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Toxicology on Ken Urker is still pending, and Gypsy Rose Blanchard had already told People he overdosed. The Massachusetts medical examiner ruled Sandra Birchmore a suicide three months after she was found and took it back in April 2026. Bryan Kohberger swore to Judge Hippler he was guilty and now wants Hippler removed, with Hippler hearing the motion on October 15, 2026. Four listener Q&A segments in one episode. Ken's sister Autumn says he slept with a gun because of people online, and a September 2025 prison call has Gypsy describing a knife and Ken's headboard. Prosecutors say Matthew Farwell's state police...

The piece of Colleen Slemmer's skull that Christa Pike carried to breakfast on January 13, 1995, spent the weekend in a black leather jacket on an office chair at the Knoxville Job Corps center. Pike had left it there Friday afternoon. On Tuesday morning an officer reached into the inside pocket and found the bone. He drove it to a forensic anthropologist at the University of Tennessee, who set it into the one space still empty in Colleen's reconstructed skull. Chapter two of Satan's Helper: The Christa Pike Story, the Hidden Killers documentary on the Colleen Slemmer murder, is how that...

Bryan Kohberger pleaded guilty to four murders six days after Judge Steven Hippler denied his lawyers' request for more time, and that six-day gap is now the spine of Kohberger's fight to get Hippler off his case. The motion to disqualify, filed by appointed attorney Greg Rauch, also quotes Hippler's sentencing remarks calling Kohberger a "faceless coward" and "the worst of the worst." The hearing is October 15, 2026, before Hippler. Kohberger told that judge under oath on July 2, 2025, that he was guilty and that no promises were made. His handwritten petition says Anne Taylor's team coerced him and withheld evidence...

The prosecution's case against Richard Allen in the Delphi murders rested on three things. A single unfired bullet linked to Allen's gun through contested forensic analysis. Allen's own statement that he was on the trail that afternoon. And more than sixty confessions made during thirteen months of solitary confinement.

No DNA. No fingerprints. No blood. No witness who saw Allen harm anyone.

Allen surrendered voluntarily in October 2022. The state sent him to Westville Correctional Facility — not the county jail, not a standard pretrial facility. A state prison. Maximum-security segregated unit. The only pretrial detainee during th...

Prosecutors say Matthew Farwell's first interview about Sandra Birchmore's death went unrecorded and that no judge was ever asked for a warrant to search his house or phone. Sandra, 23 and ten weeks pregnant, was found in her Canton apartment on February 4, 2021. The medical examiner ruled suicide that May; in April 2026 the same office withdrew it and listed the manner as undetermined. Dr. Michael Baden, hired by her family, found a fractured hyoid bone and a ligature tangled in her hair and called it homicide. Farwell, a former Stoughton detective, is on trial in Boston federal court, accused of strangling...

Sandra Birchmore was picking out car seats and onesies two days before she was found dead in her Canton apartment. A friend shared that detail with reporters after the first day of Matthew Farwell's federal trial. Inside the courtroom, three women described a woman who was making plans. Sandra's boss said she'd been told the father of Sandra's baby was a police officer and that Sandra was determined to have the child. Sandra told her third-grade students the father was her boyfriend. Her mentor, a detective, said she'd never in her career seen a death scene like this one...

Aurora Urker is 21 months old, her father is dead, and the fight over who raises her is being argued through tabloids. Ken Urker died October 1, 2026, with no custody order filed. His sister Autumn told the U.S. Sun he ended the relationship a month earlier and wanted to take Aurora home to Texas. Gypsy Rose Blanchard answered with September 2 texts in which she and Ken agree to a $1,500 joint-custody filing with no contesting lawyers. Between those two accounts sits a September 2025 prison call, published by the Daily Mail, in which Gypsy describes taking a knife to Ken's headboard and...

Ken Urker was found dead on his 34th birthday, October 1, 2026, and his sister Autumn says he had been sleeping with a gun every night because strangers online had doxxed him and sent death threats. The Lafourche Parish Sheriff's Office says deputies found drug paraphernalia and a handgun and that the death is being investigated as drug-related; the coroner says no cause until toxicology returns. Gypsy Rose Blanchard told People the next day he overdosed, then launched the Kenan's Law petition saying harassment had been reported to TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Reddit before he died. Ryan Anderson, who married Gypsy...

Caleb Flynn's attorney filed the appeal and said he was finished. Alleigha Botner deleted her texts the morning Ashley Flynn died, lied to the FBI, and investigators skipped her home. Matthew Farwell's defense attorney called a relationship that prosecutors allege started at 15 an affair. Sandra Birchmore told friends Farwell turned kind twelve days before she died. Four listener Q&A segments covering both cases in one episode. Flynn's appeal challenges jury instructions and venue. Botner's investigation gaps include no DNA collection, no Flock cameras, and a parked-car alibi. Farwell's prosecution rests on a 180 and a masked entry. The defense...

When Christa Pike sat across from a Knoxville police investigator in January 1995 and explained why Colleen Slemmer was dead, she said the girl who'd hovered over her bed at night with a knife was Colleen. She'd told her mother the same story at Christmas, nineteen days before the murder. The story has one source. Chapter one of Satan's Helper: The Christa Pike Story, the Hidden Killers documentary on the Colleen Slemmer case, is the eighteen years that produced the girl who told it.

The file on her starts early. At twelve, after her grandmother died, she went...

In the Delphi case, the only physical evidence the state presented connecting Richard Allen to the murders of Abby Williams and Libby German was a single unfired .40-caliber bullet found between the girls' bodies. Not fired from Allen's gun. Not found with DNA, fingerprints, or blood. Linked to his Sig Sauer through a forensic method called toolmark analysis — a discipline the Innocence Project has called "not settled science."

No physical evidence. No witness who saw Allen harm anyone. One unspent round and microscopic scratches on brass.

Meanwhile, the investigation had found other leads it chose no...

Federal prosecutors say Stoughton police detective Matthew Farwell strangled Sandra Birchmore in her Canton apartment and staged the scene as a suicide. Massachusetts called it a suicide for three and a half years. Prosecutor Cummings told a jury Farwell met Sandra through a police youth program when she was a child and was allegedly with her by 15. When a friend called Stoughton police and disclosed the relationship, prosecutors say Farwell did a 180. Turned nice. Asked for a key. Sandra told friends he had changed. Twelve days later she was dead. He allegedly walked into her building that night hooded...

Matthew Farwell's murder trial opened in Boston on October 9 with a fight over one phone. Prosecutor Torey Cummings read the jury Sandra Birchmore's final text, sent to Farwell seven minutes before he reached her building on February 1, 2021. Defense attorney Kimberly Stevens answered with a search from Sandra's phone that afternoon, about the color of the suicide ribbon. The first describes a 23-year-old opening her door to a man she trusted. The second describes a woman the defense says took her own life after he broke up with her.

The government's story starts in a Stoughton police youth...

Alleigha Botner testified she texted I want to kill her, Caleb about Ashley Flynn. She searched how to wipe their conversations off the apps they used. She deleted her own messages the morning Ashley died. She lied to the FBI about the affair. And seven or eight agencies worked this case without ever searching her home, collecting her DNA, running a Flock camera, or walking the field behind the Flynn house. Her alibi: a car parked in a driveway in Vandalia, caught on a neighbor's camera. Not her. The car. A UC law professor says there may be an...

Caleb Flynn got life without parole on nine counts including aggravated murder. Two days later his attorney filed a notice of appeal, asked the court to appoint a public defender, and told reporters his firm would not handle it going forward. The appeal targets Judge Pratt's jury instructions and her refusal to move the trial out of Miami County. Mulligan says the state failed to prove prior calculation and design. Flynn says he did not do it. Listener questions cut through both: why the lawyer walked away from his own filing, the gap between what Mulligan is appealing and...

Did anyone check the first story? Tony Brueski and former FBI agent Jennifer Coffindaffer put that question to three cases. Ken Urker, Gypsy Rose Blanchard's ex, died in Louisiana on October 1, 2026; the sheriff's office reports no signs of foul play, Gypsy says overdose, and his sister says he was terrified of her. Sandra Birchmore's death was a suicide in the state's file from 2021 until April 30, 2026, when the medical examiner changed it to undetermined. Matthew Farwell, the Stoughton detective who was the last person seen with her, is on trial in federal court in Boston and says she took her...

Twelve days before Kouri Richins' murder trial opened, the prosecutors preparing to try her served Verizon with a warrant for the phone records of a sitting sheriff, a former sheriff, and a police chief. Two of those men, Wasatch County Sheriff Jared Rigby and former Summit County Sheriff Dave Edmunds, pleaded not guilty October 7 to obstructing justice in her case.

The Summit County Attorney's Office says it received an anonymous letter in January listing thirteen allegations against Detective Eric Mainord, one of the lead investigators on the Richins case and a candidate against Rigby for Wasatch County...

Christa Pike told the execution team where to try the needle, her lawyers say. They tried at least seven times, by her lawyers' count, before getting two doses of pentobarbital into her on September 30, 2026. She was still snoring when officials cut the microphone and called an ambulance. The Tennessee Department of Correction says it followed its lawful, established protocol and that the protocol did not allow additional procedures. Pike is the only woman on Tennessee's death row, convicted of the 1995 torture killing of Colleen Slemmer. Her lawyers have asked a Nashville court to preserve every piece of evidence from...

Three days after Abby Williams, thirteen, and Libby German, fourteen, were found dead on a creek bank in Delphi, Indiana, a man did something investigators say almost never happens. He walked up to a conservation officer in a grocery store parking lot and told him he had been on the trail that afternoon. His name was Richard Allen. The officer, Dan Dulin, wrote it down.

Someone marked the form cleared. One word in red ink. Nobody has ever identified who wrote it. Prosecutor Nick McLeland said at trial he does not know to this day. Sheriff Tony...

Robert Devine ran the youth police program Sandra Birchmore joined at 13, rose to deputy chief, retired during the internal investigation into his contact with her, and became a lawyer. In December 2025 the state's police standards board revoked his certification, finding a pattern of unprofessional conduct and that he was untruthful about his contact with her. Investigators say that contact included Facebook messages sent under a fake name. He disputes the findings, denies any encounter with her, and has sued to get his badge back. He has never been charged; neither has William Farwell, who gave up his certification in 2024...

Kimberly Stevens chose the word affair for a relationship prosecutors say began when Sandra Birchmore was 15. She put her arm around Matthew Farwell and told the jury he made mistakes and did not kill Sandra. Then she built her defense from Sandra's own phone: the suicide ribbon search, the image asking who would cry, the medical examiner who originally ruled suicide. The prosecution says zero searches for methods existed on Sandra's devices, and that years of texts about Farwell grabbing her throat explain why Sandra would not have fought. The examiner has since changed her ruling to undetermined. The...

Jury selection in the Matthew Farwell trial began October 6 in Boston, and the first fight is over one doctor. Sandra Birchmore's medical examiner ruled her 2021 death a suicide, then changed it to undetermined in April 2026. Prosecutors want her on the stand to explain both rulings, and so does the defense.

Farwell, a former Stoughton police detective, has pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors say he strangled Sandra on February 1, 2021, to keep her from reporting a relationship they say began when she was 15. The defense says he went there to end it and that she took her own life after...

Matthew Farwell's defense has a doctor who won't say suicide and a medical examiner who no longer does. Sandra Birchmore was found on February 4, 2021, on her bedroom floor with a strap around her neck tied to a closet door handle. The defense's pathologist, a former New Hampshire chief medical examiner, says he can't determine how she died and can't rule out hanging. The prosecution's experts say her broken hyoid and her position point to strangulation. Prosecutors also say Farwell's DNA was on the strap. He has pleaded not guilty to killing a witness and causing the death of her...

Gypsy Rose Blanchard says Ken Urker died of a drug overdose and that she doesn't know whether it was intentional. The Lafourche Parish Sheriff's Office says he was found dead at his Raceland home on October 1, 2026, the case is open, and there are no signs of foul play. Between those two statements sits a month that the internet has filled in on its own. The internet's version has a reported split, a rumored custody fight over their daughter Aurora, and a man who, by his sister's account, was afraid of the mother of his child. Gypsy calls him her...

The DNA result in Sandra Birchmore’s case creates a simple fact with a complicated legal consequence: Matthew Farwell was not the biological father of her unborn child. Prosecutors still say the pregnancy matters to motive because they allege Birchmore told Farwell the baby was his and that his own communications show he believed her.

Farwell has pleaded not guilty to federal charges accusing him of killing Birchmore and causing the death of her unborn child. The government alleges he strangled her on February 1, 2021 and staged the Canton apartment to look like suicide. The defense maintains she to...

Christa Pike’s September 30 execution attempt failed after Tennessee administered two doses of pentobarbital and she remained alive. Her attorneys now say the IV process included at least seven needle sticks, a needle bent at a 90-degree angle, and injuries to both arms that were documented after she reached the hospital.

One of the most striking details comes from Pike’s own legal team: they say she was actively helping the IV team identify possible access points. That claim sits beside another documented failure from the same state only four months earlier. On May 21, Tennessee halted Tony Carr...

Alex Murdaugh is headed back to trial, and the missing murder weapons are now at the center of a new discovery fight. His lawyers filed a September 30 motion asking the court to compel production of records from an investigation into allegations that local police may have handled or moved evidence after Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were killed.

The defense motion relies on reporting about a state grand-jury inquiry involving Yemassee Police Chief Greg Alexander and another officer. Alexander was present at Moselle on June 7, 2021, but he has not been charged. His attorney denies the allegations. The defense...

Caleb Flynn entered sentencing still saying he did not kill Ashley Flynn. He left with life without parole and a question from his own daughter hanging over the courtroom. Judge Jeannine Pratt repeated Ava’s question about why Flynn hated her mother so much, then said the court could not answer it and no explanation could justify the verdict the jury had returned.

That verdict followed a prosecution built without the murder weapon. No gun was recovered. Prosecutors instead argued that the total digital record pointed to Flynn: approximately 107,000 messages exchanged with Alleigha Botner, activity from Apple de...

A post-mistrial filing in the Lindsay Clancy case sent true-crime discussion straight toward Patrick Clancy, even though Kevin Reddington's Rule 25 motion did not accuse Patrick of killing the children or identify him as an alternate suspect. The filing was aimed at the Commonwealth's proof, not at replacing Lindsay Clancy with another defendant. 

Reddington argued that prosecutors had failed to present legally sufficient evidence that Clancy committed the killings and failed to prove criminal responsibility beyond a reasonable doubt. That sounded jarring after a trial in which the defense focused on postpartum psychosis and lack of criminal responsibility. B...

Caleb Flynn entered his sentencing hearing still denying that he killed Ashley Flynn. He left with a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole and the words of his daughters hanging over the courtroom.

Their statements were read by relatives. One daughter said she would not visit him in prison. Another asked what their mother had ever done to deserve what happened and urged Flynn to tell the truth. Ashley's family asked for the maximum sentence while also speaking about forgiveness and the permanent damage the murder caused.

The jury had convicted...

Gypsy Rose Blanchard told PEOPLE she believed Urker overdosed and said she did not know whether it was intentional. She told TMZ that an unidentified substance had been found at the scene. Police-report details later described syringes and other drug-related items, but investigators said they had found no evidence of foul play while continuing to investigate. The coroner’s office was completing the autopsy on October 2, with results still pending.

By October 4, Blanchard had moved from explaining her belief about Urker’s death to promoting “Kenan’s Law,” a petition aimed at social-media companies and repeated harassment complaints...

Tennessee’s failed execution of Christa Pike was the state’s second major execution failure in four months, and one name connects both attempts. Pike survived after officials administered two doses of pentobarbital on September 30. She was transported to a hospital after witnesses reported that she continued breathing and could be heard snoring.

Dr. Mark Fowler was assigned as the physician for Pike’s execution. He had also been involved in the May 21 attempt to execute Tony Carruthers, which was stopped after the execution team could not establish the IV access required by Tennessee’s protocol. Litigation from the...

More than 100,000 messages helped prosecutors tell the story of Caleb Flynn’s affair with Alleigha Botner before a jury convicted him of killing Ashley Flynn. Those texts are now fueling a different question: could they support a civil case against Botner?

Botner testified that Flynn talked about wanting Ashley gone and discussed killing her. She said she believed some of his statements referred to divorce, but she also described deleting a message after Ashley’s death asking Flynn whether he had been involved. Trial reporting documented that she initially denied the affair when interviewed by the FBI.

Former FBI Special Agent Jennifer Coffindaffer says the Nancy Guthrie case reached her personally months before the latest Mexico ransom claim. In April, an extortionist sent her a demand through a private personnel email address and used a middle name she does not publicly go by. She reported the contact to the FBI and later said she did not believe the sender was one of Nancy's abductors. The message still demonstrated access to information most people would never know to look for.

On September 28, a separate message reached Nancy's friend Lauren Serpa. According to Serpa, the sender...

Two cases in one sitting with defense attorney and former prosecutor Eric Faddis, and both of them have a document that predates the damage.

In Tennessee, it is a lawsuit. Christa Pike's attorneys filed in January arguing that her blood condition and small veins created a serious risk that an IV line would fail during her execution. The state disputed it. The execution went ahead on September 30, two doses of pentobarbital were administered, and Pike survived. Her lawyers say the lines failed and the drug went into the tissue of both arms. The Department of Correction says...

On September 15, 2026, Nick Reiner's public defender told a Los Angeles courtroom that he has a serious mental illness and a long history of self-medicating. His circumstances, she said, show how hard it is for people like him to get treatment. Seventeen years earlier, in a $60,000-a-month room at a Malibu treatment center, a 15-year-old Nick talked every night after lights out, and the boy in the next bed has one word for it. That word, and why he chose it, is where Self-Made Monster: The Nick Reiner Story begins, and the full series runs from that room to that...

The Sandra Birchmore murder trial of former Stoughton police officer Matthew Farwell opened with jury selection on October 6 in Boston, and the paperwork at the center of it has been rewritten. The original 2021 ruling called Sandra's cause of death asphyxia by hanging and the manner suicide. The revised version says asphyxia, manner undetermined. The word homicide has never appeared on it.

Farwell, 40, has pleaded not guilty. His account is that he went to Sandra's Canton apartment on February 1, 2021, told her he was not the father of the child she was carrying, ended the relationship and left her...

Christa Pike's failed lethal injection is the second execution Tennessee couldn't finish in five months, and the state keeps choosing the method. The Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that a prisoner can only beat a method by proving the state could easily carry out a less painful one, and Tennessee's answer to hanging and firing squads is that it isn't equipped. When a firing squad bill came up in 2023, the department had already written that it didn't know where it would begin. Amherst professor Austin Sarat's research found lethal injection botched more often than any other method, and between 2018 and 2020...

Jury selection in the Sandra Birchmore murder trial began October 6 in federal court in Boston, where Matthew Farwell faces charges of killing a witness and causing the death of her unborn child. He has pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty, and a conviction carries a mandatory life sentence.

The paternity test in this case excluded Farwell. Prosecutors say the man they accuse of strangling Sandra in her Canton apartment believed the baby was his because she told him so, and because his own messages through late 2020 and early 2021 read like a man who...

Caleb Flynn's father and mother wrote the judge before his sentencing for the murder of Ashley Flynn, and this episode reads both letters out loud with the trial record next to them. The letters are dated October 2, 2026. Mike Flynn, a Church of God pastor for twenty-two years, told Judge Jeannine Pratt that his son had "never even seen the inside of a courtroom until now" and that the family's pain was "unimaginable." He also told her that a corrections officer at the county jail had praised his parenting during a video call with Caleb. He asked her to "use...