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A Monster in Human Skin: The Making of Edward Spreitzer
Edward Spreitzer didn’t exactly grow up in a horror movie. No red flags waving from the jump. He was born in 1961 in Chicago to a teenage mom and a father who looked at his son like a pe…
The Unlikely Beginnings of Japan’s Most Dangerous Cult Leader
In the spring of 1955, in Kumamoto, Japan, a poor family of mat makers welcomed their fourth son. His name was Chizuo Matsumoto, and at first glance, his life was expected to follo…
The Dooley Family’s New Start and a Sudden Turn
Lyda Trueblood was born in Keytesville, Missouri, in 1892. Life was tough for just about everybody back then, but Lyda seemed to pull the short straw more often than not.
At twenty years old, s…
How the Weavers Ended Up on Ruby Ridge: A Family Seeking Shelter from the Storm
In the 1980s, Randy Weaver, an Iowa factory worker and former U.S. soldier, decided to take his wife Vicki and their four kids out to Idaho. Vicki was the family’…
A Quiet Farm with a Dark Secret
Niagara, North Dakota, is one of those places where if you blink, you might miss it. Around fifty people call it home, and the landscape looks like the kind of peaceful farmland postcard you’d expect: rolling g…
Introduction: A Crime Seen Before
The Repeat Performance That Isn’t Coincidence
There’s something deeply unsettling about hearing the details of a violent crime and realizing you’ve heard them before. Same method. Same motive. Ne…
Conspiracy theories have been around forever. From secret societies pulling strings behind the scenes to government cover-ups, people have always loved a good hidden truth. But thanks to the internet, these theories have evolved from whispered suspi…
A New Name, a New Country, and the Birth of Harry Powers
The Great Depression didn’t exactly come with a warning label. One minute, people were building futures. The next, they were broke, hungry, and hanging on by a thread. And while most fo…
The Incel Ideology — Roots and Radicalization
The term “incel” is short for “involuntary celibate.” It started decades ago as a simple label for people… mostly men, who were struggling with loneliness and the fr…
Growing Up in a War Zone: Sally McNeil’s Early Years in Allentown
The Allentown, Pennsylvania that young Sally Dempsey grew up in wasn’t exactly the stuff of Norman Rockwell paintings. In the 1960s, her childhood home was more like a li…
Bonnie and Clyde vs. Their Darker Shadow: Meet Charles Starkweather
When you think crime duos, Bonnie and Clyde pop up like the original poster kids. They’re the legend, the blueprint everyone else gets measured against. If you buy into the i…
When Naked and Bloody on a New Mexico Road Means Trouble
Spring, 1999. A woman bolts down a dusty road in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. If that name sounds like a bad joke, you’re not far off. This place is famous for two things: meth la…
The Boiling Point in Brooks County
May 1918. Southern Georgia. Things weren’t exactly peaceful, but they were holding—barely. Tensions simmered just beneath the surface, like a pot someone forgot they left on the stove. And then someone…
The Attack That Should Never Have Happened
Lisa Knoefel was 41 years old, and on the night of November 26, 2012, she was exactly where she should’ve felt safest—her own bed, trying to get some sleep. No alarm bells. No warning signs. Ju…
Nasim Aghdam and the Viral Path to a Tragedy
On April 3, 2018, a 39-year-old woman walked up to YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, California, with one very specific objective. What that objective was—and how long she’d been planning it…
Something Was Hunting the Forgotten on Skid Row
1978, downtown Los Angeles. The city’s heartbeat was loud, but in the background, barely audible to the people not paying attention, something much darker had started to stir. In the alleys, ben…
He scammed, seduced, and stabbed... business in the front, murder in the back.
The Final Act of a Serial Seducer
On May 15, 2025, Glen Edward Rogers... serial killer, grifter, and self-declared ladies’ man, was executed by lethal injection…
The Man at the Door
On July 9, 2014, a man in a FedEx uniform knocked on the front door of 711 Leaflet Lane in Harris County, Texas. Inside, 15-year-old Cassidy Stay was holding down the fort. She was a student at Klein Collins High School, oldest …
Beige Boy in a Gray World
Before he called himself BTK. Before he was binding, torturing, or killing anyone... Dennis Rader was just a quiet, awkward kid growing up in Kansas. And not the kind of quiet that screams “deep thinker” or &ld…
The Last Normal Afternoon of Sandra Cantu
March 27th, 2009. A Friday. One of those warm, pre-summer afternoons where the school bell rings and every kid in town turns into a heat-seeking missile for snacks, bikes, and their best friend’s fron…
The Baby With a Secret
Ted Bundy was born on November 24, 1946, in Burlington, Vermont. His birth certificate said “father: unknown.” Which was true. But everything else about the situation? Not so much.
He came into the world as Theod…
The Strange, Self-Made Life of Susan Monica
Susan Monica wasn’t exactly what you’d call average. Born Stephen Buchanan in California in 1948, she served in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War as an engineer before deciding to trade mil…
Jack the Ripper’s Brutal Legacy: The Eleven Women and the Theories That Followed
By the end of the 19th century, London wasn’t just grimy—it was scared. A series of brutal murders had gripped the city, leaving eleven women dead on…
The Last Normal Night: Kelly Tinyes Gets a Phone Call
On the night of March 3, 1989—just one day before her fourteenth birthday—Kelly Tinyes was holding down the fort at her family’s home in Long Island, New York. She was the resp…