THE IOWA MURDERS-Rod Kackley

Leon Benson spent 24 years in an Indiana state prison for the 1998 murder of a young man named Kasey Schoen. His conviction hinged on the testimony of two eyewitnesses – but what if their memories turned out to be wrong? And what if the people who knew what really happened had never been allowed to speak? Suspect Season 3: Five Shots in the Dark is the story of two victims: one murdered, one sentenced to life. Follow host Matt Shaer and attorney Lara Bazelon as they investigate how the justice system failed both Leon and Kasey, and who the real killer might be. Join this unprecedented look inside the attempt to overturn a wrongful conviction and find out if justice will finally be served. Listen to Suspect wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge Suspect ad-free on Wondery Plus. Find Wondery Plus in the Wondery App or on Apple Podcasts: Wondery.fm/SuspectS3_TM 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

17 Juli 20236min

A 19-year-old accused of killing his parents is diagnosed with an unusual psychiatric disorder and spends a torturous six years in the Colorado judicial and mental health systems before his case experiences an unexpected end. “Just in the Nick of Time is one of the most profound cases of Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), all told from the perspective of the person who interacted most with the personalities, his criminal defense lawyer David Savitz. It is a book about what happens when a mental disease far outpaces the understanding of the courts, the psychiatric community, and the public. JUST IN THE NICK OF TIME-David B. SavitzRitual.com/Murder 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

10 Juli 202356min

On an unseasonably warm winter evening in Pennsylvania, 15-year-old Patty Desmond sneaked out through the basement of her house. She had a history of running away, and that, combined with an argument with her mother, gave police reason to suspect she'd come home in a week or two. The year was 1965. That night was the last time her family ever saw her.Conrad Eugene Miller was well-known to local law enforcement. An older married man with a child, Miller's association with Patty was questionable at best. Yet he was the last person known to have seen her alive-and the suspect police continued to circle back toward.After nothing but false sightings and rumors, the case was moved to the backburner-where it stayed. As decades crept by, reality sunk in: Patty Desmond was never coming back. Then, a tiny crack unleashed a flood of information, and a mystery that had never quite been forgotten was solved. LAST CHILD SEEN: The Search For Patty Desmond-Maureen BoyleRitual.com/Murder 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

3 Juli 202348min

In September of 1990, in the Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights, sixteen-year-old Lisa Pruett, a poetry lover and member of a church youth group, was on her way to a midnight tryst with her boyfriend, when she was viciously stabbed to death only thirty feet from the boy’s home.The murder cast a palpable gloom over the upscale community and sparked accusations, theories, and rumors among Lisa’s friends and peers. Together they wove a damning narrative that circled back to a likely suspect: “weird” high school outcast Kevin Young. Without a shred of evidence the teen was arrested, charged, and tried for the crime. His eventual acquittal didn’t squelch the anger and outrage among those who believed that Kevin got away with murder.With a fresh perspective and painstaking research culled from police files, court records, transcripts, uncollected evidence, and new interviews, James Renner reconstructs the events leading up to and following that heartbreaking night. What emerges is a portrait of a community seething with dark undercurrents—its single-minded authorities, protective status-conscious parents, and the deeply peer-pressured teens within Lisa’s circle.Who had the capacity for such unchecked violence? What monsters still lurk in the dark? After more than thirty years, questions like these continue to fester among the community of Shaker Heights, Ohio, still deeply scarred by wounds that remain hidden, unspoken, and unhealed. LITTLE, CRAZY CHILDREN: A True Crime Tragedy of Lost Innocence-James RennerRitual.com/Murder 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 Juni 202356min

Coal Country Killing: A Culture, A Union, And The Murders That Changed It All, revolves around the cold-blooded 1969 assassination of United Mineworkers of America “reform candidate” Jock Yablonski, and murder of his wife and daughter in their Pennsylvania farmhouse. But driving the story are the extraordinary efforts of a tenacious special prosecutor and his “army” of investigators to bring the gunmen, the union boss who ordered the murders, and his henchmen who saw them carried out, to justice.Initially, three bumbling small-time criminals, dubbed “The Hillbilly Hitmen,” were arrested and charged. But they were the tip of the iceberg as the murders were directed by then-UMWA President “Tough Tony” Boyle as revenge for Yablonski running against him in the bitterly contested 1968 union election and to prevent his corruption from being exposed.Up against the tight-lipped culture of Appalachia coal country, legendary Philadelphia homicide prosecutor Richard A. Sprague, and his investigators, spent nearly nine years doggedly working their way up the ladder of those responsible to the final showdown with Boyle.Written by New York Times bestselling authors—former New York County Assistant District Attorney Robert K. Tanenbaum, a lifelong friend of Sprague’s, and Steve Jackson—Coal Country Killing is a tour de force for those who love justice. COAL COUNTRY KILLING: A Culture, A Union, and the Murders that Changed It All-Steve JacksonRitual.com/Murder 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 Juni 20231h 1min

On a cold, windy December night in 1926, hell was unleashed on a tenant farm near Farwell, the last Texas town before the New Mexico border. Prone to the bottle and fits of rage, the burly man with the smiling blue eyes was in no mood to quarrel with his third wife over his bootleg whisky and sexual abuse of his stepdaughter. He went from room to room in the house, killing his wife and each child with primitive cutting tools and his bare hands. By the time he concluded his bloody work, he had taken the lives of nine family members ranging in age from 2 to 41, committing what one local reporter called “the blackest crime” in the history of the West Texas Panhandle. Husband, father, uncle, embezzler, serial mass murderer, philanderer, child molester, convict, and military deserter, George Jefferson Hassell was many things to many people, most of them bad. His pattern of familicide crime had begun in 1917, when he slaughtered his common-law wife and her three kids in Whittier, California. Later, in Texas, he married his brother’s wife and became stepfather to her eight children. Using Hassell’s confessions and his many interviews with reporters as well as the trial transcripts and reminiscences of those who crossed paths with him in Texas, Oklahoma, and California, Mitchel P. Roth presents the first comprehensive account of the life and crimes of one of the least known multiple murderers in Texas, let alone American, history. Roth situates Hassell’s saga within the 1920s Texas criminal justice system, including the death penalty, which Hassell ultimately received from Old Sparky, the electric chair at Huntsville. THE MAN WITH THE KILLER SMILE: The Life and Crimes of a Serial Mass Murderer-Mitchel P. Roth 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

13 Juni 202356min

Discover the dark side of human nature with Blood on the Tracks.This true crime book takes you on a journey through the most heinous murder cases in history, including unsolved mysteries that will leave you wondering.Each story is expertly researched and crafted to provide a captivating account of the events leading up to the crime and the investigation that followed.From the infamous Thanksgiving Massacre to the shocking case of the Vanishing Bride & Groom, to the unbelievable story of a Dominatrix and her Doppelgänger, Blood on the Tracks leaves no stone unturned.As you turn each page, you'll feel the tension and suspense build as you try to piece together the clues and solve the case alongside the investigators.Don't miss out on this captivating journey through the world of murder and mystery. BLOOD ON THE TRACKS: Real-Life Tales of Murder and Mystery-Rod KackleRitual.com/murder 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 Juni 202352min

Dr. Michael Baden has been involved in some of the most high-profile civil rights and police brutality cases in U.S. history, from the government’s 1976 re-investigation of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., to the 2014 death of Michael Brown, whose case sparked the initial Ferguson protests that grew into the Black Lives Matter movement. The playbook hasn’t changed since 1979, when Dr. Baden was demoted from his job as New York City’s Chief Medical Examiner after ruling that the death of a Black man in police custody was a homicide.So in 2020 when the Floyd family, wary of the same system that oversaw Michael Brown’s death, needed a second opinion—Dr. Baden is who they called.In these pages, Dr. Baden chronicles his six decades on the front lines of the fight for accountability within the legal system—including the long history of medical examiners using a controversial syndrome called excited delirium (a term that shows up in the pathology report for George Floyd) to explain away the deaths of Black and people of color, restrained by police. In the process, he brings to life the political issues that go on in the wake of often unrecorded fatal police encounters and the standoff between law enforcement and those they are sworn to protect.Full of behind-the-scenes drama and surprising revelations, American Autopsy is an invigorating—and enraging—read that is both timely and crucial for this turning point in our nation’s history. AMERICAN AUTOPSY: One Medical Examiner's Decades-Long Fight for Racial Justice in a Broken Legal System-Dr. Micheal Baden 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

5 Juni 202358min