True Crime Brewery

In September, 2015, 25-year-old Jack Taylor was found dead in the graveyard of St. Margaret’s Church in East London. Jack was not the first young man to be found dead under unexplained circumstances, all within a few hundred yards of each other. It was initially believed that these deaths resulted from drug overdoses, but Jack’s death led the police to find a more sinister cause. A killer had lured these men to their deaths using online dating apps.Two days before Jack Taylor was found dead, he had arranged to meet with a man he’s been chatting with on the dating app Grindr. When his family and friends didn’t hear from Jack, they reported him missing. Then the police showed up at his parent’s home with the worst news imaginable.Join us at the quiet end for The Grindr Killer. Four suspicious deaths under very similar circumstances in the same area of London pointed to one killer. Today we’re going back in time to learn about the monster responsible and his methods to lure young, gay men into his deadly web

How much are your loved ones worth to you?  Priceless, right?  You cannot put a dollar amount on a person’s life.  Not so for Karl Karlson. There were so many tragedies and coincidences in his life that his second wife suspected him of two murders and several instances of insurance fraud.  In fact, she became convinced enough to record her conversations with Karlsen.Join us at the quiet end for Cashing In.  Karl Karlson valued people only for how they could benefit him.  Over a span of many years, his family members tried to believe in his innocence. But there were signs that things weren’t right.  As the pieces of his life and the facts of his crimes came to light, a puzzle of sorts began to come together.  But before looking at the whole picture, let’s look at how the individual pieces add up to two of the most unfathomable crimes imaginable.

Kathy Stobaugh married the wrong man. Once she realized her mistake, she did everything right in order to set off on a better course. She worked full-time, went back to college, and accomplished her dream of being a kindergarten teacher. Saving her money, she rented a new house and moved there with her two children. But her husband, Charles, was not going to let her get away so easily.On December 29, 2004, Kathy happily hummed a tune as she gathered her divorce settlement papers together and drove off in her car. Charles had finally agreed to talk things over and reach a financial settlement with her. She had a newfound hope that their post-divorce lives could be civil. She held no false hopes that they would be friends.Join us at the quiet end for Gone & Never Forgotten: The Kathy Stobaugh Story. Did Kathy’s soon to be ex-husband kill her and hide her body or are we meant to believe that she just walked off one day before her divorce hearing?

On the morning of Friday, August 16, 1996, Marissa Moody brought her 6-year-old son to the impressive home of Janet and Perry March to have a play date with 5-year-old Sammy March. The March family seemed like the picture-perfect family, but Marissa never felt comfortable around Perry March.  He was intimidating and snubbed her at every opportunity.Janet March, 33-years-old, was an accomplished artist from a privileged upbringing.  It wasn’t terribly unusual that Janet wasn’t there for the play date.  The March children had a nanny.  The only thing that seemed off that day to Marissa was the presence of a rolled-up rug lying on the floor near the kitchen entryway.  She had never seen it before, and when she returned to pick up her son that afternoon, the rug was gone. Perry claimed that Janet had left home for a 12-day vacation.  But, after 12 days, there was still no sign of her. Homicide detectives became convinced that Janet’s 100-pound body had been concealed in the rug that day.Join us at the quiet end f

In 2006, 33-year-old Mechele Linehan was visited by the Alaska police regarding a 1996 murder. Back then, Mechele had been working as an exotic dancer. The murder victim was a former client named Kent Leppink. But, in 2006, Mechele was a professional woman married to a physician and raising a young daughter in Washington state. Her arrest was shocking to the people in her community.Join us at the quiet end for The Fisherman & the Flirt. Mechele had been dancing at The Great Alaskan Bush Company for only a few months when she met Kent Leppink. He was infatuated with Mechele and soon told people that she was his fiancée, but Mechele said that they were never engaged and were not in a romantic relationship. There are many sides to this story, so let’s dive in and try to separate fact from fiction.

When 16-year-old Patricia Columbo took a job in a soda shop next door to a pharmacy, no one even imagined that she and the 36-year-old married pharmacist Frank DeLuca would become involved in a sexual relationship. But that’s exactly what happened.Over the next four years, Patricia’s parents tried to talk some sense into her.  First, Deluca moved Patricia into his family home with his wife and five children.  When Patricia’s parents gave her money to move out and get her own apartment, they were distressed to learn that she had Frank DeLuca move in with her.Join us at the quiet end for A Dark Passion.  Patricia Columbo and Frank DeLuca went into her family’s house with the motive to kill them all and receive her family inheritance, but the murders were clearly overkill, revealing a level of hate beyond all reason and leading everyone who knew the family to question why these shocking crimes happened.

On July 5, 2003, 37-year-old Florida bartender Sandra Rozzo was shot in her own garage before she could even get out of her car. Sandra, known by her friends as Sandee, was a hard worker, a good friend, and a devoted mother to her young daughter. The idea that someone would want her dead was difficult to comprehend.There was one man with a motive: 36-year-old Tracey Humphrey. Humphrey was an ex-boyfriend charged with felony battery and the sexual assault of Sandee. He was due to go on trial in August of 2003. Sandra planned to testify against him. But Tracey had an ironclad alibi. If he didn’t kill Sandee himself, could he have been the mastermind behind her murder?Join us at the quiet end for The Silencing of Sandra Rozzo, a murder case with an unlikely pair of co-conspirators. It’s also a case that begs the fascinating question of whether one person can convince an otherwise nonviolent person to kill.

Elaine O’Hara of South Dublin, Ireland, spent her life looking for love. Because of mental health issues, Elaine spent many of her years in the St Edmundsbury Hospital, receiving psychiatric treatment for depressive disorder, self-harming behaviors, and three suicide attempts. As a result, she missed the usual social milestones of dances, dating, and boyfriends. In her twenties, she began to meet men online and became involved in masochistic behavior.Lonely and emotionally immature, Elaine was exceedingly vulnerable to online predators. In August of 2012, Elaine disappeared after a visit with her family. Investigators assumed she had committed suicide by jumping off nearby cliffs. But disturbing texts found on recovered cell phones later revealed that Elaine had been involved with a dangerous man. Join us at the quiet end for Groomed for Murder. Elaine O’Hara wanted to find a man to love her and have a family of her own, but instead she was tragically lured to her own murder by a cruel, sick man who was

After a night out clubbing with a friend in New York City, the beautiful and kind 20-year-old Kim Antonakos disappeared. Kim was on her way home in the early morning hours when she was abducted. Her father, wealthy businessman Tommy Antonakos, immediately began a widespread and organized search for his daughter. What he didn’t know was that Kim’s abductors were supposed friends of Kim. Right under Tommy’s nose, these cold-blooded men pretended to care about her and to participate in his search for Kim. Join us at the quiet end for Seized and Scorched. Everything about Kim’s abduction showed unbridled cruelty and extraordinary incompetence. When plans to hold Kim hostage for money didn’t go according to plan, Kim’s abductors panicked and took Kim’s life. But not only was her young life stolen from her and those who loved her, Kim died an agonizing and slow death, leaving her unrecognizable. Before the investigation was completed, another murder would occur, revealing that the callousness of at least on

In the early morning of April 22, 2016, relatives of the Rhoden family in Pike County, Ohio, began to discover family members brutally killed in their own homes. In all, eight members of the Rhoden family were murdered, including one minor, 16-year-old Christopher Rhoden, Jr.The victims had been shot to death. Three young children, including a newborn infant, were left alive. Investigators determined early on that the killings were planned and carried out by at least two perpetrators who knew the family well, but it took over two years to make arrests.This crime investigation is the most extensive in the history of the state of Ohio. Evidence of cock-fighting and marijuana growth operations were found at some of the crime scenes, but the motive may have been something as simple as a child-custody dispute.Join us at the quiet end for The Piketon Massacre. Due to the methodical nature of these killings and the lack of forensic evidence at the scenes, these murders have been described as a premeditated and

This episode was suggested to us by Jeane, a long-time listener. In fact, Jeane was so enthusiastic about this case that she volunteered to write the script, and we took her up on that. Jeane was a federal prosecutor in the San Francisco Bay area for 27 years, focusing primarily on white-collar crimes, before she retired in 2018. She looks forward to the U.S. Department of Justice becoming a nonpartisan institution once again and cherishes the career attorneys who stuck it out. So, thank you for all your research and hard work, Jeane.  This is a fascinating case you brought to our attention and we’re excited to share it with our listeners at the quiet end. That said, please join us at the quiet end for The Cards He Was Dealt, the story of the life and death of Barry Crane. 

Something different today!  We’re talking about untrue crimes which occurred in a high rise LA office building in 1988. At the center of these events was a detective from New York named John McClane. He and his wife Holly were separated at the time over issues including her blossoming career with the Nakatomi Corporation in Los Angeles, but John visited her for the holidays and soon found himself at the center of a complex and violent robbery plot. The events that follow are quite shocking and show failures by the LAPD to rescue hostages or arrest the perpetrators. In fact, if not for a beat cop named Al, John McClane would have been completely on his own.Join us at the quiet end for Diehard, the story of two good cops who prevailed over evil on Christmas Eve 1988.

Most of us have some compulsions or obsessions.  But what if your compulsion was to poison people?  Then you would be well on your way to becoming a killer.  As a child, Graham Young began experimenting with poisons.  By the age of 14, he was using his family as subjects. His father, step-mother, and sister suffered from episodes of excruciating stomach pain, vomiting, and diarrhea. Then, while Graham was still a teenager, his stepmother died from one of his poisoning experiments.Graham would ultimately confess to the murder of his stepmother and the attempted murder of other family members. He was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for several years until he was determined to be rehabilitated. What his doctors didn’t know was that Graham had spent much of his time in the hospital reading medical texts to improve his knowledge of various poisons. He had honed his skills to include extracting poisons from plants on the hospital grounds.  His step-mother’s murder was just the beginning of his career as a devian

In 1999, Leann and Michael Fletcher were just beginning to grow their family as Michael was busy building his career as an attorney. That August, the couple left their daughter, Hannah, with Leann’s parents. Michael took Leann to the shooting range to teach her how to shoot a gun. Afterwards, taking advantage of the free baby-sitting, they returned home and had afternoon sex. What happened next would destroy both of their families. In the aftermath of an unexpected and shocking death, problems in the Fletcher marriage were exposed. Leann had recently learned that she was pregnant, reuniting with Michael after a lengthy separation. She had high hopes for the future. Michael had been a doting husband for the past several months, but his loving gestures had raised some eyebrows, especially those of Leann’s mother.Join us at the quiet end for Bedroom Betrayal. Was Michael Fletcher a loving father looking forward to the birth of a second child, or was he an unfaithful, lying, cold-blooded man with a long-planne

18-year old Angie Dodge had just moved into her first apartment in 1996 when her life was suddenly and violently snuffed out. In 1998, a young man named Christopher Tapp was convicted of Angie’s murder. The prosecution’s case relied on Christopher’s confession. The defense argued that the confession was coerced and that the state was ignoring DNA evidence from an unknown suspect. Angie’s heartbroken mother, Carol Dodge, was left to wonder about the suspect still at large.After years of seeking the truth, Carol Dodge watched Christopher’s confession tapes. Appalled by the interrogations, she reached out to an expert in false confessions, who in turn contacted the Innocence Project. But it would take several more years and the work of experts in DNA genealogy to find Angie’s real killer and exonerate Christopher Tapp. The use of genealogical familial searching and its success in this and other cases has exciting implications for future criminal investigations. The public has shown approval for the techniqu

Jennifer Farber Dulos was a woman to be envied. Educated and attractive, she came from a wealthy New York City family, lived in beautiful Connecticut mansions, married a handsome educated man, and had five healthy children. After 13 years of marriage to her Greek-American husband, Fotis Dulos, he became aggressive and unfaithful. He told Jennifer that he had fallen out of love with her, but he didn’t want to move out of the family home. Instead, he wanted to move his new lover and her daughter in with them. Not surprisingly, Jennifer was not on board with this plan. She moved out under the cover of the night, taking the children with her. Join us at the quiet end as we discuss the disappearance of Jennifer Dulos. When Jennifer vanished, she and Fotis were still deeply entrenched in a lengthy and intense divorce battle. As Jennifer tried to move forward and focus on her children, Fotis was realizing that he could lose custody of his children and go bankrupt. Although he denied having any involvement in

New Jersey mom Michelle Nyce spent the last night of her life working the makeup counter at Macy’s, followed by a romantic tryst with her lover. When she finally arrived home, her husband was waiting for her in a jealous rage.Michelle had come all the way from the Philippines when she was just 20-years old to be the wife of 41-year old Dr. Jonathan Nyce. After 15 years of marriage, they were raising three children together in their luxurious $1.6 million home. But Jonathan, the former chief executive of a pharmaceutical company, was failing in his career and in his marriage. He was about to lose everything, including Michelle. Join us at the quiet end for Mail-Order Murder: The Story of Michelle & Jonathan Nyce. Michelle and Jonathan were an unlikely couple, but they seemed to make things work for a time. By 2004, their relationship was strained and Michelle had fallen in love with their former gardener. Was Jonathan capable of killing his pretty, young wife, or was her lover responsible for her dea

Sex is a powerful motivator. So, when 53-year old Christopher Regan became involved with younger married woman Kelly Cochran, no one was completely shocked, even though Kelly was not Chris’ type. In fact, she was quite rough around the edges, abrasive, and only minimally attractive. But she was friendly, easy, and, most importantly, willing. She seemed to have no moral concerns about cheating on her husband, but Chris would learn the hard way that she had no morals at all. When Chris disappeared in October of 2014, his family was concerned. The police decided that he had either taken his own life out in the vast forests of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula or moved away to start a new life. But one investigator, Iron River police chief Laura Frizzo, believed that Chris had been murdered.Join us at the quiet end for Blood Pact. Chris Regan’s disappearance set off an investigation into the world of Kelly and her husband, Jason. What they found included a wedding night blood pact, a chain of lies, and the horri

Sometimes a small thing in life can change everything. That’s what happened when high school student Susan Mae Bolling was sent to a psychotherapist for treatment of depression and anxiety. Her therapist, Dr. Felix Polk, was married with two children, but that didn’t stop him from beginning a sexual relationship with Susan. Susan and Felix Polk married in 1982, shortly after he divorced his wife. Despite the huge 26-year age difference, they seemed very happy. But with several years of marriage and raising three sons together, the couple had a contentious relationship. This resulted in more than one call to the police with allegations of domestic violence. Join us at the quiet end for May December Murder. When Dr. Felix Polk was found dead at age 70, their youngest son Gabriel blamed Susan. Their oldest son, Adam, called Susan “cuckoo.” And Susan herself seemed unfazed by her husband’s death, leading investigators to contend she had planned his murder for money.

Rozanne Gailiunas was smart, caring, and a devoted parent. In 1983, her marriage to physician Peter Gailiunas was on the rocks. She was in love with contractor Larry Aylor, a man also in the middle of a contentious divorce. In fact, the two were making plans to spend the rest of their lives together. Then, a little past 6 p.m. on Oct. 4, 1983, police found Rozanne murdered in her suburban home. She was bound, nude and face down on her bed. Her 4-year-old son was in the home, thankfully unharmed. Rozanne’s husband, Peter, and her lover, Larry, were the first people police wanted to speak with. Rozanne appeared to have been sexually assaulted. There were no signs of a burglary. Peter seemed to have the strongest motive, but he pointed the finger at Larry or his wife, Joy. All three had an alibi.Join us at the quiet end for Murder on Her Mind. The events leading up to the murder of Rozanne and the events that followed her death make up a complex web of lust, hatred, and greed. It would take years for pol