Wondery Presents Suspect Season 2: Vanished In The Snow

In the early 1980s, William Steel's life took a turn towards the macabre when he quite literally ran into Robert Durst in midtown Manhattan. Steel was attending a school for locksmithing and security systems at the time, and Durst -- the black sheep of a family that controls billions of dollars in New York real estate -- decided he could use a man of those specific talents. Little did Steel realize that his new acquaintance was not only the prime suspect in his first wife's mysterious disappearance but quite possibly the wealthiest serial killer in American history. For the better part of a decade, Steel and Durst maintained what has been called a friendship of mutual usury, as Durst paid Steel for use of his Brooklyn home to engage in drug- and fetish-fueled sex with a variety of prostitutes. As they got to know each other better, Durst boasted to Steel of darker deeds. Were they confessions of rape, torture and cold-blooded murder, or just the twisted fantasies of a maniacal multimillionaire? Steel didn't know for sure until years later. He's now convinced that Durst is, indeed, a murderous monster, and he remains haunted by thoughts that he should have done something to stop the fiend before he claimed more innocent lives. In his gripping memoir, Sex and the Serial Killer, My Bizarre Times with Robert Durst, Steel reveals the depths of the scion's depravity, and he demands justice for Durst's victims and their shattered families. SEX AND THE SERIAL KILLER: My Bizarre Times with Robert Durst-William Steel Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

25 Mar 20221h

ON AN OCTOBER NIGHT IN 1905, a horrifying scene was found on a wooden vessel off the coast of Cape Fear, North Carolina. Onboard the Harry A. Berwind, one crewman lay dead, his blood streaming down the deck. The four officers all were gone-murdered, too, it would turn out, their bodies dumped into the sea. Only three sailors remained alive, one tied up, all telling different stories, all blaming each other. The three sailors were Black. The dead officers were white.So began a legal spectacle that would captivate much of the nation's press and fuel a sensational trial in Wilmington. It was in Wilmington, after all, that shocking racial violence had occurred not long before, and now the city remained in the clutches of white supremacists. Most observers could have predicted a quick verdict and a triple hanging . . . if not an even quicker lynching. Yet the legal drama would defy predictions, lasting seven years, reaching the Supreme Court, pulling in presidents Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft-then even being twisted into a fanciful, big-budget movie. In the end, so many participants-from jurors to lawyers to politicians-acted against type that justice had a fighting chance. SHIP OF BLOOD: Mutiny and Slaughter Aboard the Harry A. Berwind, and the Quest for Justice-Charles Oldham Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

19 Mar 202249min

A brilliantly researched reinvestigation into the nearly forgotten century-old murder that inspired one of the most seductive mysteries in the history of television and film. In 1908, Hazel Drew was found floating in a pond in Sand Lake, New York, beaten to death. The unsolved murder inspired rumors, speculation, ghost stories, and, almost a century later, the phenomenon of Twin Peaks. Who killed Hazel Drew? Like Laura Palmer, she was a paradox of personalities—a young, beautiful puzzle with secrets. Perhaps the even trickier question is, Who was Hazel Drew? Seeking escape from her poor country roots, Hazel found work as a domestic servant in the notoriously corrupt metropolis of Troy, New York. Fate derailed her plans for reinvention. But the investigation that followed her brutal murder was fraught with red herrings, wild-goose chases, and unreliable witnesses. Did officials really follow the leads? Or did they bury them to protect the guilty? The likely answer is revealed in an absorbing true mystery that’s ingeniously reconstructed and every bit as haunting as the cultural obsession it inspired. MURDER AT TEAL'S POND: Hazel Drew and the Mystery that Inspired Twin Peaks-David Bushman and Mark T. Givens Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

16 Mar 20221h 1min

Sons of Anarchy meets The Departed in this fast-paced, high-wire act memoir from former ATF agent Ken Croke, the first federal agent in history to go undercover and successfully infiltrate the infamous—and infamously violent—Pagan Motorcycle Club, a white supremacist biker gang. Longtime ATF agent Ken Croke had earned the right to coast to the end of a storied career, having routinely gone undercover to apprehend white supremacists, gun runners, and gang members. But after a chance encounter with an associate of the Pagan Motorcycle Gang created an opening, he transformed himself into “Slam,” a monstrous, axe-handle wielding enforcer whose duty was to protect the leadership “mother club” at all costs. He befriended the club’s most violent and criminally insane members and lived among them for two years, covertly building a case that would eventually take down the top members of the gang in a massive federal prosecution, even as he risked his marriage, his sanity, and his life. With today’s law enforcement largely moving toward the comparative safety of cyber operations, it became one of the last of its kind, a masterclass in old school tactics that marked Croke as a dying breed of undercover agent and became legendary in law enforcement. Now for the first time, Croke tells the story of his terrifying undercover life in the Pagans—the unspeakable violence, extremism, drugs, and disgusting rituals. Written with bestselling crime writer Dave Wedge and utilizing the exclusive cooperation of those who lived the case with him, as well as thousands of pages of court files and hours of surveillance tapes and photos, Croke delivers a frightening, nail-biting account of the secretive and brutal biker underworld. RIDING WITH EVIL: Taking Down the Notorious Pagan Motorcycle Gang-Ken Croke Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

12 Mar 202259min

The pulse-pounding account of the first time in history that the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit created a psychological profile to catch a serial killerOn June 25, 1973, a seven-year-old girl went missing from the Montana campground where her family was vacationing. Somebody had slit open the back of their tent and snatched her from under their noses. None of them saw or heard anything. Susie Jaeger had vanished into thin air, plucked by a shadow.The largest manhunt in Montana’s history ensued, led by the FBI. As days stretched into weeks, and weeks into months, Special Agent Pete Dunbar attended a workshop at FBI Headquarters in Quantico, Virgina, led by two agents who had hatched a radical new idea: What if criminals left a psychological trail that would lead us to them? Patrick Mullany, a trained psychologist, and Howard Teten, a veteran criminologist, had created the Behavioral Science Unit to explore this new "voodoo" they called “criminal profiling.”At Dunbar’s request, Mullany and Teten built the FBI’s first profile of an unknown subject: the UnSub who had snatched Susie Jaeger and, a few months later, a nineteen-year-old waitress. When a suspect was finally arrested, the profile fit him to a T...Shadowman: An Elusive Psycho Killer and the Birth of FBI Profiling-Ron Franscell Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

1 Mar 20221h 23min

THE TRUE STORY BEHIND NBC’S MARQUEE MINI-SERIES "THE THING ABOUT PAM" STARRING RENEE ZELLWEGER AS PAM HUPP AND JOSH DUHAMEL AS JOEL SCHWARTZ, PREMIERING FEBRUARY 2022.The explosive, first-ever insider’s account of the case that’s captivated millions – the murder of Betsy Faria and the wrongful conviction of her husband – told by Joel J. Schwartz, the defense attorney who fought for justice on behalf of Russel Faria, and New York Times bestselling author Charles Bosworth Jr.On December 27th, 2011, Russell Faria returned to his Troy, Missouri, home after his weekly game night with friends to an unthinkable, grisly scene: His wife, Betsy, lay dead, a knife still lodged in her neck. She’d been stabbed fifty-five times. First responders concluded that Betsy was dead for hours when Russ discovered her. No blood was found implicating Russ, and surveillance video, receipts, and friends’ testimony all supported his alibi. Yet incredibly, police and the prosecuting attorney ignored the evidence. In their minds, Russ was guilty. But prominent defense attorney Joel J. Schwartz quickly recognized the real killer. The motive was clear. Days before her murder, the terminally ill Betsy replaced her husband with her friend, Pamela Hupp, as her life insurance beneficiary. Still, despite the prosecution’s flimsy case and Hupp’s transparent lies, Russ was convicted—leaving Hupp free to kill again. Bone Deep takes readers through the perfect storm of miscalculations and missteps that led to an innocent man’s conviction—and recounts Schwartz’s successful battle to have that conviction overturned. Written with Russ Faria’s cooperation, and filled with chilling new revelations and previously undisclosed evidence, this is the story of what can happen when police, prosecutor, judge, and jury all fail in their duty to protect the innocent—and let a killer get away with murder. BONE DEEP: Untangling the. Betsy Faria Murder Case-Charles Henry Bosworth and Joel Schwartz Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

26 Feb 20221h

Drawing on media reports, interviews and court records, this book recounts the stories of women bank robbers in the United States, from the time of the Revolutionary War to the present. Ranging from sensational to poignant to comical, the heists of frontier outlaws, gun molls, insurrectionists, housewives, grandmas and young mothers "literally robbing for Pampers" are narrated as part of the social history of women in America. PUT THE MONEY IN MY PURSE: A History of Female Bank Robbers-Judith A. Yates Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

24 Feb 202259min

November 2, 1945: On her way to a high school football game with friends, a fourteen-year-old girl vanishes after driving away with a man who says he needs a babysitter. The FBI unleashes its top kidnapping expert, an agent who helped bring John Dillinger down. Will that be enough to find the girl and her abductor? Agents chase the suspected kidnapper from California to Illinois and back again. Arrested in Los Angeles, he admits abducting the child. He also tells the FBI he killed the girl and threw her body into the Pacific Ocean. A search for her corpse proves fruitless. Then, when all hope is lost, authorities discover the skeleton of another young woman who's fallen victim to this madman.Ready for another twist? The wife of the man who made that discovery is found dead at the bottom of the cliff. During the accused killer's trial, women around the country fall in love with the handsome monster and literally break down the doors of a courthouse to get close to him. After the child's killer is convicted and sentenced to the gas chamber, a scientist shows up and says he can bring the murderer back from the dead.The Murder of Thora Chamberlain: A Shocking True Crime Story-Rod Kackley Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

18 Feb 20221h 1min