaces where the story actually lives.We follow the arc from Joseph James DeAngelo's earliest known crimes in 1974 through his arrest in 2018 and sentencing in 2020, with one chilling fact threaded through every phase: while California was being terrorized, DeAngelo was also an active-duty police officer. He wasn't just hiding from law enforcement—he was learning how it worked from the inside, and that advantage shaped the way he hunted, the way he covered his tracks, and the way he stayed untouchable for more than forty years.The episode opens by naming that truth right out loud, because it changes everything.The person stalking neighborhoods, breaking into homes, and destroying lives wasn't a shadowy outsider. He wore a badge, carried a gun, and walked into work like any other sworn officer. From there, the story steps back to his early life—childhood trauma, military service in Vietnam, criminal justice studies at CSU Sacramento, and a marriage that, on the surface, made him look like a normal young man building a future. But behind that veneer, something darker was already forming.We then move into the Visalia Ransacker years from 1974 to 1975, when DeAngelo committed more than a hundred burglaries and his first confirmed murder, all while serving as a police officer in Exeter. It's the first clear look at his patterns, his boldness, and the early moments when a different kind of attention might have stopped what was coming next. Instead, the case splinters, and the window closes. By 1976, just months after being hired by the Auburn Police Department, DeAngelo begins the East Area Rapist spree. Over the next several years, the Sacramento region is hit with at least fifty sexual assaults, each one escalating the fear and the stakes. The episode walks through how close investigators came—especially Detective Richard Shelby, who at one point was within arm's reach of the suspect. And yet, even with the net tightening, DeAngelo keeps slipping through, aided by his knowledge of police tactics and the blind spots that come with assuming the predator is always “someone else. One of the most haunting turns comes in 1979, when DeAngelo is fired from Auburn PD for shoplifting dog repellent and a hammer. On paper, it's petty theft. In reality, those items match the East Area Rapist's known methods so cleanly they should've set off alarms across the department. But they didn't. The moment passed as a minor embarrassment instead of the massive red flag it was, and DeAngelo simply moved on to the next phase. That next phase takes us south into the Original Night Stalker murders, stretching from 1979 to 1986. Here, the offender escalates from rape to routine homicide, killing victims while maintaining the same signatures and controlling routines seen in Northern California. The tragedy isn't only the violence itself, but the fact that law enforcement agencies failed to connect these crimes to the earlier Sacramento attacks, even though the methodologies lined up like fingerprints. The episode doesn't just describe that failure—it lingers on what it cost.The narrative then shifts to the years when the case begins to reawaken in the public eye, largely through the relentless work of Michelle McNamara. She coins the name “Golden State Killer,” brings the scattered crimes under a single identity, and spends years pushing the case back into the spotlight.Her death in 2016 adds a painful gravity to that chapter, but her book, I'll Be Gone in the Dark, leaves behind a surge of attention and pressure that helps fuel renewed investigative energy. Finally, the episode breaks down the genetic genealogy breakthrough that ended DeAngelo's run. Investigators upload crime-scene DNA to GEDmatch, locate distant relatives, and then do the slow, painstaking genealogical work to narrow the search. When DeAngelo becomes the focus, a covert DNA collection from a Hobby Lobby parking lot confirms it. In April 2018, he's arrested—an ending that feels impossible until it's suddenly real.We close with his guilty plea, the survivor testimonies that reclaim the final word from the man who tried to steal it, and a sober look at what this case forces us to confront. It exposes the dangers of law enforcement culture closing ranks, the catastrophic consequences of fractured communication between agencies, and the complicated future we're stepping into with genetic genealogy—where justice and privacy are now forever tangled together.

In this week's deep-dive, we're taking you into a case that haunted California for decades and still sends a chill through anyone who reads the details. For more than ten years, a masked predator moved through neighborhoods like a ghost — breaking into homes, stalking families, and leaving devastation behind. The numbers alone are staggering: over a hundred burglaries, at least fifty sexual assaults, and thirteen confirmed murders. He slipped between counties and police departments, stayed a step ahead of massive task forces, and then — somehow — disappeared. Not into the shadows, but into ordinary suburban life, where he lived free for more than forty years.This is the full story of Joseph James DeAngelo — the man the world would come to know as the Golden State Killer. We start back in 1974 in Visalia, a small agricultural city where a strange series of burglaries had detectives completely rattled. The person behind them wasn't grabbing TVs or cash. He was spending hours inside people's homes, taking small, personal things — a single earring, coins, women's underwear — and rearranging objects in ways that felt deliberate and unsettling. It wasn't just theft. It was a message: I was here. I know you. I can get to you.From there, we follow the escalation as the Visalia Ransacker's crimes tip into attempted abduction and then murder. We walk through the December 1975 killing of Claude Snelling, a journalism professor who died protecting his teenage daughter from being taken.And we cover the terrifying near-capture just two days later, when Detective William McGowen fought the prowler face-to-face and survived only because the suspect's gun misfired at point-blank range.Then the nightmare shifts north. In 1976, Sacramento is hit by a new kind of terror.The East Area Rapist begins attacking women in their homes with a level of planning and cruelty that left investigators stunned. We break down how his assaults evolved, including the moment he began targeting couples — tying up husbands and boyfriends, stacking dishes on their backs, and forcing them to listen helplessly while he raped their partners. We look at the psychological warfare he used to control entire communities: threatening phone calls, stalking routines, and the methodical surveillance he did before striking again.As the years pass, his crimes migrate south — and turn deadly. Starting in 1979, the man now known as the Original Night Stalker begins murdering couples in their homes across Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Orange counties. We go crime scene by crime scene, showing how the evidence slowly — and finally — revealed that Visalia, Sacramento, and Southern California were all connected to the same offender.We also dig into the long, frustrating decades of investigation: the dead ends, the jurisdictional chaos, and the breakthroughs that came only when DNA technology caught up to the case. And of course, we cover the seismic moment in 2018 when genetic genealogy identified the suspect, leading detectives straight to DeAngelo's quiet home in Citrus Heights — the same kind of suburb he once terrorized.The twist that still hits like a gut punch? During the height of his crime spree, DeAngelo was a police officer, using his training and insider knowledge to stay invisible.We close with the plea and sentencing — a historic reckoning where fifty-three victims and family members stood up in court to face the man who had stolen so much from them. Their impact statements are heartbreaking, powerful, and a reminder that this story isn't just about the monster — it's about the people who survived him. This episode is the result of hundreds of hours of research across court records, investigative files, victim testimony, and years of reporting. Our goal was to tell this story with care, accuracy, and respect — honoring the victims and the investigators who refused to let the case die. The Golden State Killer investigation didn't just end with an arrest. It changed law enforcement forever. Genetic genealogy opened a door to solving cold cases that once seemed impossible, and we talk about both the promise of that tool and the ethical questions that come with it.And we take a moment to recognize Michelle McNamara, whose relentless work on I'll Be Gone in the Dark helped reignite national attention and kept pressure on the investigation. She died in 2016, two years before DeAngelo was caught, but her voice and determination are woven into the story of how this case was finally solved. If you think you know this case, stick with us — because when you lay every chapter out in full, the scale and horror of what happened, and the way it was finally unraveled, is almost impossible to comprehend.

In this deeply personal and explosive episode of The Redacted Report, Brian — a former Atlanta police officer with sixteen years on the job — breaks his silence about one of the most devastating and shameful incidents in modern APD history. On November 21, 2006, ninety-two-year-old Kathryn Johnston was shot and killed in her own home during a botched narcotics raid that ultimately exposed systemic corruption inside the Atlanta Police Department.Brian goes beyond the early headlines and the department's initial story — the one that falsely portrayed Johnston as a drug dealer who fired first — and lays out what really happened: a chain of lies, planted evidence, and institutional pressure. Three narcotics officers fabricated a warrant, forced entry into Johnston's home, and opened fire after she fired a single warning shot in self-defense. She was struck thirty-nine times. While she lay dying on her living room floor, the officers attempted to manufacture justification for what they had done. Officers Jason Smith, Gregg Junnier, and Arthur Tesler later pleaded guilty to federal civil rights violations and received prison sentences of five to ten years — but as Brian explains, they were not the lone villains.They were the predictable outcome of a system engineered to produce tragedies like this.Drawing from his own experience, Brian exposes the department's crushing quota-driven “productivity points” system. Officers were expected to earn seven points per day: an arrest counted as five points, while answering a call for service counted as only a quarter point. In practice, that meant an officer could respond to twenty-eight community calls and still fall short — or make two arrests, even questionable ones, and exceed expectations. The episode also highlights how confidential informant Alex White became an unlikely catalyst for the truth. Refusing to carry the cover-up forward, White contacted federal authorities and exposed the conspiracy — a decision that put his life in danger and ultimately forced him into witness protection. The resulting federal investigation uncovered a broader pattern of corruption: officers lying on warrant applications, planting drugs saved from prior arrests, inventing “informants” who didn't exist, and stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from seizures. One of the most damning revelations is what didn't happen after the convictions. Brian details how the three officers went to prison, but the supervisors who shaped and enforced the quota culture faced no real consequences. Sergeant Wilbert Stallings kept his rank and pension. Lieutenant Mark Pratt retired with full benefits. Captain Dennis O'Brien was promoted just six months after the shooting. The reforms that followed, Brian argues, were largely cosmetic — the quota system was rebranded, not removed, and pressure to generate arrests only intensified as the department tried to repair its image through statistics.Brian also shares the quieter, untold casualties of the same machinery — people whose lives were shattered without ever making the news: Fabian Sheats, who served three years on planted evidence; Frances Thompson, whose family was torn apart by a false raid; and Marcus Williams, whose education and future were derailed by fabricated drug charges. Their stories never sparked investigations.They never received justice. They were simply collateral damage.The episode ends with Brian's personal reckoning. He acknowledges that while he never planted evidence or pulled the trigger on an innocent person, his compliance and silence made him part of the machine that killed Kathryn Johnston. He reflects on the brutal irony that Johnston — born in 1914, a woman who survived Jim Crow, the Great Depression, two World Wars, and the Civil Rights Movement — was ultimately killed at ninety-two by officers chasing a daily quota.This is not just a story about three corrupt cops or one horrific night in Atlanta.It's an indictment of a nationwide policing model that rewards numbers over humanity, treats poor communities like occupied territory, and enables predictable, preventable tragedies while the architects of the system retire with full pensions. The Kathryn Johnston case briefly pulled the curtain back — but as Brian warns, nothing fundamental has changed. There will be more Kathryn Johnstons until the structure itself is confronted.The Redacted Report is both confession and call to action. Brian challenges listeners to demand reforms with teeth: an end to arrest quotas in any form, independent oversight with real authority, accountability for supervisors and policy-makers — not just street-level officers — and the demilitarization of narcotics policing.Until those changes happen, he argues, we are all living inside a system that can turn any home into a crime scene and any innocent person into a casualty of the war on drugs.This is investigative storytelling at its rawest — told by someone who lived inside the culture, understands how the damage is manufactured, and can no longer stay silent about the redacted truth behind one of American law enforcement's darkest moments.

This case is personal. It happened just months before I began my career with the Atlanta Police Department, and it shaped the way I understood the job, the institution, and the stakes of unchecked power. On November 21, 2006, three Atlanta Police Department narcotics officers executed a no-knock warrant at 933 Neal Street in northwest Atlanta—the home of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston. The warrant was built entirely on fabrication. Officers Jason Smith, Gregg Junnier, and Arthur Tesler claimed a confidential informant had bought crack cocaine from the residence earlier that day. No buy occurred. There was no dealer, no “Sam,” no surveillance. There was only an elderly woman living alone in a high-crime area, protected by burglar bars and an old revolver she kept for self-defense.Around 7:00 p.m., officers cut through the security bars and forced entry. Johnston believed she was being robbed. In the dark, unable to see who was coming through her door, she fired one shot over the intruders' heads. Officers responded with 39 rounds, striking her five or six times. As she lay dying on her living room floor, Smith handcuffed her and then planted three bags of marijuana in her basement to manufacture justification for the raid. The officers also pressured their informant, Alex White, to lie and say he had purchased drugs at the home.White refused to participate in the cover-up and went public six days later. His decision triggered an FBI investigation that uncovered systemic corruption inside the APD narcotics unit: falsified warrant applications, planted evidence, coerced informant statements, and a quota culture demanding nine arrests and two search warrants per officer each month.Officers who failed to hit numbers faced transfers and punishment; those who exceeded them received rewards and incentives. Investigators determined the same marijuana planted in Johnston's home had been used earlier that day to frame another man, Fabian Sheets. Sheets was then coerced into providing the false tip that sent officers to Johnston's address. Every step leading to her death was driven by lies, pressure, and a performance system that valued arrests over truth.The legal fallout was swift but damning. In April 2007, Smith and Junnier pleaded guilty to manslaughter and federal civil rights violations, with Smith admitting to planting drugs and lying on the warrant. In October 2008, Tesler pleaded guilty to federal civil rights charges. Sentences followed: Smith received ten years in federal prison, Junnier six, and Tesler five.The scandal dismantled the narcotics unit, forced policy changes requiring multiple controlled buys before warrants, sharply restricted no-knock entries, and accelerated the creation of Atlanta's Civilian Review Board. The city settled with Johnston's family for $4.9 million in 2010. Her house was later demolished, and in 2019 the Kathryn Johnston Memorial Park opened near the site. Her death became a lasting symbol of the dangers of quota-driven drug enforcement and the human cost of militarized policing—foreshadowing later no-knock tragedies like Breonna Taylor's killing in 2020.This episode examines the full chain of corruption that led to Kathryn Johnston's death, the cover-up that followed, and the institutional pressures that made it possible. It is a case about power without accountability, policing distorted by metrics, and the irreversible consequences when truth is treated as optional.

In this deep-dive episode of The Redacted Report, host Brian cuts through fifty years of myth, speculation, and misinformation surrounding America's most infamous unidentified killer. This is the Zodiac story told without sensationalism—an investigation grounded in confirmed facts, disputed evidence, and the uncomfortable gray areas that have fueled decades of obsession.Brian begins by laying out the difference between what investigators know, what they suspect, and what the Zodiac himself claimed. He revisits the confirmed attacks—from the 1968 Lake Herman Road murders to the killing of San Francisco cab driver Paul Stine—along with the crucial survivor testimonies that shaped the early investigation. The episode also explores the long-debated question of whether victim Darlene Ferrin may have known her attacker, a claim that has lingered without proof.The narrative then shifts to the disputed cases, including the 1966 Riverside murder of a college student—claimed by the Zodiac but dismissed by police decades later—the disappearance of nurse Donna Lass, and several possible but unconfirmed victims tied to the killer by pattern or rumor. Brian also revisits the unsettling abduction of Kathleen Johns, a case still debated among investigators.The heart of the episode focuses on the most scrutinized suspect ever named: Arthur Leigh Allen.Brian details the mountain of circumstantial evidence that once made him the prime focus of the investigation, and the physical evidence—handwriting, fingerprints, and later DNA—that ultimately cleared him. Recent claims, including alleged confessions and alternative suspects promoted by documentaries and citizen groups, are examined with sharp skepticism and a commitment to factual integrity.The episode also breaks down the Zodiac ciphers, from the early Z408 to the 340 cipher cracked in 2020, and discusses the investigative failures, jurisdictional conflicts, and missing evidence that have kept this case unsolved. Brian confronts the theories—credible and absurd—and looks at how the Zodiac transformed from a real killer into a cultural phenomenon that continues to inspire amateur sleuths and wild speculation.Ultimately, this episode reveals a more grounded truth: only five murders and two attempted murders can be definitively tied to the Zodiac, and many widely accepted “facts” are nothing more than unproven theories. The case remains open across multiple jurisdictions, with thousands of suspects reviewed and no definitive answers.The victims are honored throughout the episode—teenagers on their first date, a young mother, a college student, and a working cab driver—all of whom deserve to be remembered beyond the mythology built around their killer.Survivors whose testimonies shaped the case are also acknowledged, along with the contradictions and evolving memories that complicate their accounts.This episode represents months of research and a commitment to separating fact from fiction. While many questions remain, Brian's goal is not to solve the case, but to present it with honesty—including its dead ends, contradictions, and discomforting truths.The Redacted Report is a weekly investigative true crime podcast dedicated to uncovering the hidden layers behind notorious cases. Brian brings his background in law enforcement and his dedication to factual accuracy to each episode, reminding listeners that sometimes the real story is buried beneath decades of noise. Join us next week for another investigation where the official story isn't the whole truth—because in every case, what's hidden matters most.

In the summer of 1969, the San Francisco Chronicle received a letter that would ignite one of the most infamous investigations in American history. Inside was a chilling confession, a cryptic cipher, and the signature that would terrify the nation: a circle with a cross through it. T We trace every confirmed attack, beginning with the Lake Herman Road murders of teenage sweethearts David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen—an ambush that seemed random until the killer later claimed it as his own. From there, we follow the trail to Blue Rock Springs, where Darlene Ferrin was killed and Michael Mageau survived a barrage of gunfire—and the eerie phone call that linked both crimes in the killer's own voice.We dive into the ciphers that made this case legendary: the first three-part code cracked by a schoolteacher and his wife, and the 340-character cipher solved over fifty years later.These messages revealed the killer's delusions, obsessions, and desire to terrorize an entire region. We also break  down the horrifying daylight attack at Lake Berryessa, where Bryan Hartnell survived a knife assault from a hooded figure wearing the iconic crossed-circle emblem. Then we move into Presidio Heights, where cab driver Paul Stine's murder and a devastating miscommunication allowed police to unknowingly let the Zodiac walk right past them. We explore dozens of letters and cards sent to newspapers, including threats against school buses and claims of dozens more victims. This correspondence became the Zodiac's greatest weapon—psychological warfare that spread fear across Northern California.We examone the massive multi-agency manhunt, forensic clues from footprints to partial prints to modern DNA extraction, and the long list of suspects: Arthur Leigh Allen, Rick Marshall, Lawrence Kane, Ross Sullivan, and more—each compelling, each flawed, none ever confirmed.We also cover unconfirmed cases like Cheri Jo Bates and Donna Lass, as well as modern developments from DNA profiling to the controversial Case Breakers announcement.We discuss whether genetic genealogy may one day identify the killer—as it did in the Golden State Killer case—and why recent results remain sealed.Beyond the crimes, we look at the cultural footprint: how the Zodiac case reshaped criminal investigation, inspired countless books and films, and created a vast community of amateur sleuths still searching for answers.At the center of this story are the victims—Betty Lou Jensen, David Faraday, Darlene Ferrin, Cecelia Shepard, and Paul Stine—whose lives and futures were stolen by a killer who turned murder into a game.It's the story of a case that transformed American true crime, a mystery that refuses to die, and a shadow that still lingers over the Bay Area more than fifty years later. The Zodiac sought immortality—and in a grim sense, he found it.The case remains open.The cipher is not fully solved.And somewhere, the key to this mystery is still waiting to be discovered.

Tonight on The Redacted Report, we reopen the case file on one of America's most infamous crimes—the 1966 massacre of eight student nurses in Chicago. The world knows the headline: one survivor, one killer, Richard Speck. But the real story didn't make the newspapers, and it never made the documentaries.That story begins here.We trace Speck's path long before the murders, uncovering early psychiatric evaluations, head trauma, and behavioral red flags buried in government archives—warnings ignored until it was far too late. Records from Texas expose a trail of violence against women that mirror the Chicago killings almost exactly, cases that were dismissed or quietly dropped. Maritime logs reveal a pattern of explosive aggression at sea, ignored by a system that kept placing Speck on new ships despite repeated danger.The week before the murders—long treated as an afterthought—comes into focus as a period of planning and preparation. Witnesses reported Speck stalking nurses, drawing layouts of buildings, and meeting with unknown individuals. The crime scene itself tells a story that never reached a jury: signs of earlier tampering, restraints brought in advance, and a timeline that points to a calculated, controlled attack rather than a spontaneous frenzy.Corazon Amurao's survival—heroic and heartbreaking—contains details withheld from the public for decades. She heard Speck speaking casually with the victims. She heard another voice in the townhouse. And years later, she admitted what she'd been urged to conceal: she saw a second set of feet.Even the manhunt and arrest raise questions. Speck was seen calmly sitting outside the townhouse after the murders, visited multiple locations searching for someone, and suddenly had access to money. A forged medical bracelet appeared on his wrist. An anonymous caller with medical knowledge identified him at the hospital. Nothing about his capture fits the official version. The suppressed forensic evidence is equally troubling: multiple unidentified fingerprints, unexplained footprints, a phone call placed from inside the crime scene during the murders, and a controlled drug in Speck's system he should never have had access to.Prison tapes later caught Speck alluding to “the man with the plan,” describing the killings as “the message,” and insisting he wasn't acting alone.Patterns of similar attacks on nurses in other cities, linked locations, coordinated methods, and financial trails all point to a larger, unsettling picture—one the justice system seemed unwilling to confront. Speck may have been the hand, but the question remains: whose hand was guiding him?Richard Speck died in 1991, but the unanswered questions surrounding this case remain locked behind sealed files, suppressed reports, and the memories of those told to stay silent. Tonight, we challenge the official narrative and present the case as the evidence actually shows it.On The Redacted Report, we don't repeat the story they told you.We expose the one they didn't want you to hear.

On a sweltering July night in 1966, eight young student nurses gathered in their modest Chicago townhouse, studying, laughing, and planning for bright futures devoted to healing others. By dawn, all but one would be dead — victims of a crime so brutal and senseless that it forever changed how Americans understood violence, safety, and evil itself. In this powerful episode of The Guilty Files, we revisit one of the darkest nights in American history — the Richard Speck murders. We begin with Speck's troubled childhood in rural Illinois, tracing his transformation from an abused and neglected boy into a violent, drifting man. Through court records, psychological profiles, and witness testimony, we follow the sequence of events that led him from one bar to another that night, driven by rage, addiction, and a lifetime of trauma — until he found himself at 2319 East 100th Street. Inside that small townhouse lived eight remarkable women — future nurses united by their compassion and courage. We remember Gloria Davy, Patricia Matusek, Nina Schmale, Pamela Wilkening, Suzanne Farris, Mary Ann Jordan, Merlita Gargullo, and Valentina Pasion — honoring their dreams, their kindness, and their shared commitment to care for others. Through meticulous research and survivor testimony, we recount the investigation that gripped the nation — how a simple tattoo reading “Born to Raise Hell” led detectives to their suspect. We revisit the bravery of Corazon Amurao, the sole survivor who hid beneath a bed for hours, bearing silent witness and later testifying to bring Speck to justice. The trial that followed revealed not only the depths of one man's depravity but also the flaws and limits of the American justice system. Though sentenced to death, Speck's life would end not at the gallows but behind bars — where years later, a shocking prison video reignited public outrage and reopened the wounds of those still grieving. Beyond the crime, this episode examines its lasting impact: reforms in nursing education and hospital security, the birth of modern criminal profiling, and the cultural shift that redefined how Americans viewed personal safety and random violence.This is not a story told to glorify evil — it is a story to remember courage, humanity, and loss. The lives of these eight women remind us that even in the face of unimaginable darkness, compassion and justice endure.

In this episode of The Redacted Report, we reopen the case of Edmund Kemper, the so-called “Co-Ed Killer,” to expose the details that were buried in thousands of pages of police files, psychiatric evaluations, and trial transcripts.This isn't the version told in documentaries or dramatizations. This is the story of how a system failed, how warning signs were missed, and how one of California's most intelligent predators learned to play both sides of the law .Ed Kemper wasn't just hiding in plain sight — he was sitting at the bar with the very officers searching for him. Inside The Jury Room in Santa Cruz, he befriended Detective Johnson, Officer Martinez, and Sergeant Williams, absorbing investigative methods, forensic procedures, and common police mistakes over casual drinks. What they didn't realize was that their “gentle giant” drinking buddy was gathering operational intelligence. Kemper collected handcuffs, police radios, and scanner frequencies, giving him real-time access to law enforcement movements — knowledge that helped him stay one step ahead for nearly a year while bodies continued to surface. Behind the charm and calm demeanor was a man who had already fooled the system once. At just 21, Kemper had been released from Atascadero State Hospital, declared no threat to society despite having murdered his grandparents as a teenager. Working in the hospital's psychology lab, he studied mental health diagnostics, learned how to manipulate tests, and even handled real psychological profiles — including those of violent offenders. He used that knowledge to beat the system, understand his captors, and later, to outthink investigators.We trace the moments where fate nearly intervened — the traffic stops, the roadblocks, the missed connections between agencies that could have saved lives.Officers questioned him, waved him through, even trusted him, all because he seemed “too polite” to be dangerous. Through firsthand reports and redacted files, we expose how institutional blind spots and bureaucratic silos allowed a killer to thrive in plain view. From the quiet house on Ord Drive, where he dismembered victims while his mother was at work, to his Alameda apartment, where neighbors lived just feet away from unimaginable horror, we explore the forensic trail left behind — the vehicle evidence, the recovered photographs, and the chilling confession tapes where Ed bragged, analyzed, and justified every act in painstaking detail.His hours-long conversations with FBI profilers Robert Ressler and John Douglas later became the foundation of modern criminal profiling, shaping how future generations would define the term “organized serial killer.”But beneath all the psychology and procedure lies the story of his mother, Clarnell Kemper — the woman he blamed, feared, and eventually murdered. Working as an administrator at UC Santa Cruz, she may have unknowingly processed paperwork for students her son would later kill.The tragedy of their relationship — and the evidence found in her home — reveal the disturbing cycle of resentment and rage that fueled his crimes.This episode goes beyond the headlines to confront the decisions that allowed a double murderer to be paroled into his mother's home, the psychiatric assessments that missed every danger sign, the sealed records that kept police in the dark, and the agencies that failed to communicate. It's not a story about glorifying monsters — it's about learning from the systems that created them. Because monsters don't always look like monsters.They smile, they shake your hand, and they convince the world they're harmless — until it's too late.We close by honoring the ten victims whose lives mattered far more than the man who took them: Maude and Edmund Kemper Sr., Mary Ann Pesce, Anita Luchessa, Aiko Koo, Cindy Schall, Rosalind Thorpe, Alice Liu, Clarnell Strandberg, and Sally Hallett. Their stories remind us that behind every case file and redacted page are real lives, real loss, and the lessons society cannot afford to ignore.

In this gripping and deeply unsettling episode, we explore one of the most disturbing and well-documented cases in American criminal history — the story of Edmund Emil Kemper III, better known as The Co-Ed Killer. Between 1964 and 1973, Kemper brutally murdered ten people, including his grandparents and his own mother, leaving behind a trail of horror that still haunts true crime history. But this isn't just another serial killer story. This is an examination of transformation — how a damaged child became a monster, how the system failed at every possible turn, and how a killer managed to hide in plain sight, even befriending the very police officers who were searching for him.The episode opens with the chilling phone call from a payphone in Pueblo, Colorado, where Ed calmly confessed to multiple murders. From there, we trace his life from the beginning — through a nightmarish childhood under the control of an abusive, alcoholic mother who locked him in a basement and convinced him he was inhuman.We uncover early warning signs of psychopathy — from animal cruelty to violent fantasies — that went ignored until it was too late. We examine Kemper's first murders at age fifteen, the killings of his grandparents, and his time at Atascadero State Hospital, where he learned to manipulate the mental health system and study criminal behavior from the inside. Multiple psychiatrists later declared him rehabilitated — a catastrophic misjudgment that freed him to kill again.Kemper's subsequent 1972–1973 killing spree targeted young women across California. We recount each victim's story — Mary Ann Pesce, Anita Luchessa, Aiko Koo, Cindy Schall, Rosalind Thorpe, Alice Liu, Clarnell Strandberg (his mother), and Sally Hallett — restoring their names, lives, and humanity beyond the statistics.You'll hear how Kemper selected his victims, how he gained their trust as a gentle giant with a calm demeanor, and the unspeakable acts that followed. We also expose his obsession with law enforcement culture — drinking with police officers at the Jury Room bar, collecting police equipment, and nearly being caught several times, always talking his way out with chilling ease.Finally, we follow Kemper's confession, trial, and incarceration, where he requested the death penalty but instead became a model inmate who later helped the FBI pioneer its criminal profiling techniques.Yet, at the heart of this story lies not the killer, but his victims. This episode is a memorial to their stolen lives — a reminder of the innocence destroyed, and of the families who still live with the weight of his crimes more than fifty years later.⚠️ Content Warning: This episode contains explicit descriptions of violence, murder, and disturbing psychological themes. Listener discretion is strongly advised.

For over thirty years, Wichita, Kansas lived in fear of a man who called himself BTK — Bind, Torture, Kill. He murdered ten people, including children, and then vanished for years at a time, taunting police and the press with letters that were as cruel as the crimes themselves. But the most disturbing part of this story isn't just the brutality of his murders — it's how Dennis Rader, the man behind BTK, managed to live a perfectly ordinary life right in plain sight. He was a husband. A father. A church council president.A city compliance officer. And behind all of it — a sadistic killer who hid in the open for more than three decades. In this episode of The Redacted Report, we dig into the full story of Dennis Rader — not just the crimes, but the psychology and deception that let him walk unnoticed among his victims' families and his community. We trace his path from a disturbed Kansas kid fascinated by control and bondage to the day he finally slipped — undone by his own arrogance and a floppy disk that revealed his name.You'll hear how Rader meticulously planned each murder, how he craved attention more than anything else, and how his need to be recognized ultimately destroyed him. We revisit the detectives who refused to give up on the cold case, the technological breakthroughs that caught him decades later, and the haunting question that lingers: how does someone capable of such horror look so normal?From his chilling phone calls to the police to his bizarre confessions in court, this is the story of a man who wanted to be remembered — and of the investigators who made sure he would be, but not in the way he imagined.The Redacted Report: BTK – The Killer Next Door pulls back the curtain on one of America's most terrifying killers — and exposes how easily evil can hide behind a familiar smile.

In this gripping episode of The Guilty Files Podcast, we go beyond the headlines and dive deep into one of America's most haunting true crime stories — the life and legacy of Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer. “Bind. Torture. Kill.” Three words that held an entire city hostage for more than three decades while a monster disguised himself as an ordinary man.Dennis Rader wasn't the drifter or loner that popular culture paints as a serial killer. He was a husband, a father, a Boy Scout leader, and the council president of his church. By day, he enforced city ordinances in Park City, Kansas, measuring grass heights and citing residents for leaving trash cans out too early. By night, he fed a sadistic fantasy life that would claim ten lives and terrorize an entire community. His obsession with control and his ability to mask it behind a façade of normalcy made him one of the most chilling killers in modern history.This episode traces Rader's story from his early years in Pittsburg, Kansas — where his fascination with bondage and cruelty took root — to his years of military service, marriage, and eventual descent into a life of hidden predation. We explore how his childhood acts of animal torture and fetishism went unrecognized as red flags, how he weaponized his day jobs at ADT Security and as a municipal compliance officer to study his victims, and how his twisted need for power became ritualized in his killings.We follow the trajectory of BTK's crimes, beginning with the horrifying Otero family murders in 1974 and continuing through his series of killings that left Wichita living in fear. We unpack the infamous letters, poems, and packages that he sent to police and the media — the communications that transformed the murders into a decades-long psychological game. We also examine the eerie fourteen-year period of silence where Rader appeared to vanish, though he was in fact living quietly among the very people who feared him most.From his eventual return to taunting law enforcement in 2004, to the digital blunder that led to his downfall — a single floppy disk containing traceable metadata — this episode brings listeners inside the meticulous investigation that finally unmasked BTK.You'll hear how decades-old DNA from the Otero crime scene and a sample taken from Rader's daughter's medical record closed one of America's most elusive cold cases.We break down the courtroom confession that stunned the nation, where Rader clinically detailed each murder with chilling composure. We highlight the courage of survivors and the families of victims like Charlie Otero, who has carried the weight of trauma since discovering his family's murder at age fifteen. We also look at the profound role of forensic innovation and patience — how careful evidence preservation and evolving DNA technology turned a forgotten case file into the key that finally locked BTK away for good.Beyond the crimes, this episode delves into the mind of Dennis Rader — a study in compartmentalization, ego, and deviance.We examine how he managed to separate “Dennis the family man” from “BTK the killer,” why he craved recognition more than escape, and what his case reveals about the psychology of control. We also confront the unanswered questions: Were there more victims? How did he suppress his urges for years at a time? And how does someone who claims to love his family justify the systematic destruction of others?Finally, we explore the aftermath: Rader's life inside the El Dorado Correctional Facility, where he remains in protective custody and continues to seek attention through letters and interviews. We discuss his daughter Kerri Rawson's memoir, A Serial Killer's Daughter, her path toward healing, and the broader impact of the BTK case on law enforcement and society's understanding of how ordinary evil hides in plain sight. The Guilty Files delivers not just the crimes, but the psychology, the investigation, and the enduring questions that still surround Dennis Rader. This is more than a true crime story — it's a chilling reminder that the most dangerous predators can look just like us, and that justice sometimes depends on the details we refuse to ignore.

Keith Hunter Jesperson wanted the world to know his name.He wanted the spotlight, the ink, the infamy—so badly that when his first murder was pinned on someone else, he couldn't stand it. That's when the crude smiley faces started showing up on letters to police and the media, signed by the man who would become known as the Happy Face Killer.But in this ReWired episode, we dig beneath the sensational headlines and handwritten taunts to ask the bigger questions: What makes someone so desperate for recognition that they risk everything just to be seen? How do ego, power, and psychological compulsion turn into a deadly cocktail?And why does society sometimes feed the very monsters it claims to fear? From truck stop highways to the dark corners of a killer's mind, Dani pulls apart Jesperson's calculated confessions, his manipulative tactics, and the sociological threads that tie this case to a culture obsessed with notoriety.It's a story about murder, ego, and the uncomfortable truth about our fascination with both.This isn't just the story of a killer—it's the anatomy of an attention addict.

In this week's Uncovered episode, Brian dives into the chilling case of Keith Hunter Jesperson—better known as the Happy Face Killer.Jesperson was a long-haul trucker with a deadly double life, using the open road to mask a cross-country killing spree in the early 1990s.While police and the public remained unaware, Jesperson began anonymously confessing to his crimes—signing his letters with a chilling smiley face.But this is more than just a story of a murderer on the move. It's a cautionary tale of missteps in criminal justice, a media frenzy that targeted the wrong suspects, and a manipulative killer who craved recognition as much as control.From his first known victim, Taunja Bennett, to the infamous confession letters and the unraveling of a case that left innocent people behind bars, Brian breaks down the timeline, exposes the procedural failures, and pulls apart the tangled truth behind one of America's most disturbing serial killers.No theories. No speculation. Just the cold, hard facts—delivered with the precision and depth only a former cop can bring.

In this haunting episode of The Guilty Files: Rewired, Dani pulls back the layers of the infamous Clutter family murders—not just to revisit the crime, but to reimagine the emotional and psychological shockwave it left behind.This isn't a retelling of the facts—that's already been done.Instead, Dani dives deep into the psyche of Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, the two drifters whose fractured paths led them to one brutal night in Holcomb, Kansas. What made them tick? How did childhood trauma, cycles of poverty, and a hunger for significance culminate in the cold-blooded execution of a family they'd never met?But the story doesn't end there. Dani also explores the impact of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood—how it blurred the lines between journalism and narrative, empathy and exploitation. Was Capote shining a light on the forgotten corners of the justice system, or was he romanticizing killers for the sake of literary fame?Through speculative storytelling, psychological analysis, and a few chilling “what ifs,” Dani rewires this case with fresh questions:What if someone had intervened in Perry's youth?What if the Clutters had never opened their door that night?What if In Cold Blood had never been written?This episode reimagines the Clutter murders not just as a crime—but as a mirror reflecting the fragility of safety, the failings of society, and the cost of trying to humanize the inhumane.Content Warning: Contains discussion of murder, trauma, and speculative depictions of violence.

In this episode of The Guilty Files: True Crime Uncovered, Brian takes us back to the heartland of America—Holcomb, Kansas—where one of the most chilling and senseless mass murders in U.S. history occurred. On the night of November 15, 1959, four members of the Clutter family were brutally murdered in their own home, sending shockwaves through a tight-knit farming community and eventually capturing the nation's attention.Brian lays out the cold, hard facts of the case—from the meticulous planning by ex-convicts Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, to the terrifying final hours of Herbert, Bonnie, Nancy, and Kenyon Clutter. We follow the timeline of events that led up to the murders, the aftermath that devastated the town, and the cross-country manhunt that brought the killers to justice.You'll hear about the calculated cruelty behind the crime, the seemingly motiveless brutality, and the forensic and investigative work that cracked the case wide open.Brian also touches on how this horrific story caught the eye of author Truman Capote, who would later immortalize it in his genre-defining nonfiction novel In Cold Blood.This episode is a sobering look at the violence that can lurk behind a calm exterior—and a stark reminder that no place, no matter how peaceful, is ever truly safe from evil.Content Warning: This episode contains detailed descriptions of a home invasion and the murder of multiple family members, including a minor.

In this gripping ReWired episode, Dani peels back the layers of Randy Steven Kraft's chilling legacy as the Scorecard Killer. With a twisted ledger of cryptic notations and a pattern of meticulously targeted victims, Kraft wasn't just killing—he was keeping score.This isn't about gore for gore's sake. It's about decoding power, control, and the dark psychology that drives a killer to turn murder into a methodical game.Dani challenges listeners to look beyond the headlines and into the structured chaos of Kraft's mind. What does his scorecard truly reveal about the way he viewed his victims—and himself?How did a man operating in plain sight elude justice while racking up one of the highest known body counts in California history? And what role did institutions, from the military to law enforcement, play in enabling his path of destruction?With signature wit and razor-sharp analysis, Dani reimagines this case not just as a timeline of horror but as a study in behavioral obsession, symbolism, and system failure. This is true crime, rewritten for those who want to understand the deeper why—not just the who, what, and when.Prepare for a deep psychological dive into the dangerous intersection of sadism, secrecy, and symbolism. By the end, you'll never look at a simple list the same way again.

In this chilling installment of The Guilty Files Uncovered, Brian dives deep into the twisted psyche of one of America's most meticulous and methodical serial killers—Randy Kraft, the man known as the Scorecard Killer.With a body count that may exceed 60, Kraft's trail of terror left Southern California and beyond scarred by brutal, calculated murders—each victim a tragic entry on a cryptic and haunting “scorecard” list found in Kraft's car upon arrest.Brian peels back the layers of Kraft's double life—a seemingly clean-cut computer consultant by day, and sadistic predator by night. This episode explores how Kraft evaded capture for over a decade, the disturbing patterns in his crimes, and how law enforcement finally closed in on a killer hiding in plain sight. Drawing from case files, behavioral profiling, and Brian's own law enforcement insights, this episode unpacks:The evolution of Kraft's crimes from the early 1970s through 1983The significance and mystery of the "scorecard" documentForensic breakthroughs that ultimately exposed the killerThe implications of Kraft's military background and sexual psychologyWhy investigators believe the true number of victims may never be fully knownThis isn't just another retelling of a serial killer's spree. Brian's methodical, no-nonsense breakdown delivers historical context, investigative rigor, and sobering humanity to a case often overshadowed by flashier names in true crime lore.

Brian approaches the case like a detective on a cold trail: revisiting the timeline, scrutinizing law enforcement's shifting strategy, and examining what's been revealed—and what's been redacted. Dani peels back the emotional and psychological layers, exploring trauma, fear, and how this case embedded itself in the soul of an entire community.From the chilling Snapchat video to the strange behavior of the suspect now in custody, we go beyond the known facts and push into the uncomfortable space between justice and uncertainty. This isn't just about who did it. It's about how it happened, why it took so long, and what it says about the systems we trust to protect us.Expect sharp contrast, raw insight, and a few tough questions that still haven't been answered.Whether you've followed this case from day one or you're stepping onto that bridge for the first time, this episode of The Guilty Files: ReVisited delivers what we do best—depth, duality, and discussion that doesn't flinch.

Two young girls. A quiet Indiana trail. A haunting video.And the three chilling words:“Guys… down the hill.”In this week's ReWired episode, Dani takes the reigns and rips the veil off one of the most disturbing and heavily speculated true crime cases of our time — the Delphi Murders.We know the names: Abby Williams and Libby German.We've seen the sketch. We've heard the voice.But have we really understood the story?

On February 13, 2017, two best friends went for a walk on the Monon High Bridge Trail in Delphi, Indiana.By the next day, their bodies were found — and a haunting mystery began.In this Uncovered episode, Brian delivers a methodical, fact-based breakdown of one of the most heartbreaking and puzzling cases in recent true crime history: the murders of Abigail Williams and Liberty German.No speculation. No conspiracy. Just the timeline, the evidence, and the roadblocks that have made this case linger for more than half a decade in the public eye.

When charm turns lethal and lies wear a thousand faces, how do you stop a killer hiding in plain sight?In this co-hosted episode of The Guilty Files: Revisited, Brian and Dani peel back the layers of one of the most disturbing cases to hit the American South: the case of Jeremy Bryan Jones. A drifter with a gift for manipulation and a trail of stolen identities, Jones moved through states like a ghost—leaving behind a path of devastation, shattered families, and unanswered questions.Brian brings the procedural heat, diving into the investigative missteps, multi-jurisdictional chaos, and red flags that went ignored.Dani zeroes in on the psychological rot beneath the surface—how Jones weaponized charm, targeted vulnerable women, and evaded justice with nothing but a fake name and a crooked smile.Together, they challenge the narrative, question the system, and ask the hard questions no one else wants to: How many victims did he really leave behind?Could he have been stopped sooner? And what happens when the justice system confuses confidence for credibility? This is not just a breakdown of the known facts—it's a postmortem on every chance the system had to stop a predator and failed.Stay with us through the episode for revealing insights, sharp banter, and one of the most haunting cases we've ever revisited.Press play. Reopen the case. And don't forget—evil doesn't always look like a monster. Sometimes, it smiles like your next-door neighbor.

 He was charming. He was convincing. And for more than a decade, Jeremy Bryan Jones was a shapeshifter moving through the Deep South—stealing names, slipping past suspicion, and leaving behind only victims and lies.In this week's ReWired episode, Dani pulls back the curtain on the illusion, dismantling the mythology of a drifter who turned murder into a method of survival.This isn't just a retelling of Jones's crimes—it's a confrontation with the systems, the psychology, and the societal blind spots that allowed a predator to keep moving, even as bodies piled up in his wake.We begin with a woman whose story was nearly erased—until a single moment of defiance broke the silence. Then we explore nine gripping speculative arcs, each one rewiring what we think we know:What if someone escaped?What if we could decode the mind of the monster before the damage was done?What if AI, deepfakes, and modern forensics could expose what the justice system missed?From the haunting legacy of a mother's denial to the terrifying plausibility of digital alibis, Dani peels back each layer with sharp analysis, gut-punch storytelling, and a challenge to the audience: What do we really see when we look evil in the eye?This episode will leave you disturbed, questioning, and unable to look away.

In this gripping episode of The Guilty Files: Uncovered, Brian unpacks the chilling story of Jeremy Bryan Jones—a charismatic drifter who used charm, stolen identities, and the cracks in the system to hide in plain sight across the American South. For over a decade, Jones drifted from state to state under the name John Paul Chapman, manipulating those around him, passing background checks, and leaving behind a trail of violence that went undetected for far too long.But in September 2004, a natural disaster set in motion a series of events that would finally expose the predator beneath the persona.As Hurricane Ivan barreled into Alabama, Jeremy Jones found shelter with the Bentley family—strangers who offered him a place to stay during the storm. Just days later, in the quiet rural community of Turnerville, 45-year-old Lisa Marie Nichols was dead. A beloved mother and community member, Lisa had no idea the man knocking on her door that day was a killer. What followed was a tragic encounter that shocked the community and led to Jones's arrest—but that was just the beginning.The story takes a bizarre turn when Jones, just days after the murder, called police himself. Casually chatting about the weather, he confessed to killing a woman, leading investigators to keep him on the line long enough to locate and arrest him at a Mobile bus station. Once in custody, Jones began confessing to a staggering number of crimes—twenty-one murders across five states, including the infamous Freeman family killings in Oklahoma and the murder of Tina Mayberry in Georgia. But the shocking wave of admissions soon gave way to confusion and frustration, as Jones began recanting his claims one by one.He would later admit to fabricating many of the stories to earn better food and phone privileges in jail, leaving behind a tangled mess for investigators and desperate families trying to find the truth.The case revealed just how vulnerable systems were at the time. Jones had managed to use a stolen identity for years, slipping through the cracks of disconnected databases and outdated protocols. A fingerprint on a beer can at the crime scene, DNA evidence linking him to Lisa's murder, and bloodstains on his clothing painted a clear picture. But the ease with which he moved through communities—passing background checks and gaining people's trust—was a wake-up call for law enforcement nationwide.The courtroom saw swift justice. In October 2005, Jones was tried and found guilty on all counts, including capital murder, rape, burglary, sexual abuse, and kidnapping. The jury voted 10-2 in favor of the death penalty, and he was sentenced to die by lethal injection. His appeals have been denied, and he remains on death row at Holman Correctional Facility in Alabama.For Lisa's family, the trial brought some measure of closure, but for the loved ones of other victims Jones claimed responsibility for, the aftermath was far murkier. Many were left in limbo, unsure if their grief had been exploited by a man who treated life and death like a game.The Bentley family, who had welcomed Jones into their home during the hurricane, struggled with the deep betrayal of having unknowingly harbored a killer. And the small town of Turnerville would never be the same again.This case isn't just about one murder—it's about the broader dangers posed by predators who exploit trust, the phenomenon of false confessions in serial crime cases, and how the systems we rely on can fail in devastating ways. It also highlights how moments of chaos, like natural disasters, can create openings for the most dangerous individuals to do the most harm.In this episode, Brian unravels the layers of deception, examines the legal and investigative missteps, and reflects on the long shadow Jones cast over the victims, their families, and the communities left reeling in his wake. Listener discretion is advised, as the episode includes explicit details of sexual violence, homicide, and disturbing crime scenes. This is a story that forces us to look closely at the dark corners of human behavior—and the systems we trust to keep us safe.Tune in to The Guilty Files: Uncovered for the full story.

In this week's Revisited episode, Brian and Dani pull no punches as they dive into the chilling case of Gary Michael Hilton—the so-called “National Forest Serial Killer.” With his string of murders stretching across state lines and spanning years, Hilton's case exposes glaring gaps in communication between law enforcement jurisdictions and raises disturbing questions about how someone so unstable could fly under the radar for so long.Brian brings a procedural breakdown of the timeline, the forensic fumbles, and the legal aftermath, while Dani takes us deep into the psychological shadows—unpacking Hilton's erratic behaviors, emotional detachment, and obsession with control. The banter is sharp, the insights are real, and the stakes? As high as the Appalachian peaks Hilton once stalked.And because we're nothing if not ride-or-die for our listeners, we've got something special for you at the end of this week's episode.Stick around all the way to the end because we're dropping all three of our subscriber-only bonus segments right here in this very episode as a thank you for powering through our scheduling hiccups this week. You'll hear The Redacted Report, where Brian exposes the lesser-known files and nearly buried truths.Then it's Inside The Mind, where Dani takes you on a psychological deep-dive into what really drives a killer like Hilton.And finally, Behind The Badge, where both hosts throw off the gloves for an unfiltered, behind-the-scenes look at what it's like navigating cases like this from inside the system.This is your one-time sneak peek into the bonus content we drop every week for subscribers. If you want more—more insights, more access, and more of The Guilty Files—click the link right here in the show notes to join us on Patreon, or if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, hit that subscribe button to become a Guilty Files Detective. With either subscription, you'll get early access to every episode, ad-free listening, and all three exclusive bonus segments for every single case.Thanks for sticking with us. Now buckle up—because this one gets dark.Become A Detective

In this emotionally charged episode of The Guilty Files: Revisited, Brian and Dani take on one of the most haunting and high-profile true crime cases of the last decade: the disappearance and murder of Gabby Petito.From the outside, Gabby's story looked like a dream life shared through van-life vlogs and Instagram-perfect snapshots. But as Brian and Dani dig deeper into the case file, they expose the far more disturbing truth beneath the curated lens of social media.What begins as a chronological walk-through of Gabby and Brian Laundrie's cross-country trip quickly turns into a sobering examination of the red flags, missed intervention opportunities, and systemic failures that paved the way to tragedy.Brian brings his procedural lens to the infamous Moab police stop, offering a critical look at how law enforcement misread clear signs of domestic violence—and how that single decision might have changed the entire outcome. Dani, on the other hand, peels back the psychological layers of coercive control and emotional abuse, showing just how often the warning signs are hidden in plain sight, if only we're willing to look.Together, they reflect on the media frenzy that surrounded the case—how internet sleuths, true crime TikTok, and mainstream outlets turned Gabby's disappearance into a national obsession. They ask hard questions about who gets attention when they go missing, and who's left in silence.This episode isn't just about Gabby's death—it's about the systems that failed her, the warning signs society ignores, and the echo chamber that sometimes does more harm than good. It's about what it means to truly see someone who's crying out for help in all the ways she can, without ever raising her voice.For Brian, it's a case that exemplifies everything wrong with how we handle domestic calls in the field. For Dani, it's a devastating reminder of how normalized emotional abuse has become, and how easily it gets dismissed until it's too late. Listeners are reminded that this episode contains sensitive content, including discussion of domestic violence and intimate partner homicide.Stay until the end for an exclusive teaser of the Behind the Badge bonus segment on Patreon, where Brian and Dani share their own personal stories of domestic calls that still haunt them to this day.

This week on The Guilty Files, things look a little different—but don't worry, we haven't lost the plot (just maybe our minds). In this raw and unfiltered bonus episode, Brian and Dani pull back the curtain and get real about the chaos, curveballs, and caffeine it takes to keep this podcast alive. With life throwing punches and production delays piling up, they're hitting pause on the usual case deep dives to share a heartfelt update, a few behind-the-scenes laughs, and some truly wild stories from their past lives in law enforcement.From Dani's unforgettable origin story as “Door Slam Dani” to Brian's ride-along from hell featuring the mayor's nephew, Yeezys, and an Instagram livestream gone horribly wrong, this episode is equal parts vulnerable and unhinged. It's also a love letter to the people who keep showing up—the listeners who've become part of the foundation as The Guilty Files grows brick by brick into something big. You'll also hear how the team juggles not one, but three major shows (including Sasquatch Odyssey and Disturbing History), and what it really takes to run a studio while still showing up to tell the stories that matter. Listen To Disturbing HistoryListen To Sasquatch Odyssey Listen To Backwoods Bigfoot Stories Plus, Brian and Dani lay out the updated release schedule and give a shout-out to the episodes you've been waiting for: the Gabby Petito and Gary Hilton deep dives, both landing this week.It's honest. It's chaotic. It's real. And it's a reminder that sometimes the best episodes are the ones where we show up not with all the answers, but with the truth—and a few disaster stories for good measure.Tune in, laugh with us, groan with us, and remember: we're all just doing our best. The case files are still coming. But today? We're letting it breathe.

What makes a man vanish into the woods—only to return as a predator? In this week's ReWired, Dani ventures into the haunted trailheads of the human psyche to unpack the chilling case of Gary Michael Hilton, a drifter-turned-serial killer whose victims were hikers, wanderers, and lovers of the wild. But this isn't just a rehash of his crimes—it's an excavation. We peel back the camouflage of Hilton's mind to explore:Why the wilderness became both his refuge and his hunting groundHow psychological detachment and transient identity fueled his violenceWhether a different intervention—or system—might have stopped himAnd the deeply unsettling question: was Hilton always a killer-in-waiting, or was he shaped by what we overlooked?Dani dissects the justice system's blind spots, the human cost of being ignored or misidentified, and the terrifying allure of the wilderness when survival turns sinister. This isn't just about murder in the mountains—it's about the cracks in society where monsters take root.✨ Plus, an unforgettable personal story from Dani's time in law enforcement—a haunting case that still lingers unsolved, echoing the same bystander indifference and missed chances.

In this episode of The Guilty Files: Uncovered, Brian pulls back the curtain on one of the most chilling and calculated serial killers to ever stalk America's wilderness—Gary Michael Hilton.Known as “The National Forest Killer,” Hilton used the vast, unguarded expanses of America's public lands as his personal hunting ground. Between 2007 and 2008, Hilton committed a series of brutal murders across Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida, targeting hikers, campers, and outdoor enthusiasts who thought they were safe in nature's solitude.Brian walks listeners through Hilton's disturbing background, unraveling how a drifter with a manipulative charm and a long history of mental instability evolved into a predator who eluded capture for far too long. From the disappearance and beheading of 24-year-old Meredith Emerson in the North Georgia mountains, to the murders of John and Irene Bryant on a remote trail in North Carolina, and the horrifying fate of Sunday school teacher Cheryl Dunlap in Florida, this case is as horrifying as it is haunting.This episode also examines the multi-jurisdictional manhunt, the forensic missteps, and the red flags missed by authorities over the years. Brian takes a methodical and investigative approach, analyzing Hilton's patterns, his use of national forests to evade detection, and the terrifying reality that these killings weren't just crimes of opportunity—they were calculated acts by a killer who knew how to blend into the backwoods like a ghost.But there's more to this case than the murders themselves. Brian also digs into the psychology of a man who weaponized loneliness, manipulated trust, and left a trail of trauma stretching across the southeastern United States. If you think the wilderness is peaceful, this story will make you think twice. Listener discretion is strongly advised. The episode contains details of violent crimes and disturbing behavior that may not be suitable for all audiences. Be sure to follow and subscribe to The Guilty Files wherever you get your podcasts. For bonus segments, behind-the-scenes content, and deeper dives into the case, join us on Patreon. And as always—stay curious, question everything, and never trust a closed case.

Just a quick heads-up: this week's Revisited episode on the Gabby Petito case is delayed — Dani's feeling under the weather and couldn't join for the recording. We're giving him time to rest and bounce back, and we'll drop the episode as soon as he's back in action.In the meantime, help us out by rating and reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts, dropping a five-star rating on Spotify, and turning on auto-downloads wherever you listen.That way, the episode will be waiting for you the moment it goes live.Thanks for your patience — and as always, stay curious, never trust a closed file, and keep those alibis tight.

In this Rewired episode, Dani peels back the layers of one of the most haunting and highly publicized true crime cases of our time — the murder of Gabby Petito. The story was everywhere. Viral hashtags. 24-hour news cycles. Social media sleuths dissecting every second of footage. But behind the public obsession lies a deeply human story of control, power imbalance, emotional abuse, and the dangerous dynamics that often hide in plain sight. Dani takes us beyond the headlines and police reports, unpacking the psychological threads woven into Gabby and Brian's relationship. From the disturbing behaviors captured on bodycam footage to the toxic patterns of coercive control, Dani explores the unsettling psychology that often fuels intimate partner violence — and how society sometimes misses the red flags until it's too late. We examine the role of parasocial relationships, the true crime media machine, and the uncomfortable reality of how some victims are elevated while others remain invisible. Why did this case capture the public imagination so powerfully? What does it reveal about our collective fascination with tragedy? And how can we better recognize the early warning signs that may save lives? This is not just a retelling.This is a rewiring — challenging you to see the Gabby Petito case through a different lens.Listener discretion is advised.

In this episode, Brian takes you inside one of the most heartbreaking and widely followed true crime cases of the last decade — the murder of Gabby Petito. What began as a young couple's dream road trip across America spiraled into a national media firestorm, ending with tragedy, unanswered questions, and a haunting search for justice.Brian strips away the headlines and viral headlines to walk through the factual timeline: the cross-country van life adventure, the disturbing police bodycam footage from Moab, Utah, the troubling behavioral red flags from Brian Laundrie, and the frantic search that captivated millions. He examines the investigation step-by-step, from the missing person report to the grim discovery of Gabby's remains in Grand Teton National Park, to the subsequent manhunt for Laundrie that ultimately ended with his suicide.While the media cycle often sensationalized the story, The Guilty Files: Uncovered focuses on the hard facts, the official reports, the autopsy findings, and the investigative decisions that shaped this case. Brian applies his law enforcement experience to analyze key moments that could have shifted the outcome, and highlights the painful realities of domestic violence, public scrutiny, and law enforcement limitations that still fuel debate today.This is the real story behind the headlines — told with clarity, respect, and an unflinching look at the human dynamics that turned a young couple's social media dream into a national tragedy.

In this episode of The Guilty Files: Revisited, Brian and Dani pull back the heavy velvet curtain on one of the South's most chilling and misunderstood cases: The Corpsewood Manor Murders.Set deep in the remote woods of Georgia, the brutal killings of Dr. Charles Scudder and Joseph Odom in 1982 were far more than a simple robbery gone wrong.Brian uses his law enforcement and investigative background to walk us through the crime scene, the suspects, and the tragic chain of events that led two killers to this secluded sanctuary. Meanwhile, Dani peels back the layers of fear, rumor, and societal judgment that surrounded Corpsewood Manor—examining the cultural anxieties of the Bible Belt, homophobia, Satanic Panic, and the dangerous intersection of isolation and rumor-fueled hysteria.Together, they explore the media myths, police missteps, and moral panic that still linger around this case, asking hard questions about justice, bias, and the way small-town narratives can distort the truth. Was Corpsewood a true den of evil as some claimed? Or were Scudder and Odom simply unconventional victims in a deeply intolerant time?It's a case filled with shocking details, cultural complexities, and moral gray areas—and one that hits very close to home for Brian in more ways than one.

What happens when freedom becomes a threat... and fantasy meets a gun barrel?In this haunting ReWired episode, Dani steps beyond the factual ruins of The Corpsewood Manor Murders and into the dark psychological maze left behind.Dr. Charles Scudder and Joseph Odom weren't just victims of a brutal double homicide in the isolated woods of Georgia — they were scapegoats of a society that feared what it couldn't understand.But was this really about Satanism? Or sex? Or stolen money?Or... was it about a slow-simmering cocktail of paranoia, repressed desire, and desperate identity?