Shows
Deadly TruthsGeorge Remus and the Eden Park Murder: The Bootlegger Who Shot His WifeDuring the height of Prohibition, George Remus wasn’t just a bootlegger — he was one of the richest and most powerful liquor traffickers in America. Operating out of Cincinnati along the Ohio–Kentucky corridor, he built a whiskey empire worth millions while bribing officials and manipulating the law.But the real scandal wasn’t just his criminal enterprise.It was what happened in Eden Park in 1927 — when Remus shot and killed his wife, Imogene, in broad daylight after believing she had betrayed him financially and romantically.The trial that followed shocked the nation. Remus clai...
2026-03-0245 min
Deadly TruthsThe Demon of the Belfry | San Francisco’s Church Murder That Shocked AmericaIn 1895, San Francisco was a city of fog, faith, and reputation. Inside the walls of a respected church, that illusion shattered.He was educated. Religious. Trusted. A young medical student who volunteered in the congregation. And yet, beneath the sanctuary’s quiet order, two women would be lured, assaulted, and murdered — their bodies hidden in the belfry of the very place meant to symbolize safety.The press would call him “The Demon of the Belfry.”In this episode of Dead City, we examine the murders of Blanche Lamont and Minnie Williams, the evidence left ins...
2026-02-2441 min
Deadly TruthsThe Bloody Benders of Kansas: America’s First Serial Killer Family | The Frontier Is DeadBefore fingerprinting.Before national manhunts.Before modern policing.A family built a roadside inn along the Osage Trail in southeastern Kansas — about three hours south of Kansas City — and turned it into a killing chamber.They sat travelers at the head of the table.Struck from behind a curtain.Dropped bodies through a trapdoor.Buried them in an apple orchard.At least ten victims were uncovered in 1873.The killers were never officially caught.In this episode of The Frontier Is Dead, we examine what we actu...
2026-02-2324 min
Deadly TruthsTheodore Durrant, 1895 Church Murders, Demon of the Belfry| Dead City: San FranciscoIn April 1895, two young women walked into a San Francisco church — and never walked back out.Blanche Lamont was found hidden in the belfry of Emmanuel Baptist Church. Days later, Minnie Williams was discovered concealed inside the same building.At the center of it all was Theodore Durrant — a Sunday school teacher, choir member, and medical student, the press would later call The Demon of the Belfry.In this episode of Dead City: San Francisco, we examine the timeline, the psychological profile, the courtroom battle, and the haunting question that lingered long after his...
2026-02-1923 min
Deadly TruthsThe Servant Girl Annihilator | Dead City: AustinIn the winter of 1884, something began moving through the dark streets of Austin, Texas.Women were attacked in their beds. Doors splintered. Skulls crushed. Bodies dragged into the yard before dawn. The first victims were Black domestic workers sleeping in servant quarters behind wealthy homes. The city barely reacted.Then the violence escalated.In just over a year, between 1884 and 1885, eight women were brutally attacked. Seven died. The killer was never identified. No confession. No arrest that held. No forensic tools capable of catching him.Before London had Jack the Ripper… Au...
2026-02-1823 min
Deadly TruthsThe Whyos: New York’s First Murder-For-Hire Gang | Dead CityBefore the Mafia.Before organized crime wore tailored suits.There were the Whyos.In the late 1800s, New York’s Five Points neighborhood was ruled by a violent Irish street gang known for selling brutality by the job. Beatings. Retaliation. Murder. Their reputation was so notorious that newspapers claimed they even had a price list.But the Whyos weren’t masterminds building empires. They were products of poverty, humiliation, overcrowding, and a city that treated immigrant neighborhoods as disposable.In this episode of Deadly Truths: Dead City, we examine:• Who th...
2026-02-1614 min
Deadly TruthsMonk Eastman: The Gang King New York Erased | Dead CityBefore organized crime wore tailored suits and answered to syndicates, New York’s streets were ruled by brute force.Monk Eastman controlled large swaths of the Lower East Side at the turn of the twentieth century. His gang enforced protection rackets, operated gambling dens, and served as muscle for Tammany Hall’s political machine. But as crime became more structured and less theatrical, Eastman’s brand of visible violence became a liability.In this episode of Dead City: New York, we examine the rise, decline, and execution-style death of one of the city’s most notoriou...
2026-02-1520 min
Deadly TruthsLizzie Borden: The House That Never Gave an Answer | Dead State: MassachusettsOn a suffocating August morning in 1892, two people were killed inside a locked house in Fall River, Massachusetts.No forced entry.No robbery.No confession.The only suspect was their daughter, Lizzie Borden — a churchgoing, unmarried woman who stood to inherit her father’s fortune. She was arrested, tried, and acquitted.But acquittal is not the same as certainty.In this episode of Dead State: Massachusetts, we examine the pressure inside the Borden household — inheritance tension, Victorian gender roles, economic dependence, and the psychology of rupture versus calculation.Did...
2026-02-1437 min
Deadly TruthsHelen Jewett and America’s First Media Murder | Dead City: New YorkIn 1836, the brutal murder of Helen Jewett shocked New York City—and changed how crime was covered in America forever.Jewett was found killed inside a boarding house, struck with a hatchet and left in a deliberately set fire. Suspicion quickly centered on Richard Robinson, a young, educated man known to her. The evidence appeared strong. The outcome did not.As newspapers competed for readers, the case unfolded in real time, transforming private violence into public spectacle. The trial exposed how reputation, perception, and doubt could outweigh facts—leaving a murder unresolved and a city unse...
2026-02-1219 min
Deadly TruthsWilliam “Bill the Butcher” Poole: Political Violence Before the Mafia | Dead CityBefore the Mafia learned how to hide violence inside systems, American cities practiced it in public.This episode examines the life and death of William “Bill the Butcher” Poole, a figure often mythologized by film but rarely understood for what he truly was: a political enforcer whose brutality was tolerated — even celebrated — because it aligned with power.Poole’s murder was not a random gang killing. It was a public political act. His influence shaped street warfare between the Bowery Boys and the Dead Rabbits, fueled nativist ideology, and revealed how violence gains legitimacy when institutio...
2026-02-1130 min
Deadly TruthsFive Points Murders: The Killing of the Dead Rabbits | Dead City: New YorkIn the mid-1800s, New York called it a riot.The newspapers called it disorder.But what happened in Five Points was something far more deliberate.This episode of Deadly Truths with Becca reexamines the Dead Rabbits—not as the violent gang popular culture remembers, but as a group of young Irish immigrants who became targets in a city that had already decided their lives were expendable.Through a cinematic retelling of murder, the 1857 Dead Rabbits Riot, and the political forces that shaped Five Points, we trace how violence was normalized through nativist st...
2026-02-0926 min
Deadly TruthsWhy Hollywood Feared Black Female Desire | Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne & Eartha Kitt🔥 Black desire was never the problem — visibility was.Hollywood likes to sell itself as progressive, but for decades it enforced an unspoken rule: Black women could be admired, but they could not be openly desired without consequence.This episode examines how that line was drawn — and defended — through the lives of Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, and Eartha Kitt.From the Production Code and Southern box office pressure to white male sexual panic and containment-by-design, this isn’t a story about scandal. It’s a story about power, money, and who paid the price when desire became...
2026-02-0719 min
Deadly TruthsHollywood’s Failed Experiment: The Race to Duplicate Marilyn Monroe - Hollywood is DeadAfter Marilyn Monroe became too powerful to control, Hollywood didn’t adapt — it duplicated.This episode examines the studio system’s quiet panic and the women it put on the assembly line in Marilyn’s shadow: Jayne Mansfield, Mamie Van Doren, Sheree North, and Diana Dors.This isn’t a nostalgia piece or a tribute.It’s a structural autopsy of how mid-century Hollywood treated women as templates — rewarding sex appeal, punishing ambition, and discarding complexity the moment it became inconvenient.We trace how each woman was shaped, marketed, pushed past her limits, and ultimately...
2026-02-0712 min
Deadly TruthsGene Tierney: Hollywood’s Beautiful Star and Mental Illness - Hollywood is DeadShe was called one of the most beautiful women in film history — elegant, controlled, untouchable.But behind the image, Gene Tierney was quietly unraveling.This episode of Hollywood Is Dead examines Gene Tierney’s rise at the height of Old Hollywood, the catastrophic rubella exposure during pregnancy, the loss of her daughter, and the psychiatric treatments that followed — including insulin shock therapy and electroconvulsive therapy.This is not gossip.This is not myth.It’s a documented look at how trauma, untreated mental illness, and an unforgiving studio system collided — and how Ho...
2026-02-0618 min
Deadly TruthsJean Spangler, Jeanne French, and the Shadow of the Black Dahlia | Dead CityIn postwar Los Angeles, three women became entangled in one of the darkest chapters of American crime. Jean Spangler vanished without a body. Jeanne French was murdered and publicly shamed by the press. Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia, became a legend that swallowed every unsolved case around her.In this episode of Dead City, we examine how and why Spangler and French were linked to the Black Dahlia case—not by evidence, but by fear, media sensationalism, and a justice system that failed women repeatedly. We strip away myth, trace the real timelines, and expose how Hollywood, th...
2026-02-0527 min
Deadly TruthsThe Men Who Almost Stopped Capone: O’Banion, Weiss, and Moran | The Mob Is DeadAl Capone didn’t take Chicago alone.He survived it.Before the myth hardened, before the headlines and machine guns turned him into a symbol, three men stood in his way—each dangerous in a different way.Dean O’Banion destabilized the entire system by breaking every agreement and weaponizing chaos.Hymie Weiss came within seconds of killing Capone himself, using precision and strategy instead of spectacle.Bugs Moran survived long enough to watch everyone else die—and lost everything anyway.This episode isn’t about how Capone won.It’s...
2026-02-0444 min
Deadly TruthsAl Capone: Violence, Power, and the System That Let Him Rise | The Mob Is DeadAl Capone didn’t rise because he was brilliant.He rose because violence worked—and the system let it.This episode dismantles the mythology surrounding Al Capone and traces how unchecked brutality, political corruption, and institutional silence allowed one man to dominate Chicago during Prohibition. From his early violence in New York to the gang war that consumed the city, this is not a legend of organized crime—it’s a case study in how fear becomes policy.We examine Capone’s ascent, the murders that reshaped Chicago’s underworld, the collapse of restraint after Johnny...
2026-02-0235 min
Deadly TruthsAlbert Anastasia: How Fear Became His Weapon—and His Liability | The Mob Is DeadAlbert Anastasia ruled through fear. Known as “The Mad Hatter,” he built power in 1930s New York through extreme, unpredictable violence—both personally and through organized enforcement killings. But fear has a shelf life.In this episode of The Mob Is Dead, we strip away mob mythology and examine how Anastasia used terror as a leadership tool, how many deaths he was actually responsible for, and why the very reputation that protected him ultimately made him expendable. From documented murders to his assassination in a Manhattan barber chair, this is the real story of fear as governance—and why...
2026-01-2822 min
Deadly TruthsWho Was Andrew Jackson Really? The Trail of Tears, History vs the Legend | The Frontier Is DeadWho Was Andrew Jackson really—hero of the people or architect of state-sanctioned violence?This episode strips away the mythology and examines the documented record behind one of the most defended and dangerous figures in American history. We look at Andrew Jackson not as folklore, but as a man who fused personal rage, political ambition, and unchecked executive power into national policy.From the Trail of Tears to the normalization of political violence, this is a fact-driven breakdown of how Jackson’s legacy was constructed—and who paid the price for it. No euphemisms. No patrio...
2026-01-2730 min
Deadly TruthsThe Darren Mack Case: Reno’s Courthouse Sniper and Murder of Charla MackIn June 2006, Reno, Nevada was shaken by one of its most shocking crimes. Darren Mack, embroiled in a bitter divorce, brutally murdered his wife, Charla Mack, before targeting Family Court Judge Chuck Weller in a sniper-style shooting outside the Washoe County courthouse.This true crime episode of Deadly Truths revisits the Darren Mack case—tracing the history of domestic violence and control behind closed doors, the murder that devastated the community, and the violent courthouse attack that threatened Reno’s justice system. We examine how the investigation unfolded, the high-profile trial that gripped Nevada, and the lasting impa...
2026-01-2512 min
Deadly TruthsThe Great Basin Murders - Long Haul Killers on I 80Bonus episode of Reno Murders delves into the chilling Great Basin Murders, focusing on the disappearances of women along the I-80 corridor. The host, Rebecca Clark, explores the historical context of these cases, highlighting the patterns of violence and the potential involvement of long haul truckers. Through detailed case studies of unidentified victims, the episode emphasizes the ongoing search for justice and the hope that advancements in DNA technology may one day restore the identities of these women.Resources & Case FilesNevada Cold Case Files (NV DPS)Nevada Department of Public Safety – Unidentified Pe...
2026-01-2518 min
Deadly TruthsDisappeared in Northern Nevada: Gone Without a TraceAcross the lonely highways, neon lights, and desert valleys of Northern Nevada, women have disappeared without a trace. From downtown Reno to Washoe Valley, from the casinos to the ghostly expanse of the desert, their stories paint a chilling portrait of mystery and loss.In this episode, we investigate the unsolved disappearances of women including Luella Beckley, Melinda Beardsley, Nancy and James Robinson, Stefanie Stroh, Shantelle Hudson, Jill Kristine Beaty, Terri Ann Fourcher, and Star Michelle Palumbo. Some cases carry whispers of serial killers. Others hint at mob ties, ex-lovers, or violent struggles left behind in blood...
2026-01-2543 min
Deadly TruthsBilly the Kid: How America Turned a Teenager Into a Frontier Myth | The Frontier Is DeadBilly the Kid wasn’t a folk hero — and he wasn’t a psychopath. He was a poor, orphaned teenager caught inside a rigged frontier economy that rewarded violence, protected power, and erased the people it used up.In this episode of The Frontier Is Dead, we dismantle the mythology around Billy the Kid and examine what historians actually know versus what newspapers, dime novels, and Hollywood sold to the public. From inflated kill counts to the media machine that turned a frightened young man into a national symbol, this episode asks a harder question: why did Americ...
2026-01-2536 min
Deadly TruthsJesse James Wasn’t a Hero — He Was a Prototype | The Frontier Is DeadJesse James is one of the most mythologized figures in American history — but the legend hides more than it reveals.In this episode of Frontier Is Dead, we dismantle the mythology surrounding Jesse James and examine who he really was, how his image was manufactured, and why America needed him to be something he wasn’t.This is not a story about his death.It’s a forensic look at radicalization, post–Civil War violence, media myth-making, and selective outrage — and how the frontier narrative trained Americans to excuse brutality when it aligns with grievance...
2026-01-2034 min
Deadly TruthsMarilyn Monroe Was Not the Myth Hollywood Sold — Negligence, Power, and the Truth About Her Death | Hollywood Is DeadMarilyn Monroe didn’t die because she was weak, unstable, or doomed by fame — and she wasn’t killed by a political conspiracy either.In this episode of Hollywood Is Dead, we dismantle the myths surrounding Marilyn Monroe and examine what the evidence actually supports: a woman who was intelligent, disciplined, deeply talented, and systematically mismanaged by the systems that profited from her.We start at the night of her death, walk through how the media shaped public perception, and trace the real story — from Hollywood’s response when she stopped playing along, to medication used as co...
2026-01-1846 min
Deadly TruthsRita Hayworth: Hollywood Erased Margarita Cansino | Hollywood Is DeadBefore she was a red-haired sex symbol, she was Margarita Cansino — a multilingual dancer, singer, and serious actress reshaped by Hollywood because her identity didn’t fit the brand. This episode of Hollywood Is Dead breaks down how studios erased Rita Hayworth’s ethnicity, how controlling men defined her relationships, how alcoholism became a coping mechanism, and how early Alzheimer’s was mocked as moral failure by the press. This is not nostalgia. This is an indictment.This episode discusses documented historical abuse, addiction, and neurodegenerative illness. Interpretations are presented for historical and cultural analysis, not diagnosis or specu...
2026-01-1131 min
Deadly TruthsThe Battle of Alcatraz | When Containment Failed | Dead BoltsThe Battle of Alcatraz was not a riot, not a legend, and not an escape story. It was a system failure.In this episode of Deadly Truths with Becca, we break down the 1946 Battle of Alcatraz step by step — how a prison designed for silence and control lost containment, took hostages, and required U.S. Marines to retake a federal penitentiary.This episode examines:Why Alcatraz was built for containment, not punishmentHow planning and desperation exploited institutional blind spotsThe siege inside Cellhouse D and the deaths that fo...
2026-01-1027 min
Deadly TruthsAl Capone on Alcatraz: How the Mob Boss Was Broken | The Mob Is Dead | Deadly TruthsAl Capone didn’t lose his power in a shootout or a courtroom — he lost it on Alcatraz Island.In this Mob Is Dead edition of Deadly Truths, Becca breaks down how the federal government used isolation, absolute control, and silence to dismantle America’s most famous mob boss. This episode separates myth from reality, explores Capone’s psychological and medical decline, examines why Alcatraz was designed to erase influence rather than punish violence, and explains how the Rock exposed the limits — and dangers — of total institutional control.Based on historical records, court documents, and credible sources, thi...
2026-01-0934 min
Deadly TruthsThe Black Dahlia, George Hodel, Hollywood Suspect | Dead City Los AngelesIn January 1947, the body of Elizabeth Short was discovered in a vacant Los Angeles lot—bisected, posed, and drained of blood. The press called her The Black Dahlia. The case became legend. The truth became buried.This episode examines the Black Dahlia murder through the lens of George Hodel—a wealthy physician, cultural insider, and longtime LAPD suspect who was secretly surveilled by police yet never charged. We break down the surveillance transcripts, the surgical elements of the crime, and the institutional forces that shaped the investigation.We also trace disturbing parallels to the disappearance of J...
2026-01-0443 min
Deadly TruthsThelma Todd: Hollywood’s “Accidental” Death, Power Struggles, and the Café That Made Her DangerousIn 1935, actress Thelma Todd was found dead in her car inside a private garage. Authorities ruled it an accident. Hollywood moved on.This episode examines what the headlines ignored: Todd’s fight for independence, her café’s quiet power, rising tensions with director Roland West, and the unanswered questions surrounding her final hours.This is not gossip. It’s a reconstruction of control, money, and motive—set inside an industry that protected itself first and women last.If you want real history—not studio mythology—follow Deadly Truths.Listen, subscribe, and share this episode on Spotify, Apple Podcast...
2026-01-0436 min
Deadly TruthsJean Harlow: Hollywood’s First Star Worked to Death | Deadly Truths with BeccaJean Harlow was one of the first true movie stars in American history — and one of the first casualties of Hollywood’s studio system.At just twenty-six years old, Harlow died from acute kidney failure after weeks of visible decline that studios minimized, delayed treating, and quietly worked around to keep production moving.This episode examines Jean Harlow’s final days, the medical negligence surrounding her illness, the brutal realities of MGM contracts, and how Hollywood rewrote her death to protect the brand rather than confront responsibility.This is not a gossip story.
2026-01-0321 min
Deadly TruthsThe Cleveland Torso Murders: The Killer Eliot Ness Couldn’t Catch | Dead City | Deadly truthsIn the 1930s, Cleveland was gripped by a series of murders so brutal and precise they exposed the limits of American law enforcement. Bodies were found dismembered, decapitated, and deliberately staged along rail lines and riverbanks — while the killer was never officially named.In this episode of Deadly Truths, we examine the Cleveland Torso Murders through historical records, investigative failures, and modern behavioral profiling. We explore how systemic blind spots, political pressure, and victim invisibility shaped one of the most disturbing unsolved serial murder cases in U.S. history — and why the truth may have been contained rath...
2026-01-0340 min
Deadly TruthsJean Spangler & Jeanne French: Hollywood Myths vs. the RecordTwo women.Same city.Different lives — and stories history keeps getting wrong.In this episode of Deadly Truths, we examine the disappearance of Jean Spangler and the murder of Jeanne French, two Los Angeles cases repeatedly mislinked through rumor, celebrity fixation, and Black Dahlia mythology.We break down what the historical record actually says — police documentation, timelines, coroner findings, and media distortion — and why these cases are most likely not connected, despite decades of speculation.This is not a serial-killer episode.It’s an episode about access, visibility, and how women ar...
2025-12-2428 min
Deadly TruthsElizabeth Short: Black Dahlia Without Myths, Suspects, or Hollywood Lies - Hollywood is DeadIn Elizabeth Short: The Black Dahlia Case Without Myths, Suspects, or Hollywood Lies, Deadly Truths strips this case down to verified facts, documented timelines, and behavioral evidence — not tabloid fantasies.This episode dismantles decades of misinformation, explains why popular suspects don’t hold up under scrutiny, and examines what profilers actually agree on about the man who killed her.No recycled theories. No sensational nonsense. Just the uncomfortable truth behind one of America’s most exploited murders.This episode discusses homicide, sexualized violence, and post-mortem injury.All information presented is drawn from historical records, autopsy reports, contem...
2025-12-2038 min
Deadly TruthsLana Turner: Beauty, Abuse, and a Night Hollywood Couldn’t Control - Hollywood is DeadLana Turner: Beauty, Abuse, and the Night Hollywood Couldn’t ControlEveryone thinks they know Lana Turner — the blonde bombshell, the MGM fantasy, the face of classic Hollywood glamour.This episode tells the story most people never learned.From Lana’s childhood trauma and early fame to a pattern of controlling and abusive relationships, this episode examines how violence was normalized long before April 4, 1958. We explore the warning signs surrounding Johnny Stompanato, the role of coercive control, and why the legal system ultimately ruled the killing a justifiable act of defense.Throug...
2025-12-2030 min
Deadly TruthsBugsy Siegel: The Gangster Behind Las Vegas and His Violent EndBugsy Siegel helped change Las Vegas — but not in the way history usually tells it.In this episode of Deadly Truths, we strip away the Hollywood mythology and examine Bugsy Siegel through a psychological lens: his volatility, ego-driven violence, treatment of women, and why the very traits that made him powerful also made him expendable.This is not a story about glamour or genius.It’s a case study in emotional dysregulation, narcissistic entitlement, and how organized crime ultimately destroys the people who can’t control themselves.From Brooklyn street culture to the Fl...
2025-12-1525 min
Deadly TruthsMeyer Lansky: The Mob’s Invisible Architect and Financial MastermindMeyer Lansky is often called the mob’s accountant—but that undersells what he really was.Lansky didn’t build his power with street violence or flashy brutality. He built it with math, patience, and ruthless calculation. While others pulled triggers, Lansky moved money, engineered gambling empires, and quietly shaped the financial backbone of American organized crime.In this episode of Deadly Truths, we strip away the myths and look at Lansky through a psychological lens:his emotional detachment, strategic empathy, avoidance of direct violence, and the invisible decisions that still left bodies behind.T...
2025-12-1529 min
Deadly TruthsDutch Schultz: Paranoia, Power, and the Gangster Who Lost ControlDutch Schultz is usually remembered as a brutal Prohibition-era gangster.This episode tells a different story.In Dutch Schultz: Paranoia, Power, and the Gangster Who Lost Control, Becca examines how violence, fear, and psychological dysregulation turned one of the most feared men in New York into a liability even the mob couldn’t tolerate.This is not a bootlegging highlight reel.It’s a deep dive into:Schultz’s upbringing and environmentHow Prohibition amplified his worst traitsWhen his violence stopped being strategicWhy th...
2025-12-1340 min
Deadly TruthsLucky Luciano: The Mob Boss Who Invented Modern Organized CrimeLucky Luciano: The Mob Boss Who Invented Modern Organized CrimeLucky Luciano didn’t just survive the Mafia — he rebuilt it.From the night he was beaten, stabbed, and left for dead on a Coney Island beach… to the murders of Joe Masseria (mah-SAIR-ee-uh) and Salvatore Maranzano (mah-rahn-ZAH-no)… to creating the Commission and secretly working with U.S. Naval Intelligence during WWII — Luciano shaped the American underworld more than any other figure in history.In this episode, I walk you through Luciano’s rise, the Castellammarese War, the hits that changed the Mafia forever, the Havana C...
2025-12-0745 min
Deadly TruthsDisappearance of Nick Spero: Kansas City’s Silent Mob Hit (1973) - The Mob is DeadIn May 1973, Kansas City mob associate Nick Spero walked out of his home and vanished. No body was ever recovered. No one was ever charged. And inside the Kansas City underworld, everyone immediately understood what had happened.This episode dives into the internal mob tensions that led to Spero’s disappearance, the power struggle between the Spero brothers and the Civella crime family, and the silent, efficient method the mafia used to eliminate one of their own. No spectacle. No headlines. Just a man erased to maintain the hierarchy.We explore Spero’s final days, the...
2025-12-0645 min
Deadly TruthsAssassination of Leon Jordan: Kansas City’s Political Murder | Dead City | Deadly truthsOn July 15, 1970, Missouri State Representative Leon Mercer Jordan was gunned down outside his own bar, the Green Duck Tavern. His murder was fast, professional, and executed with the precision of a contract killing. For decades, the case sat in silence—until a cold-case investigation uncovered the names of the likely gunmen, all tied to Kansas City’s criminal underworld.This episode breaks down the final hours of Leon Jordan’s life, the political power he built, the enemies he made, and the tangled investigation that followed. No myths. No rumors. Only what the documented record shows about one of...
2025-12-0637 min
Deadly Truths1880s Frontier Murders in Clay County: The Hillyard Double Murder & Prairie Corpse Mystery | True Crime HistoryBones on the Prairie: Frontier Murders dives into two chilling, true 1880s Missouri–Kansas borderland cases: the Hillyard Double Murder and the Clay County Corpse Mystery. Both crimes emerged from the same frontier era when isolation, post–Civil War tensions, and primitive investigations shaped how violence unfolded — and why so many murders stayed unsolved.Through original archival reporting, regional history, and an unflinching look at frontier justice, we explore how these victims lived, how they died, and why their stories still echo across the prairie today.If this episode pulled you into the darker corners of fro...
2025-12-0621 min
Deadly TruthsThe 1950 Kansas City Double Mob Murder: Binaggio & “Mad Dog” Gargotta | Deadly TruthsOn April 6, 1950, two of Kansas City’s most powerful men—political boss Charles Binaggio and mob enforcer Charles “Mad Dog” Gargotta—were found executed inside the First Ward Democratic Club.No witnesses.No suspects.No charges.This episode uncovers the documented facts behind the murders, the political machine that protected them, and how their deaths reshaped the Kansas City mob for the next 50 years. From high-level Mafia pressure to federal investigations and the fallout of the Kefauver hearings, this is the true story of the night the KC underworld erased two of its own.Based...
2025-12-0530 min
Deadly TruthsThe 1915 Boice Murder Mystery and the 1933 Hester Strangling | Dead City | Deadly truthsTwo Kansas City socialites. Eighteen years apart.Both dead under circumstances the city never fully explained.In this episode of Deadly Truths, Becca uncovers the parallel tragedies of Mary Virginia Boice, the 24-year-old society woman found dead in a locked hotel room at the Savoy in 1915, and Bonnie Bolding Hester, the wealthy widow discovered strangled inside her upscale home in 1933.Both cases triggered headlines, scandal whispers, and carefully managed investigations that revealed more about Kansas City’s power structure than they did about the victims. Through coroner contradictions, sanitized press coverage, and quiet pressure fr...
2025-12-0321 min
Deadly TruthsAssassination of Mob Boss Johnny Lazia Kansas City’s Kingpin | The Mob is Dead | Deadly truthsJohnny Lazia wasn’t just a gangster — he was KansasCity. Political fixer, mob kingpin, and the man behind Tom Pendergast’s muscle, Lazia controlled bootlegging, gambling, bombings, and election fraud across the city.On July 10, 1934, his reign ended in a burst of machine-gunfire outside St. Joseph’s Hospital. The hit shocked the city, the newspapers exploded, and the fallout exposed one of the deepest criminal-political networks in American history.In this episode, we break down Lazia’s rise, his empire, thebetrayal that led to his assassination, and why this murder became the defining moment in Kansas Cit...
2025-12-0332 min
Deadly TruthsThe I-70 Serial Killer: Inside America’s Most Elusive Highway Murderer | Dead CityHe walked into quiet shops off America’s interstate… and killed in under ninety seconds.Between 1992 and 1994, the unidentified I-70 Serial Killer murdered clerks in Kansas, Missouri, Indiana, and beyond — striking in broad daylight, vanishing onto the interstate within minutes, and leaving one of the most chilling cold cases in American history.In this episode, we break down:• The confirmed victims across the I-70 corridor• Why Kansas City became part of his hunting ground• Behavioral profile and why he killed so efficiently• The ballistic links, witness sketches, and investigative gaps• Possible connected murder...
2025-11-2944 min
Deadly TruthsThe Kansas City Butcher — Inside the Crimes of Bob BerdellaThis is Deadly Truths with Becca.Today we’re going straight into one of the most disturbing cases in Kansas City history — a predator who hid in plain sight, manipulated the vulnerable, and turned an unassuming neighborhood house into a torture chamber. This episode breaks down who Bob Berdella really was, how he blended into KC’s flea-market culture, how he selected victims, and the methods he documented in chilling detail.We cover his early life, the Art Institute years, the expulsions, the escalation into cruelty, and the double life he maintained behind the façade of a “h...
2025-11-2841 min
Deadly TruthsThe Kansas City Two Trunks Murder (1890s) — A Forgotten Crime in the Heartland | Deadly TruthsThe Kansas City Two Trunks Murder is one of the Midwest’s most chilling forgotten cases—a woman dismembered, packed into two cheaply made trunks, and shipped through Union Depot in the 1890s. This is not the Kentucky trunk murder. This is Kansas City’s own nightmare, buried in the archives and nearly erased by time.In this episode, we uncover the victim’s life, the killer hiding in the same boarding house, and the investigation that chased him across the rail lines.None of the shock. All of the truth.If this story matters...
2025-11-2324 min
Deadly TruthsThe Kansas City Massacre: Mobsters and the Birth of the Modern FBI | Dead City | Deadly truthsOn June 17, 1933, a burst of gunfire outside Union Station changed American law enforcement forever. The Kansas City Massacre wasn’t just a botched prisoner transfer — it was a deadly collision of mobsters, machine guns, and corruption that exposed how unprepared the FBI truly was.In this episode of Deadly Truths, we break down the ambush minute-by-minute: the gunmen, the escape attempt, the political cover-ups, and how four men died on the concrete before the sun even came up. We dive into the myths, the suspects, and the violent criminal network operating across the Midwest during the Public Enem...
2025-11-1941 min
Deadly TruthsThe Assassination of Jesse James: Betrayal in the Heartland | Deadly Truths Season 5Jesse James didn’t die in a gunfight or on horseback.He died unarmed, dusting a picture frame in a rented house while the Ford brothers aimed a pistol at the back of his head.This premiere episode of Season 5: Kansas City’s Darkest Crimes — Heartland Homicide cuts through the Hollywood myth and exposes the real Jesse James: a violent outlaw, a master manipulator of the press, and a man trapped by the legend he created.We break down his early years as a Confederate guerrilla, the real crimes of the James–Younger Gang, the coll...
2025-11-1730 min
Deadly TruthsThe Bardstown Murders: The Town That Became a Crime SceneBetween 2013 and 2016, the quiet bourbon town of Bardstown, Kentucky became the center of one of America’s most disturbing clusters of unsolved cases. A police officer ambushed. A mother and teenage daughter brutally murdered. A young mother of five who vanished without a trace. And the father who was shot and killed while searching for her.In this season finale, we break down every major case:• Officer Jason Ellis (2013) — executed on the Bluegrass Parkway• Kathy & Samantha Netherland (2014) — a staged and brutal double homicide• Crystal Rogers (2015) — missing mother of five• Tommy Ballard (2016) — killed during the search for his...
2025-11-1523 min
Deadly TruthsThe Murder of Shanda Sharer: The Brutal Truth Behind the 1992 Teen KillersTwelve-year-old Shanda Sharer thought she was sneaking out to see a friend. Instead, she was walking straight into one of the most brutal and disturbing crimes in American history.In this episode, we break down the real story behind the 1992 murder of Shanda Sharer—jealousy, manipulation, group psychology, and a night of escalating violence led by four teenage girls who crossed every line of humanity. From the abduction to the torture, the fire, the aftermath, and the shocking decisions made in court, this is the full, unfiltered truth of a case that still haunts Indiana and Kentucky to...
2025-11-1536 min
Deadly TruthsThe Bluegrass Conspiracy: Corrupt Cops, Cocaine Smuggling, and the Truth Behind the Cocaine BearThe Bluegrass Conspiracy is one of the wildest true-crime stories to ever come out of Kentucky — a sprawling network of corrupt cops, wealthy insiders, drug-running pilots, political protection, and a smuggling pipeline that stretched from Lexington to Colombia. At the center of it all was former narcotics officer Andrew Thornton II, a man who went from badge to trafficker, flying low-altitude cocaine runs through the Appalachian mountains… until he fell out of the sky wearing night-vision goggles, a bulletproof vest, and a Gucci bag full of cocaine.His death was only the beginning.As investigators traced his...
2025-11-1532 min
Deadly TruthsThe Murder of Marion Miley: Kentucky’s Golf Prodigy Cut Down in Cold BloodMarion Miley was one of the brightest stars in American golf — a 25-year-old prodigy with national titles, international attention, and a future the sports world was already predicting. But in the early hours of September 28th, 1941, everything ended in a violent burst of gunfire inside the Lexington Country Club.In this episode, we uncover the full story:• Marion’s rise as one of golf’s most promising female athletes• Her final night inside the clubhouse apartment• The break-in by three desperate men• The chaotic gunfight that left Marion dead and her mother critically injured•...
2025-11-1525 min
Deadly TruthsThe Rowan County War: Kentucky’s Bloodiest Feud - The Frontier is DeadKentucky has seen violence, but nothing like what hit Rowan County in the 1880s.This wasn’t a feud — it was a war.In this episode, we uncover the brutal story of The Rowan County War, a three-year bloodbath that turned the quiet town of Morehead into a battlefield. What began as a political dispute exploded into public executions, ambushes, burned homes, and open-street shootouts, all led by the ruthless Craig Tolliver and his armed clan.You’ll hear how a single Election Day killing lit the fuse… how Sheriff James Hogg’s daylight murder pus...
2025-11-1419 min
Deadly TruthsThe Murder of Pearl Bryan: The Headless Mystery of 1896 - Dead StateIn 1896, the body of 22-year-old Pearl Bryan was found in a frozen Kentucky field—pregnant, murdered, and beheaded.Her killers, Scott Jackson and Alonzo Walling, were educated, well-dressed medical students.Her missing head was never found.This episode uncovers Pearl’s final days, the lies that lured her into danger, the forensic trail that exposed her killers, and the explosive double execution that shocked America. We examine the rumors of satanic rituals, the courtroom chaos, and the haunting legends that still cling to the Ohio River valley.More than a murder, this is a...
2025-11-1420 min
Deadly TruthsBrutal Murder of Brenda Sue Schaefer - Dead CityBrenda Sue Schaefer was 36, kind, devout, and ready to end her relationship with Mel Ignatow — a controlling, 51-year-old real estate broker from Louisville. On September 23, 1988, she vanished.For years, Ignatow taunted investigators, manipulating the media while police searched for proof. When her body was finally found, the case still fell apart in court — and Ignatow walked free.Then, six months later, a man remodeling Ignatow’s home opened a floor vent… and found five undeveloped rolls of film. The photographs showed everything — the torture, the murder, and Ignatow’s face.But it was too late. He...
2025-11-1415 min
Deadly TruthsTwo Trunks, One Ticket: The Butcher of Lexington (1901) - Dead CityIn December 1901, two young women vanished from a Lexington boarding house. Days later, two wooden trunks arrived in Cincinnati — leaking blood.Inside were the dismembered remains of Lillian Rodin and Minnie Everly… and the calling card of a man named Claude O’Brien.He was charming, well-dressed, and deadly — a salesman who turned seduction into slaughter.His arrest and public hanging shocked Kentucky, giving birth to forensic science in the Bluegrass and inspiring one of America’s earliest urban legends: O’Brien’s boxes.This episode of Deadly Truths: Kentucky Bloodlines dives into the real story...
2025-11-1414 min
Deadly TruthsThe Harpe Brothers: America’s First Serial Killers - The Frontier is DeadBefore the words serial killer ever existed, the frontier already knew their kind.In the late 1790s, Micajah “Big Harpe” and Wiley “Little Harpe” roamed the Kentucky-Tennessee wilderness with three captive “wives” and a trail of mutilated bodies behind them. They didn’t kill for money or revenge — they killed because it made them feel alive.This season premiere of Deadly Truths takes you into the birth of American sadism — a land without law, mercy, or conscience.From the Revolutionary War’s ruins to the first roadside manhunt, this is where America learned what evil really looked l...
2025-11-1318 min
Deadly TruthsThe Forgotten Names of the Public Enemy Era - The Mob is DeadThey weren’t the legends — they were the wreckage left behind.In this Morally Bankrupt season finale, we go beyond Dillinger, Nelson, and Bonnie & Clyde to uncover the men who died forgotten: John Paul Chase, Homer Van Meter, Adam Richetti, Doc Barker, Red Hamilton, Eddie Green, and others erased by J. Edgar Hoover’s myth-making machine.They bled out in cornfields, cheap hotels, and back alleys while the FBI built its empire and Hollywood wrote its heroes.This episode strips away the headlines to show what really happened when the spotlight moved on — the loyalty, betrayal...
2025-11-1123 min
Deadly TruthsCreepy Karpis: The Last Public Enemy | The Mob is DeadHe was the last man standing — calm, brilliant, and impossible to catch.Alvin “Creepy” Karpis wasn’t the romantic outlaw Hoover’s FBI wanted you to believe in.He was the strategist — the man who made the Bureau look foolish, survived Alcatraz, and taught a young Charles Manson how to play guitar.This episode of Deadly Truths: Morally Bankrupt exposes the truth behind Hoover’s staged arrest, the propaganda that buried Karpis’s legacy, and the irony of America’s final Public Enemy — a man who never killed for pleasure, but who understood power better than anyone chasing...
2025-11-0624 min
Deadly Truths“Machine Gun” Kelly Public Enemy - The Mob is DeadHe never fired the gun that made him famous.He never wanted to be an outlaw.But his wife — and the FBI — turned him into one.In 1933, George “Machine Gun” Kelly shouted “Don’t shoot, G-men!” as federal agents surrounded a Memphis farmhouse.It was the line that built the legend — and the lie — that made J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI a national empire.In this 40-minute episode of Deadly Truths: Morally Bankrupt, Becca unravels the story of fear, ambition, and manipulation behind the myth:how Kathryn Kelly manufactured her husband’s persona,how th...
2025-11-0430 min
Deadly TruthsThe Blast Inside the Walls — The Leavenworth Explosion (Halloween Finale)On April 7th, 1919, a violent explosion ripped through the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth — a blast so powerful it shattered windows a mile away and left dozens of soldiers dead.The government called it an accident.The prisoners called it revenge.And more than a century later, guards still whisper that something beneath those walls remembers.In this Halloween finale, Becca unearths the haunting true story of The Blast Inside the Walls — a mix of fact, fire, and the ghosts of justice gone wrong.This episode of Deadly Truths contains hist...
2025-10-3111 min
Deadly TruthsPretty Boy Floyd: The Outlaw America Needed - The Mob is DeadHe robbed banks when the banks were robbing everyone else.He burned mortgage records so families could keep their homes.And when the FBI called him Public Enemy Number One, Oklahoma called him a hero.In this episode of Deadly Truths, we uncover the rise and fall of Pretty Boy Floyd — from barefoot farm boy to Depression-era legend — and how the government’s war on crime turned a desperate man into an American myth.Was he a cold-blooded killer… or the outlaw America needed most?Some will rob you with a six-gun...
2025-10-3048 min
Deadly TruthsMa Barker and the Barker Gang - The Mob is DeadShe wasn’t a mastermind. She was a mother — and Hoover needed a monster.Before she was a headline, she was just a woman standing in a kitchen in the Ozarks — a pot boiling, four boys yelling, and a husband running out of patience.Arizona Donnie Clark Barker — “Ma” — wasn’t born a monster. She was born poor, in a world that punished women for being anything but quiet.When the FBI raided her Florida hideout in 1935, they claimed she was the criminal mastermind behind one of America’s most dangerous gangs — a gray-haired matriarch orchestrat...
2025-10-2921 min
Deadly TruthsBaby Face Lester Nelson | The Mob is Dead | Deadly truthsHe wasn’t just another outlaw — he was a storm with a gun.Lester Gillis, better known as Baby Face Nelson, wasn’t driven by fame like Dillinger or fantasy like Bonnie and Clyde. He was driven by rage.In this episode of Deadly Truths: Morally Bankrupt, we unravel the violent rise and fall of America’s most unpredictable Public Enemy — from his days under Al Capone to the bloody shootout in Barrington that left federal agents dead and the country shaken.Nelson wanted respect. What he got was infamy.And in the end, even...
2025-10-2430 min
Deadly TruthsThe Lie We Loved: Bonnie & Clyde and the Price of America’s Outlaw Romance | Deadly Truths: Morally BankruptThey were young, reckless, and deadly — and America couldn’t look away.In this episode of Deadly Truths: Morally Bankrupt, Becca unravels the myth of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, the outlaw lovers who turned bloodshed into legend. From dusty backroads and stolen Fords to the FBI ambush that ended their story, this is the truth behind the glamour — the grief, the bodies, and the lies we told ourselves to make it all sound romantic.Discover how newspapers turned criminals into celebrities, how Hollywood kept the fantasy alive, and why our obsession with outlaw love storie...
2025-10-2322 min
Deadly TruthsThe Making of a Myth: John Dillinger and the Price of Fame - The Mob is DeadHe was the man who made America fall in love with crime.John Dillinger didn’t just rob banks — he robbed the line between fame and infamy.In this episode, Deadly Truths unravels how a restless boy from Indianapolis became the “Gentleman Bandit,” how the media built his legend, and how J. Edgar Hoover used his death to build the FBI’s empire.From the charm to the bloodshed, from the wooden gun to the Biograph alley — this is the story of the outlaw who taught America that fame can outlive morality.⚠️ Content Disclaim...
2025-10-2241 min
Deadly TruthsThe Last Call at Leavenworth Bootleggers - Dead BoltsIt was tradition at the Leavenworth Penitentiary: before a man walked to the gallows, he was offered one last drink. Some refused. Some asked for whiskey. Others stayed silent.But behind that ritual lay a darker story — one about the guards who built the scaffolds, the warden who signed the orders, and the soldiers who watched death become routine.In this episode of Deadly Truths, Becca uncovers the hidden history of execution at Leavenworth — the hangmen, the condemned, and the uneasy morality that lingered long after the trapdoor fell. From the 1920s Prohibition era to the fina...
2025-10-1812 min
Deadly TruthsLast Withdrawal: Bank Robbers and the Gallows at Leavenworth (Public Enemies) - Dead BoltsThey called them Public Enemies — men who robbed banks by day and captured headlines by night.But by the end of the 1930s, their hideouts had been replaced with cellblocks, and their getaway cars with wooden coffins.This is The Last Withdrawal — the true story of America’s final outlaw generation and the gallows that waited for them inside the walls of Leavenworth.The Great Depression gave birth to desperate men who became legends: John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, Machine Gun Kelly, and Alvin Karpis. They turned crime into rebellion — robbing banks th...
2025-10-1714 min
Deadly TruthsRobert Henry Best (WWII Traitor) - Dead BoltsHe traded his pen for a microphone — and his freedom for a cell.This is the story of Robert Henry Best, the American journalist who defected to Nazi Germany and became “Mr. Guess Who,” one of Hitler’s English-speaking propagandists.He believed he was telling the truth. Instead, he became the vice of treason.Captured by Allied troops in 1945, Best was convicted of twelve counts of treason and sentenced to life in prison at Leavenworth.His broadcasts were delusional — rants dressed up as patriotism.He died in federal custody in 1952, alone and forgotten...
2025-10-1613 min
Deadly TruthsMarcus Reno: The Man Who Survived CusterOn June 25, 1876, Major Marcus Albert Reno led part of the 7th Cavalry into the valley of the Little Bighorn River — and straight into legend.He survived what became known as Custer’s Last Stand, but instead of glory, he inherited disgrace.Branded a coward, court-martialed, and forgotten by history, Reno’s story became one of survival turned scandal.This episode explores the man behind the myth — the officer who lived through America’s most infamous defeat and spent the rest of his life trying to prove he shouldn’t have.From the chaos of the battl...
2025-10-1617 min
Deadly TruthsWilliam Kreutzer & the Fort Bragg Shooting - Dead in the RanksOn October 27, 1995, Sgt. William J. Kreutzer Jr. opened fire on a brigade formation during morning PT at Fort Bragg. He killed Major Stephen Mark Badger and wounded 18 fellow soldiers. This episode unpacks the events before, during, and after the shooting — from Kreutzer’s mindset to the struggle to subdue him, the trial, and the long legacy of that day.In this episode you’ll hear about:Kreutzer’s history, mental health struggles, and motivesThe sequence of the shooting — hidden in the trees, sniper fire, the assault from staff and Special Forces, and how the gu...
2025-10-1515 min
Deadly TruthsRobert Bales & The Kandahar Massacre — Dead in the RanksOn the night of March 11, 2012, Staff Sergeant Robert Bales left his post in Kandahar and murdered 16 Afghan civilians, including children, in two villages — triggering one of the most brutal massacres by a U.S. soldier in modern history.In this episode of Deadly Truths, we explore:Who Robert Bales was — before, during, and afterThe sequence of events in the villages of Alkozai and BalandiTestimonies, investigations, and the military trial that followedThe moral, psychological, and political fallout — both in Afghanistan and at homeTrigger/Content Warning: This e...
2025-10-1516 min
Deadly TruthsJohn Brown: The Firebrand of Kansas — Before the Civil War, There Was Kansas: The Frontier is DeadBonus Episode: Before the Civil War ever began, Kansas was already on fire.In the 1850s, one man made it his mission to end slavery — not with speeches, but with blood.This episode dives into the life and legacy of John Brown, the radical abolitionist who turned the Kansas frontier into America’s first civil war. From the Pottawatomie Massacre to the Battle of Osawatomie, Brown’s war on slavery changed the course of a nation — and set the stage for the bloodiest conflict in American history.🔥 Deadly Truths: The Firebrand of Kansas expl...
2025-10-1416 min
Deadly TruthsBefore Little Bighorn and After: Custer’s Leavenworth Years - The Frontier is DeadLong before his legendary last stand, George Armstrong Custer strutted through Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, a golden-haired Civil War hero convinced the rules didn’t apply to him. He was America’s “Boy General” — brave, photogenic, and utterly reckless — until the Army’s most haunted posttried to teach him humility.This Deadly Truths bonus episode traces Custer’s rise frombattlefield celebrity to court-martialed officer, his stormy year of disgrace at Leavenworth, and the eerie echoes that still linger in the fort’s limestone walls. We’ll follow the chain of arrogance that began on those parade groundsand ended nine years later in...
2025-10-1325 min
Deadly TruthsLeavenworth Prison Executing the Enemy Within WWII: Dead BoltsDuring World War II, thousands of German prisoners of war were held in camps across the United States — but some never made it home.Inside the barbed-wire fences of places like Camp Gruber, Tonkawa, and Fort Meade, Nazi loyalists turned on their own — murdering fellow soldiers accused of betraying Hitler or showing kindness to Americans.In the summer of 1945, fourteen of those killers were executed at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas — the largest mass execution of enemy soldiers on U.S. soil.This episode of Deadly Truths digs into the forgotten story of the Leavenworth 14 — from the brut...
2025-10-1121 min
Deadly TruthsThe Lynching at Leavenworth — The Murder of Fred AlexanderIn January 1901, a young Black man named Fred Alexander was dragged from his jail cell by a mob and burned alive outside Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. His only “crime” was being accused — not tried, not convicted — accused. This bonus episode of Deadly Truths: Death in the Big House examines how racism, mob violence, and media hysteria collided to create one of Kansas’s darkest moments. Through historical records, modern reflection, and the city’s recent efforts at remembrance, we revisit the story of Fred Alexander — and the reckoning that came more than a century too late.⚠️ Trigger Warning: Contains descripti...
2025-10-1010 min
Deadly TruthsInside Military Death Row: The Men Condemned at Fort Leavenworth - Dead in the RanksFort Leavenworth, Kansas — the oldest military prison in the United States, and the only one authorized to carry out executions.In this episode of Deadly Truths: Season Two — Death in the Big House, host Becca takes you inside the walls of the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks to uncover the stories of the men currently on military death row — soldiers once sworn to serve, now condemned for murder, rape, and wartime atrocities.From paratrooper Ronald Gray, to Hasan Akbar, Timothy Hennis, and Nidal Hasan, these cases reveal what happens when discipline collapses, and the military justice system turns...
2025-10-0938 min
Deadly TruthsThe Real Story Behind In Cold Blood | Kansas’ Most Famous MurderBefore true crime was a genre, one story changed everything — the brutal 1959 murders of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas. Their deaths shocked the nation and inspired Truman Capote’s groundbreaking book In Cold Blood, a work that blurred the line between journalism and literature.In this bonus Halloween episode of Deadly Truths: Season 2 — Leavenworth, Death in the House, host Becca Clark revisits the crime that redefined American true crime. From the quiet Clutter farmhouse to the execution of Perry Smith and Richard Hickock at the Kansas State Penitentiary near Leavenworth, this episode dives into how it happen...
2025-10-0715 min
Deadly TruthsThe Last Soldier to Die — John A. BennettFort Leavenworth, April 13, 1961 — thunder rolled across the Kansas sky as Private John A. Bennett became the last soldier ever executed by the U.S. military.Convicted of raping an 11-year-old Austrian girl, Bennett’s case raised hard questions about justice, race, mental health, and mercy within America’s armed forces. He confessed to the assault, was tried by court-martial, and hanged at Fort Leavenworth — yet controversy still follows his story decades later.In this Bonus episode of Deadly Truths: Season 2 — Halloween in the Big House, host Becca Clark revisits Bennett’s early life, the crime in Austria...
2025-10-0613 min
Deadly TruthsThe Ghosts of the Disciplinary Barracks | Fort Leavenworth’s Haunted PrisonWelcome to Season Two of Deadly Truths. I’m Becca, your host — and this season, we’re stepping inside the heart of America’s most haunted fortress: Fort Leavenworth.Behind these stone walls, soldiers were tried, executed, and buried under numbered headstones — their stories silenced, but never gone. Between 1875 and 1961, at least 136 men were executed at the Old U.S. Disciplinary Barracks, making it one of the most chilling sites in U.S. military history.In this Halloween bonus episode — The Ghosts of the Disciplinary Barracks — we’ll uncover the dark history of Fort Leavenworth’s executions, the...
2025-10-0411 min
Deadly TruthsThe Birdman of Leavenworth Robert Stroud: Dead Bolts - Deadly TruthsRobert Stroud, better known as the “Birdman of Alcatraz,” is often remembered through a Hollywood lens—mystified, softened, even glamorized. But the truth is darker. Originally sentenced to just 12 years for killing a man in Alaska, Stroud chose violence again and again behind bars. At Leavenworth, he murdered a prison guard, guaranteeing he would never leave the Big House alive.This Halloween, we peel back the myths and step into the cold corridors of Leavenworth, where Robert Stroud’s true legacy isn’t feathers or cages—but blood and brutality.And stay tuned—because next time, we unrav...
2025-10-0424 min
Deadly TruthsCarl Panzram — The Madman of Leavenworth - Dead Bolts : Deadly TruthsSeason Two, Episode One of Deadly Truths takes you inside the walls of Fort Leavenworth for a chilling Halloween special. We begin our October series with the infamous story of Carl Panzram — the Madman of Leavenworth. Born in brutality and shaped by abuse, Panzram grew into one of America’s most terrifying criminals. He confessed to murders, assaults, and arsons across the world, and in 1930 he walked to the gallows at Leavenworth with defiance on his lips. Was he born a monster, or made by the cruelty he endured? And does his ghost still haunt the prison today?Jo...
2025-10-0236 min
Deadly TruthsThe Thanksgiving Day Massacre: Priscilla Ford’s Deadly Rampage in RenoOn Thanksgiving Day, 1980, Reno was celebrating with parades and family gatherings when tragedy struck. Priscilla Ford, a woman with a long history of mental health struggles, drove her car through the crowded streets of downtown Reno—killing six people and injuring more than twenty.This episode dives into:Ford’s troubled background and the warnings leading up to the attack.The horrifying events of that November day under the Reno Arch.The trial that followed, including questions of competency and justice.The lasting impact this massacre left on Reno and...
2025-09-3019 min
Deadly TruthsTahoe's Real Estate Serial Killer - Dead StateIn the late 1970s, Lake Tahoe was a paradise on the surface — neon-lit casinos, booming tourism, and endless alpine beauty. But beneath the glitter and pine trees lurked a predator.This episode uncovers the chilling murders of 27-year-old Brynn Rainey and 16-year-old Carol Andersen, two young women brutally killed just two years apart. For decades, their cases went cold, their killer hiding in plain sight. The shocking truth? He wasn’t a drifter or a shadowy stranger — he was a local real estate agent, living and working among the very community he terrorized.Join us as we...
2025-09-2716 min
Deadly TruthsThe Murder of Hailey Nieto | Reno True Crime Podcast*Updated with corrected information from Hailey's mother April, please donate to her family below (GoFundMeLink For Hailey’s Girls, Luna & Mila )In March 2023, 18-year-old Hailey Nieto—a young mother of two—vanished from her apartment at the Siegel Suites Nevadan in downtown Reno. Days later, her body was found stuffed in a duffel bag off a dirt road near Cold Springs. The investigation pointed to her neighbor, 39-year-old habitual criminal Todd Tonnochy, a man Hailey had already voiced fears about.This episode unpacks the red flags Hailey shared before her death, the brutal details of the crim...
2025-09-2622 min
Deadly TruthsThe Alphabet Serial Killer of RenoIn this episode, we unravel the chilling case of Reno’s so-called Alphabet Serial Killer. From the eerie pattern in his victims to the strange, methodical way he stalked the streets, this story unsettled the community and left investigators scrambling for answers. We’ll dive into the timeline of murders, the victims’ stories, and how the killer earned his haunting nickname. Was it coincidence, calculation, or something more sinister? Join us as we trace the alphabet of death through Reno’s dark history.Resources for this episode: ABC7 — “Serial killer Joseph Naso calls I-Team from prison”T...
2025-09-2621 min
Deadly TruthsThe Mound House Murder: Marijuana, Betrayal, and Death on Highway 395On June 19, 2020, 26-year-old Jered Stefansky drove from Redding, California to Mound House, Nevada for what he believed was a marijuana deal. He vanished. Months later, skeletal remains were found at Rye Patch, and a massive conspiracy unraveled. In this episode, we follow the chilling path from Stefansky’s disappearance, through stalking, paranoia, and a brutal murder-for-hire plot involving Cory Spurlock. A double murder on Highway 395, lies, betrayal, and a desperate mother’s voice that echoes long after.📚 Resources & LinksDepartment of Justice – Press Release (Sept 12, 2025):Jury Convicts Man of Murder-for-Hire Conspiracy, Witness Tampering by Killing, and Stalking...
2025-09-2019 min
Deadly TruthsReno’s Corridor of Death : The Truckee RiverFrom Sandra Whitlock in 1985 to Christopher Nyhammer in 2025, the Truckee River has carried with it more than just snowmelt from Lake Tahoe. It has carried bodies. Fourteen confirmed deaths – some murders, some drownings, some still unexplained – haunt this ribbon of water that cuts through Reno, Nevada. By day it’s a place of recreation and families, but by night it becomes a corridor of shadows. This episode dives deep into the deaths tied to the Truckee, the unsolved mysteries, and the reputation the river has earned as a place of beauty and terror.Hosted by Rebecca Clark, true c...
2025-09-1911 min
Deadly TruthsThe Murder of Brianna Denison | Serial Rapist and MurdererIn January 2008, Reno was shaken by the disappearance of 19-year-old college student Brianna Denison. Abducted from a friend’s home near the University of Nevada campus, her case became one of the most high-profile investigations in the city’s history. This episode uncovers the chilling details of her abduction, the DNA trail that connected her case to other assaults, and the eventual capture of predator James Biela.We’ll explore how the community responded, the trial that gripped Nevada, and why Brianna’s story continues to resonate today.References & ResourcesABC News — “Body Found in Ren...
2025-09-1819 min
Deadly TruthsHungry Valley’s Suspected Serial Killer - Dead StateIn 1979, two young women vanished in Reno, Nevada. Their bodies were later discovered in Hungry Valley — less than a mile apart — sparking fear and mystery that haunted the community for decades. Julia Woodward was 21, and Jeannie Smith only 17, when their lives were cut short. For forty years, their murders remained unsolved.Then in 2019, advances in DNA technology pointed investigators toward Charles Gary Sullivan, a man in his seventies living in Arizona. Was he a hidden serial predator in Reno’s past?This episode unpacks:The cases of Julia Woodward and Jeannie Smith, and how th...
2025-09-1823 min
Deadly TruthsThe Murder of Julia Bulette: Queen of the Comstock - The Frontier is DeadIn 1867, Julia Bulette, Virginia City’s most famous courtesan and the so-called Queen of the Comstock, was brutally murdered in her cottage. Strangled and left for dead, her killing shocked the booming mining town built on the riches of the Comstock Lode.This episode of Deadly Truths explores Julia’s extraordinary life, the crime scene, and the sensational trial that followed. The controversial conviction and public hanging of John Millain raised questions that linger to this day: was justice really served, or was he a scapegoat?From the silver boom of Virginia City to the earl...
2025-09-1706 min
Deadly TruthsCannibalism at Donner Pass | The Frontier is DeadIn this episode of Reno Murders: Death in the Biggest Little City, we uncover the chilling history of the Donner Party tragedy at Donner Pass. Stranded in the Sierra Nevada during the brutal winter of 1846–47, dozens of pioneers faced starvation, desperation, and the ultimate taboo—cannibalism for survival.We’ll explore the journey westward, the fateful decisions that trapped them in the snow, and the haunting rescue attempts that revealed one of America’s darkest survival stories. More than just a tale of hunger, the Donner Party’s ordeal shaped how settlers viewed the Sierra Nevada and set the st...
2025-09-1539 min
Deadly TruthsThe Disappearance of Roy J. Frisch: Reno’s Mob MysteryIn 1935, Reno, Nevada was more than neon signs and quick divorces—it was the gambling capital of the West, with organized crime and mob money pulling the strings behind the scenes. That’s where we meet Roy J. Frisch: a bank cashier by day, trombone player by night, and federal witness with a dangerous secret.Frisch was set to testify in a federal mail fraud trial tied to mobsters like Tony “The Hat” Cornero and the Graham & McKay gambling syndicate. But just days before taking the stand, Frisch walked out of the Majestic Theatre and vanished into the Reno...
2025-09-1014 min
Deadly TruthsThe Reno State Fair Serial Killers - Dead CityKiller Couples: Love, Control, and Murder Across the WestWhen love turns lethal, the story takes a darker twist. In this episode of Deadly Truths, we investigate one of America’s most notorious killer couples—partners bound not just by romance, but by a shared appetite for control, manipulation, and murder.Behind the façade of an ordinary relationship, they plotted abductions, sexual assaults, and killings that stretched from Reno to Sacramento and along the highways of the West. Together, they became more dangerous than either could have been alone.We’ll explore how the...
2025-09-0639 min
Deadly TruthsRodney Halbower Serial Killer | Dead City Reno | Deadly truthsIn the mid-1970s, San Mateo County, California was terrorized by the Gypsy Hill Murders—a string of brutal killings near Pacifica, Daly City, Millbrae, and South San Francisco. For decades, the crimes went unsolved.Then in 1976, Michele Mitchell, a nursing student at the University of Nevada, Reno, was murdered in a case that also went cold. Decades later, DNA evidence revealed the shocking truth: both cases were tied to the same man—Rodney Halbower, the Gypsy Hill Serial Killer (aka the San Mateo Slasher)In this episode of Reno Murders, we trace Halbower’s violen...
2025-09-0530 min
Deadly TruthsThe Sheep’s Flat Serial Killer: From Jane Doe to Justice - Dead CityFrom Jane Doe to Justice: Reno’s Sheep’s Flat Mystery takes you inside one of Nevada’s most haunting cold cases. In 1982, the body of a woman was discovered near Sheep’s Flat outside Reno. For nearly four decades, she remained unidentified as “Jane Doe.” In 2019, forensic DNA technology finally revealed her name: Mary Silvani—and unmasked her killer, serial murderer James Richard Curry.This true crime episode explores Mary’s story, the forensic genealogy breakthrough that solved her case, and the chilling details of Curry’s violent past. Listeners will get an inside look at Reno crime history...
2025-09-0523 min
Deadly TruthsReno’s Haunted Canyon – Murder or MythIn the early 1970s, stories spread of four mutilated bodies discovered in Robb Canyon, on the edge of Reno, Nevada. The victims were never identified, the case was never solved, and the mystery became one of Reno’s most chilling unsolved murder legends. Was this truly a brutal crime, or just a ghost story that grew into Nevada folklore?In this bonus true crime episode, we explore the dark history of Robb Canyon—examining what was allegedly found, the unsettling atmosphere of the canyon itself, and the stories that connect it to Reno’s haunted past. We also c...
2025-09-0409 min
Deadly TruthsThe Brutal Murder of Sonja McCaskie: Reno’s Olympian Tragedy - Dead CityMurder in the Duplex: The Olympian’s Final Night on Yori AvenueIn March 1963, Reno was shaken by the brutal murder of Sonja McCaskie, a 27-year-old Olympic skier who had once represented Great Britain on the world stage. Inside her small duplex on Yori Avenue, police uncovered one of Nevada’s most shocking and gruesome true crime cases.This episode of Reno Murders: Death in the Biggest Little City explores:The life and final days of Sonja McCaskie, the British Olympian who made her home in RenoThe horrifying crime scene that...
2025-09-0421 min