REDRUM true crime

Sade Robinson was 19, working two jobs and in her final semester at Milwaukee Area Technical College, studying criminal justice. On the 1st of April 2024, she went on a first date in downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin. By the next evening, a human leg had been found on the shore of Lake Michigan at Warnimont Park in Cudahy, and over the following weeks more of her remains would surface across two states. In this episode of REDRUM, we cover the murder of Sade Robinson: who she was, the night she was last heard from, the discovery that shocked Milwaukee, and the investigation...

On the morning of the 3rd of February 1967, Violet Shenton, a London shopkeeper and landlady, climbed the stairs above her leather-goods shop at 304 Holloway Road. Her tenant was Joe Meek, the pioneering record producer behind “Telstar,”, and a man NME later ranked the greatest producer of all time.

Joe's makeshift studio had produced hit after hit while Violet banged a broom on her ceiling. But by 1967 his career was collapsing. He was in debt, increasingly paranoid and living in fear of the police after the unsolved Tattingstone suitcase murder of 17 year old Bernard Oliver. Within minutes of Viol...

On July 22nd, 2013, a customer pulled up to a mechanic’s home in Jonesville, South Carolina, and found the door standing open... Inside, Charles “Butch” Parker and his wife, Gretchen, had been shot and stabbed. A number of dogs stood guard over their bodies, there were no witnesses, and the sheriff had no leads...

But Butch had put up a sign that read “Smile, you’re on camera,” and three cameras had been rolling. The footage showed a staged car breakdown, a 10 minute conversation in the yard, and a man with “skinhead” tattooed beneath his chin walking towards the hous...

On Tuesday the 18th of February 2014, 20 year old hairdresser Hollie Gazzard went to work at a salon in the centre of Gloucester with one instruction for her colleagues: if her ex-boyfriend, Asher Maslin, turned up, call the police straight away.

3 days earlier, Hollie had rung 999 herself, telling officers he had threatened to beat her and throw acid in her face. Since then, police had tried to arrest him twice, but failed. Hollie was a talented, much-loved stylist with big plans, including opening her own salon one day. Behind the scenes, though, she had spent a...

It's morning at the bus stand in Hassan, in south India. A 22 year old woman is standing at a bus stop… next to the man she thinks she's about to marry.

He hands her a small pill. He tells her it's a contraceptive... she should go into the ladies' toilet and take it there, with a bit of water from the tap.

So she does. And while she's in there, he walks away.

He goes back to the lodge where they spent the night, picks up the jewellery she left in the room, an...

CCTV footage shows the last moments before Samantha Josephson got into a car she believed was her uber. The black car that pulls up beside her isn’t her uber. And inside is a stranger. A stranger that will go on to kill her.

Join Grace Cordell as we look at the details of the case as it unfolded, the trial and subsequent sentencing.

⁠⁠The Final Cut podcast⁠⁠ Sign up for the free REDRUM newsletter, full of all things true crime, as well as a run down of all the...

The Man Who Killed 19 People… and Got Away With It.

This is a re-mastered release of an episode from back in 2025.

Sammy "the Bull" Gravano was the right-hand man to John Gotti, the so-called Teflon Don, and a made man who admitted to taking part in 19 murders.

Then, in 1991, he did the unthinkable: he turned informant. His testimony brought down Gotti and the leadership of the Gambino crime family, shattering the code of omertà that had protected the Mafia for generations.

In return, Sammy Gravano walked away wit...

It's just before midnight in Walthamstow, East London, and a group of neighbours are standing at a front door.

They've heard arguing. They've seen it spill out onto the communal green. So they ring the doorbell, and they ask again and again, “Are you okay? Do you need help?”

The woman thanks them. Tells them she's fine, and so the group then go home.

At 3am however, it starts again. This time, a neighbour presses record on their phone and dials 999. And inside the flat...

In 2015, Food Network Star contestant Cristie Schoen Codd and her husband JT Codd vanished from their North Carolina farmhouse - and the truth behind their disappearance turned out to be so unhinged and incomprehensible, it was difficult for the families and wider community to wrap their heads around.

This episode covers the full story: Cristie's journey from the Mississippi Gulf Coast to Hollywood movie sets and reality TV, her romance and marriage to husband JT, and the chilling investigation that followed their disappearance in March 2015. We break down how a "friendly neighbor," contractor Robert Jason Owens, became...

Today we’re taking a look back at some of the most tragic cases of people who have been killed by someone they trusted.

Our first case takes us to Northamptonshire where for months, primary school teacher Fiona Beal told everyone her partner of 17 years had run off with another woman … but that lie would come unraveled in a way that no one expected.

Then we’re going to Wilmslow, Cheshire where Detective Constable Leanne McKie spent her career protecting victims - until the morning she confronted her own husband, a fellow police officer, over a forg...

A Sunday bbq. A loving family settling in for the night. By morning, 4 people are dead... 3 generations of one household wiped out in a matter of hours.

This week on REDRUM, we dig into the Bermondsey Murders: the case of Joshua Jacques, a man who told police he was making a "sacrifice," and the family who never saw it coming. We trace the final hours through phone records, a frantic call from a neighbour, and the chilling texts that read "he's calm now", sent just hours before everything fell apart.

Was this a mental breakdown...

It's the 24th of January, 2023. It's just snowed in Duxbury, Massachusetts, a seaside suburb on the around 35 miles outside of Boston. A mother builds a snowman with her two oldest kids in the back garden. She takes pictures. She sends them to her husband. She sends them to her mother. In every single one of those photos, there’s nothing. No warning… no sign… Just a normal Tuesday, in a nice house, with an ordinary family.

3 lives have been lost. Taken by the woman who was supposed to love them the most. Today we are talking about the Li...

On the 8th of May 2019, 15 year old Riley Crossman was reported missing from her home in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia. What followed was a desperate community-wide search involving hundreds of volunteers, law enforcement and the FBI, as Riley’s family waited for any sign that she might still be alive. But as investigators began reconstructing Riley’s final hours, disturbing details started to emerge... including a green truck seen outside her home, contradictory accounts of where Riley’s mother’s boyfriend Andy McCauley had been, and a final message Riley sent to her boyfriend just hours before she disappeared: “Andy’s in...

Ryan Champion was the sole survivor of a massacre that took the lives of his mother, father and only sibling Emily. He had introduced the killer to the family. A man he barely knew, who quickly became obsessed with his sister Emily.

When detectives looked into this man, the killer and his relationship to the family, they realised that nothing really made any sense.

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In March 1981, North Little Rock police were called to a quiet home where Ron Orsini had been shot dead in his sleep. The only people in the house were his wife, Mary Lee Orsini, and daughter. Mary's story didn't add up. A year later, a car bomb ripped through a driveway on Inverness Circle, critically injuring Alice McArthur, the wife of a prominent Little Rock defense attorney. The two crimes seemed unrelated - until investigators found the thread connecting them ran straight back to Mary.

This episode unpacks the twisted, real-life case that gripped Arkansas for years...

For years, Chad Schipper was a trusted, familiar face in his small Illinois church — a man Larry and Connie Van Oosten had known since he was a boy in their Sunday school class. But behind closed doors, Schipper was drowning in secret debt and had been quietly stealing from the people who trusted him most. When the Van Oostens turned down his request for money, something in him shifted — and he began a meticulous, 18-month plan that would end with the elderly couple bound, blindfolded, and locked inside a hidden room he'd built specifically to hold them.

In t...

18 year old Kelsey Smith hopped into her car and made the short journey to Target to buy a last minute gift for her boyfriend. CCTV tracked her walking round the store, casually speaking on her phone and browsing, before paying for her items, leaving, and getting into her car. But when Kelsey didn't show up at home and was quickly reported as missing, officers watched the CCTV footage again... this time more closely. When they did, they caught sight of something suspicious. A man dressed in a white t shirt was seen in every single location Kelsey was seen...

With an update in July of this year, 2026, I'm revisiting one of the most fascinating and tragic cases of the last woman hanged in Britain.

Come Closer:

https://raereview.com/comecloserlinks

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I'm taking this week off for holiday so releasing 2 of REDRUM's most disturbing episodes. This episode was originally released as audio only and has since been remastered to include video.

The words “I can kill you without leaving any evidence.” aren’t something you ever want to hear your partner say to you. But especially not when he’s a MET police officer. And especially not when he’s spent 17 years raping and abusing women- and getting away with it.

Sign up for the free REDRU...

The murder of Nicole VanderHeyden was a case that saw her boyfriend, father of her child Doug arrested and charged with the brutal crime. However, when DNA from the crime scene came back showing it wasn't a match to Doug, investigators had to turn elsewhere.

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A brutal double murder rocked a peaceful suburban neighbourhood ... the killer, was someone no one expected. Chip Northup and Claudia Maupin were asleep in their home, when they were brutally attacked. The killer stood over their beds and watched them before beginning the savage and merciless murders.

Sign up for the free REDRUM newsletter, full of all things true crime, as well as a run down of all the latest REDRUM cases. This will only ever come to you once a month... I'm no fan of spam. https://www.surveymonkey.com...

On June 16th, 2010, a young nurse called Lanell Barsock was found shot to death in the garage of her Palmdale, California home... a black plastic bag pulled over her head and head trauma that looked as though she'd been beaten. The person who found Lanell, was her best friend, La'Rene. Her story pointed detectives straight at Lanell's jealous, controlling boyfriend, Louis - and within 24 hours, he was behind bars. But as Los Angeles County detectives dug into Louis's alibi, cracks began to appear in the case that would eventually unravel everything they thought they knew. Because the woman who...

On the morning of January 27th, 2015, inside one of South Africa's most secure gated estates, a family was slaughtered in their beds. Martin, Theresa, and Rudi Van Breda were found dead - axed to death in a scene investigators called one of the most brutal they'd ever encountered. 16 year old Marli survived with catastrophic head injuries and no memory of that night. And the fourth family member, Henri, walked away with only minor cuts.

Henri told police a masked intruder had broken in, laughing as he swung the axe. But there was no forced entry. The alarm...

A routine call to Greater Manchester Police set off a chain of events that would shock Britain and change policing forever. 2 officers, PC Fiona Bone and PC Nicola Hughes, were sent to investigate what looked like an ordinary vandalism report in the quiet suburb of Hattersley. It wasn't ordinary. It was a trap.

In this episode, we walk through the final morning of two young officers' lives - the hoax call that lured them in, the chaos of the following minutes, and the manhunt that gripped the country as police raced to track down...

He was the man every study-abroad student wanted on their trip - charismatic, always around, always at the party. Manuel Blanco Vela ran a wildly popular tour company for American college students exploring Spain, Portugal, and Morocco. Parents thought their kids were in safe hands. They weren't.

This episode follows Gabrielle, a 19 year old student who was drugged and sexually assaulted by her own tour guide on what was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime ... and who, years later, would open a Facebook message that changed everything: "Manuel Blanco Vela killed my...

On the 1st of May, 1984, 45 year old Anthony Littler stepped off the train at East Finchley Underground station after a night out with friends who shared his love of real ale. It should have been an ordinary walk home. Instead, minutes later, he lay dying on a dark footpath just meters from the station... attacked by two men lurking in the vegetation, armed with a rounders bat. What followed was a chillingly precise crime and an emergency call that made no sense.

A young, "well spoken" caller rang for an ambulance and told the operator a man...

Ian Huntley - the killer of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, one of Britain's most notorious child murderers, was fatally attacked in prison on February 26th, 2026.

In this true crime episode, we investigate the man responsible: 44 year old Anthony Russell, a triple murderer now serving a rare whole life order. Before Ian Huntley, Anthony Russell's 2020 killing spree tore through Coventry and Leamington Spa in the West Midlands, fuelled by heroin addiction and a psychotic delusion that his best friend had betrayed him. 3 people would be dead within days... including a grieving mother searching for...

In November 2022, 55 year old Leroy Fowler was rushed to hospital after suddenly becoming violently ill inside the home he shared with his girlfriend, Judy Church. Doctors quickly discovered something deeply unusual: Leroy's kidneys were shutting down, his blood had become dangerously acidic, and tests revealed he had been poisoned with ethylene glycol... the toxic chemical found in antifreeze. As investigators searched the couple's home, they uncovered disturbing evidence, including an orange-stained sports drink bottle, handwritten journals filled with anger, voodoo dolls, and chilling phone videos recorded while Leroy lay suffering on the floor. Prosecutors alleged that what first appeared...

For over 2 decades, the murder of 23 year old law student Tara Louise Baker haunted investigators, devastated her family, and left the community of Athens, Georgia searching for answers.

On the morning of 19 January 2001, firefighters responding to a house fire made a horrifying discovery inside Tara's bedroom. What initially appeared to be a tragic fire quickly became a brutal homicide investigation involving strangulation, a fatal stab wound, sexual assault, and an apparent attempt to destroy the evidence. Despite witness sightings, countless interviews, and years of investigation, the case went cold... until advances in DNA technology and a renewed...

In July 1987, what appeared to be a horrific car crash on a quiet road in Sun Valley quickly became one of California's most shocking murder cases. Claire Peernock was found dead behind the wheel of her ex husbands wrecked Cadillac, while her 18 year old daughter, Natasha Peernock, survived with devastating injuries. But investigators soon discovered the collision had been carefully staged to hide a brutal, premeditated attack. In this episode of REDRUM True Crime, Grace Cordell uncovers the years of abuse that led to that night, the meticulous planning behind the crime, and the extraordinary courage of Natasha, whose...

Chilling CCTV footage shows the final moments of tech CEO Pava LaPere. She was stalked by a man she didn't know. He followed her to her apartment building, and then tricked her into letting him inside. This is the story of Pava, her final moments, and the legacy she leaves behind.

Sign up for the free REDRUM newsletter, full of all things true crime, as well as a run down of all the latest REDRUM cases. This will only ever come to you once a month... I'm no fan of spam. ⁠⁠⁠ (⁠https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/W7...

In November 2024, social workers, police, and the family court system were all focused on one vulnerable 14 month old boy: Oakley Barnett. His mother, Emma Barnett, had already lost care of her previous children, and a final court decision was about to determine whether Oakley would also be removed from her custody. What happened over the next few hours would end in one of the most devastating child murder cases in recent UK history.

As officers searched desperately for Emma and Oakley across Essex, helicopters circled overhead and concerns grew that something had gone terribly wrong. But the...

In September 2011, 35 year old Shawndell McLeod vanished without a trace after ending a turbulent relationship with her ex-girlfriend, Joyce Pelzer. Friends and family knew something was wrong almost immediately. Shawndell was devoted to her children, close with her loved ones, and had been making plans for the future. Then, suddenly, she was gone.

For years, investigators searched for answers, but with no body, no crime scene, and little physical evidence, the case slowly grew cold. Shawndell's family was left waiting, wondering whether they would ever learn what happened to her.

Then, in 2018, another woman entered...

In October 2023, a woman repeatedly called 999 with a chilling confession: she said she had killed someone.

But there was a problem.

She wouldn’t say who the victim was. She wouldn’t reveal exactly where the murder had happened. And despite calling emergency services multiple times over a period of weeks, police were left trying to piece together fragments of a story that barely made sense.

The woman was 52 year old Anne-Marie Burrows.

At first, officers had no body, no confirmed crime scene, and no clear way of knowing whether the call...

In the spring and summer of 1993, fear quietly moved through London’s gay community - although, at first, hardly anyone realised a serial killer was already hunting in plain sight.

He wasn’t lurking in alleyways. He wasn’t breaking into homes. Instead, he walked into pubs, struck up conversations, bought drinks, flirted, and blended in. Charming when he wanted to be, organised to an almost terrifying degree, he specifically targeted men who enjoyed BDSM and the passive role during sex, knowing they would initially trust him, believing they were stepping into a consensual encounter. But behind closed...

In August 2017, just hours before Hurricane Harvey unleashed devastation across Texas, 37 year old mother of 2 Crystal McDowell vanished without a trace.

Crystal had everything to live for. A thriving real estate career, 2 children she adored, and a new relationship that friends said had brought happiness back into her life after divorce. The morning she disappeared, Crystal kissed her boyfriend goodbye and set off to pick up her children from her ex-husband’s house in Baytown, Texas. But she disappeared.

As floodwaters swallowed roads and emergency services became overwhelmed, loved ones feared Crystal may have become tr...

In February 2000, Christine Chappel disappeared from their home in the quiet Essex village of Roxwell. At first, no one realised anything was wrong. But that all changed when a dog walker on a beach made a discovery that would leave investigators stunned.

A body had washed ashore near Kessingland. It was naked, wrapped in heavy chains, secured with padlocks, and weighed down with gym equipment in what appeared to be a deliberate attempt to ensure it would never be found. When police finally identified the victim as Christine Chappel, questions immediately began to mount...

In July 1992, 23 year old Rachel Nickell headed out for a morning walk across Wimbledon Common with her 2 year old son, Alex. But what should have been an ordinary summer morning turned into one of Britain’s most shocking and devastating crimes.

In this episode of REDRUM, we uncover the brutal murder of Rachel Nickell, the nationwide panic that followed, and the investigation that spiralled into one of the most controversial police failures in modern British history. From the intense scrutiny placed on an innocent man, to undercover honeytrap operations, criminal profiling, missed warning signs, and th...

Sakia Gunn was a 15 year old girl from Newark, New Jersey, whose life was taken in the early hours of the 11th of May 2003.

This episode follows the case as we unpack the final moments of Sakia’s life, the confrontation at a Newark bus stop that changed everything, and the devastating moments that followed. We explore the investigation into her murder, the arrest of the lead suspect, and the legal questions surrounding hate crime legislation in the early 2000s. We also look at the wider social context of the case... what it meant to be a yo...

In January 2008, 21 year old mother of 2, Denise Amber Lee vanished from her home in North Port, Florida, in broad daylight... leaving behind her phone, keys, purse… and 2 young children alone inside the house.

Across town, a terrified woman secretly dialled 911 from inside a moving car, whispering clues, begging to go home to her children, while pretending to speak normally so her abductor wouldn’t realise she was calling for help. Minutes later, another witness reported seeing what looked like a child being kidnapped from a passing green Camaro.

But despite multiple 911 calls, eyewitness information, and oppo...