Evidence Locker True Crime

Ralph and Joan Vollmer lived on a farm outside of a small Australian country town. When Joan’s mental health deteriaorated, her feverishly religious husband was convinced she was possessed by the Devil. During a botched exorcism, Joan died. But who was to blame?

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If Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story left you curious about Erzsébet Báthory, revisit the accusations and disputed accounts behind “Countess Dracula” with Evidence Locker.
16th century Transylvanian Blood Countess, Erzebet Báthory, was labelled as the most prolific female serial killer in history in The Guinness World Records. It is believed that she tortured, mutilated and murdered as many as 650 young girls, then bathed in their blood to preserve her youthful beauty. Historians are divided whether she was in fact a sadistic landowner or the victim of an effective smear campaign.

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In June 2007, the dismembered remains of 36-year-old Sanna Garoës appeared beside three roads leading out of Windhoek. Her death brought two unsolved murders from 2005 back into the headlines and gave Namibia a frightening name for a possible killer: the B1 Butcher. Then a fourth woman’s remains were found more than 400 kilometres away. Police announced her identity, only to discover that the woman they had named was alive. As investigators followed reports of DNA evidence and competing leads, a difficult question remained: which of these crimes, if any, belonged to the same person?

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In October 1849, one of America's greatest writers was found delirious on the streets of Baltimore, wearing someone else's clothes and unable to explain how he had ended up there. Four days later, Edgar Allan Poe was dead. He was just 40 years old.
No death certificate survives, no autopsy was performed, and the medical records have long since disappeared. Over the past 175 years, countless theories have emerged, ranging from alcohol poisoning and disease to political election fraud, robbery and even murder.

#TrueCrime #EdgarAllanPoe #UnsolvedMystery #LiteraryMystery #Baltimore #EvidenceLocker

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In the small Italian village of Alleghe, high in the Dolomite Mountains, a series of deaths haunted the community for decades. What began in 1933 with the suspicious death of a young hotel waitress was followed by another unexplained death, then the brutal 1946 double murder of village baker Luigi Del Monego and his wife, Luigia.

At the centre of the mystery stood the Hotel Centrale, a powerful local family, and a silence that seemed almost impossible to break. When journalist Sergio Saviane tried to expose the truth, he was sued for defamation and sent to prison. Years later...

In 1984, a mysterious criminal group calling itself "The Monster with 21 Faces" launched an unprecedented campaign of extortion against Japan's largest food manufacturers. Beginning with the kidnapping of a confectionery company president, the group taunted police and the media with mocking letters, threatened to poison popular sweets with cyanide, and spread fear throughout the country.
Despite one of the largest investigations in Japanese history, involving thousands of detectives, the elusive criminals repeatedly outsmarted authorities. Their brazen campaign caused millions in losses, shattered public confidence and remains officially unsolved more than four decades later.

#TrueCrime #MonsterWith21Faces #Japan...

As investigators searched beneath John Wayne Gacy's home, they uncovered a crime scene unlike anything they had encountered before. Hidden within the crawlspace were the remains of dozens of young men and boys, exposing years of murder concealed behind the façade of an ordinary suburban life.

With the evidence mounting, Gacy confessed to a staggering number of killings before standing trial in one of the most infamous criminal cases in American history. Yet for many victims, identification would take decades, and questions still linger today.

#TrueCrime #JohnWayneGacy #SerialKiller #Chicago #ColdCase #EvidenceLocker

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In December 1978, 15-year-old Robert Piest vanished after leaving work to meet a potential employer. His disappearance led investigators to John Wayne Gacy, a respected Chicago businessman, political volunteer and community entertainer known as "Pogo the Clown." At first, Gacy appeared cooperative, but detectives soon uncovered a disturbing pattern of missing young men connected to him.

As surveillance intensified, inconsistencies in Gacy's story mounted. Then investigators noticed a foul odour emanating from beneath his suburban home—a discovery that would change the course of the investigation forever.

#TrueCrime #JohnWayneGacy #RobertPiest #SerialKiller #Chicago #ColdCase #EvidenceLocker

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In August 1966, two electronics technicians climbed a hill overlooking Rio de Janeiro and were never seen alive again. Days later, their bodies were discovered lying side by side, dressed in suits, waterproof coats and strange homemade lead eye masks. There were no signs of violence, no clear cause of death and almost no clues—only cryptic notes, an empty water bottle and a mystery that has baffled investigators for decades. #TrueCrime #UnsolvedMystery #LeadMasksCase #Brazil #EvidenceLocker #ColdCase #Occult #UFO #Mystery #Podcast

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In January 1977, two young women, Suzanne Armstrong and Susan Bartlett, were brutally murdered inside their Melbourne home, while Suzanne's 16-month-old son was found alive nearby. The shocking crime became one of Australia's most enduring unsolved murder cases.
For nearly five decades, investigators pursued countless leads with little success. Then, an extraordinary breakthrough revived the investigation and led to an arrest on the other side of the world.
#TrueCrime #EaseyStreetMurders #Melbourne #AustralianTrueCrime #ColdCase #EvidenceLocker

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Eva Bourseau, 23, was murdered in her Toulouse apartment on 26 July 2015 by two students, Taha Mrani Alaoui and Zakariya Banouni, over a drug debt. Her body was submerged in hydrochloric acid in a plastic trunk — a method inspired by the TV series Breaking Bad. Discovered by firefighters after her mother raised the alarm, the case shocked France and made international headlines. After a 15-day trial at the Cour d'Assises de Haute-Garonne in December 2018, Taha was sentenced to 30 years and Zakariya to 25 years. The case remains one of France's most disturbing student crime cases.

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On August 2, 2006, Washington D.C. attorney Robert Eric Wone was stabbed to death inside the Dupont Circle townhouse of his college friend Joseph Price. Three housemates – Price, Victor Zaborsky, and Dylan Ward – were home at the time. Evidence suggested the crime scene had been staged, and that Wone had been drugged and sexually assaulted before his death. All three men were acquitted of obstruction of justice charges in 2010. A civil wrongful death suit was settled in 2011. No one has ever been charged with Wone's murder. The case remains unsolved.

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On New Year's Eve 1998, fifteen-year-old Kirsty Bentley vanished while walking her Labrador, Abby, near the Ashburton River in Canterbury, New Zealand. Seventeen days later, her body was found hidden in dense scrub at Camp Gully, Rakaia Gorge, 40 kilometres away. She had been killed by a single blow of blunt force trauma to the head. Despite decades of investigation under Operation Kirsty, hundreds of suspects interviewed, a 2016 coroner's inquest, and a $100,000 reward offered in 2022, no one has ever been charged. New Zealand's most haunting cold case murder remains unsolved.

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In 1895, a Swedish man named Adolf Beck was stopped on a London street by a woman who accused him of swindling her out of her jewellery. Police quickly connected him to a string of similar frauds — and to a man named John Smith, convicted of identical crimes in 1877. Over a dozen victims picked Beck out of line-ups. He was convicted at the Old Bailey and sentenced to seven years' hard labour. The problem: he wasn't John Smith. He wasn't any of it. Eight years later, still protesting his innocence, Beck was convicted again — for the exact same type of frau...

In November 2008, 23-year-old Christine Lindsey Walters left her hotel room in Eureka, California, in her pyjamas, to collect identity documents from a nearby copy centre. She was trying to get home to Wisconsin. She never made it.

A junior studying botany and ethnobotany at the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point, Christine had come to Humboldt County for a planned three-week holiday. She stayed, drawn to the area's natural beauty and a spiritual community. One week before she vanished, she participated in an illegal ayahuasca ceremony. Days later, she was found naked and covered in briar scratches on a...

Frank Sinatra's "My Way" became one of the deadliest songs in history — not on a battlefield, but in the karaoke bars of the Philippines. Between 1998 and 2018, at least a dozen people were killed in disputes linked to the song, in incidents dubbed the "My Way Killings." Victims were shot for singing off-key, stabbed over microphone disputes, and killed for daring to claim the song as theirs. The killings prompted bar owners to ban the song outright, drew international media attention, and sparked debate about karaoke culture, Filipino identity, and the role of pride and alcohol in public violence.

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In the sweltering summer of 1908, 20-year-old domestic servant Hazel Drew was found floating face-down in Teal's Pond, New York. Her skull had been crushed by repeated blows. A corset string wrapped around her throat. The investigation revealed a web of secrets, political corruption, and powerful men with much to hide. More than a century later, this unsolved murder would inspire Twin Peaks – and after 113 years, researchers finally believe they've solved the case that captivated a nation…

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On a quiet September night in 2013, a routine traffic stop on the outskirts of Aksai unraveled a mystery that had haunted southern Russia for years. A violent shootout led police to a forest campsite, and what they uncovered was more than just weapons.
The suspects were not professional hitmen or members of a paramilitary group. They were a family. A mother, her daughters, and her husband. Their crimes spanned nearly a decade: home invasions, execution-style killings, ambushes on police officers. Dozens of stolen items linked them to victims across Rostov Oblast and beyond.
They would become known in...

In 2017, 21-year-old French au pair Sophie Lionnet was found burned in a garden in Southfields, London. What began as a dream opportunity became a nightmare of abuse, torture, and ultimately murder at the hands of her employers.

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Between September 2003 and April 2006, Wisconsin prosecutors built one of the most challenging murder cases in the state's history: proving a family annihilation without bodies, a crime scene, or eyewitnesses. 
In July 1998, Allen Krnak, his wife Donna, their son Thomas, and the family dog vanished without a trace after leaving for a Fourth of July weekend at their cabin. When their truck was found wiped clean with thousands of unexplained miles, investigators knew this was no ordinary disappearance. 
The discovery of Allen's remains 800 miles away in North Carolina would reveal a horrifying truth about betrayal and greed. But Donna an...

On a windy January day in 1965, two fifteen-year-old best friends walked into the sand dunes at Wanda Beach near Sydney. They never came home. What followed was one of the largest investigations in Australian history, yet the killer vanished without a trace. Sixty years later, three suspects have emerged, but no one has ever been charged. Was it a teenage surfer, a serial killer, or someone far more sinister?

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Between 1959 and 1987, a series of brutal attacks in the forests and lakesides of Finland and Sweden left multiple victims dead – and investigators haunted by their similarities. From Tulilahti and Lake Bodom to Appojaure and the deck of the Viking Sally, the victims were ordinary people, asleep and vulnerable, when violence struck without warning. Some cases were solved. Most weren’t. 
What links these murders? Could they be the work of the same person, or do they reveal something darker about the illusion of safety in the wild?
This is a special episode that brings together cases previously featured on Ev...

In July 1984, beneath Sweden’s midnight sun, a remote campsite near Lake Appojaure became the scene of a brutal double murder. Dutch tourists Marinus and Janny Stegehuis were stabbed to death as they slept in their tent, an attack that shocked the nation and remains unresolved.
This episode marks a milestone for The Evidence Locker: released in celebration of our 250th episode, it is also a remastered re-release of our very first case. We revisit the Appojaure tent killings, the failed investigation, and the later false confession by Thomas Quick, whose story collapsed under forensic scrutiny.
Decades on, th...

In the summer of 1960, four teenagers went camping at Lake Bodom. In the pre-dawn hours, an unknown assailant attacked them inside their tent, slashing them with a knife and hitting them with a blunt object. Of the four, only 18-year-old Nils Gustafsson survived, narrowly escaping death. 45 years later, he was charged with killing his friends, but acquitted. To this day, the mystery of what happened at Lake Bodom on that sultry night haunts the people of Finland.

Special thanks: Pahan Äärellä Podcast

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July 1959. Two young women on a cycling holiday vanished from a Finnish campsite. Eine Nyyssönen, 21, and Riitta Pakkanen, 23, were found buried in a bog three weeks later, marked by a sharpened stick. Over 60 years later, this brutal double murder remains unsolved.

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On a winter evening in 1931, a soft-spoken insurance agent was lured from his Liverpool home by a strange telephone message. The address he searched for didn’t exist. By the time he returned, his wife had been brutally murdered. Who was the caller? Was the alibi a masterstroke of deception? Or did someone exploit the perfect opportunity?
Tried. Convicted. Acquitted.
 Nearly a century later, the murder of Julia Wallace remains one of the most baffling cases in British criminal history.
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Every December, thousands of letters addressed to Santa are sent to North Pole, Alaska. Boxes full of letters are then sent to North Pole Middle School, where they are included in the 6th Grade curriculum: North Pole’s 11 and 12-year-olds are nominated as Santa’s little helpers and reply to all the letters on Santa’s behalf.
But in April 2006, the peace in this snow globe of a town was shattered when six 7th Graders hatched a plan to kill their classmates. The would-be attackers had drawn up a “naughty list” of kids at school that they wanted to murder in...

In May 1999, three members of the Orderud family were found shot to death in their home in rural Norway. The victims — Kristian and Marie Orderud and their daughter Anne — had been killed in the dead of night in what appeared to be a cold and calculated execution. Despite four people being convicted of complicity, no one has ever been held legally responsible for pulling the trigger. What followed was one of the most controversial criminal cases in modern Norwegian history. In this episode, we unpack the family tensions, forensic mysteries, legal battles, and lingering questions that still surround the Orderud case...

Between 1970 and 1971, a series of brutal murders terrified the streets of Bucharest. The victims were mostly women — attacked at night, bitten, and mutilated. Their killer became known as The Vampire of Bucharest.
His crimes were frenzied and disturbing, leaving investigators to wonder whether they were dealing with a deranged killer or a man driven by superstition and obsession. He broke into homes, assaulted his victims, and sometimes drank their blood. When police finally caught him, the case exposed deep social anxieties in communist Romania — about violence, repression, and the darkness beneath a society that demanded silence.
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In 1994, a custody dispute in South Carolina ended with a mother vanishing with her infant daughter. Dorothy Lee Barnett, accused of violating a court order, disappeared without a trace — along with 11-month-old Savannah.
For nearly two decades, the pair lived under new identities across the world — first in Europe, then South Africa, then Australia — as authorities searched for clues. In 2013, an international investigation finally uncovered the truth. Dorothy had been living as Alexandria Maria Canton, and Savannah, now a young woman, had grown up unaware of her past.
The case became one of the most remarkable parental abduction storie...

Between 1996 and 1997, the dismembered remains of at least five women were found stuffed in garbage bags and dumped inside suitcases around the Belgian city of Mons. The killer, who came to be known as Le Dépeceur de Mons — The Butcher of Mons — has never been identified.
The murders shocked the quiet provincial city and left investigators chasing one of the most disturbing unsolved serial murder cases in Belgian history. Decades later, questions still linger: Who was the Butcher of Mons, and why did he choose to scatter his victims’ remains along roads with names that translated to words like Ha...

In celebration of Halloween, this week’s episode is a re-release of one of our first episodes - still chilling...
Adolfo Constanzo, also known as El Padrino (or the Godfather), was the leader of a cult that believed that Black Magic would shield their drug cartel from being busted. Adolfo encouraged human sacrifice, and countless people fell victim to the cult, later dubbed the Narcosatanists. When American medical student Mark Kilroy disappeared after a night out in Matamoros, the cult’s sadistic activities finally came to light.

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On Halloween night in 1974, eight-year-old Timothy O’Brien came home from trick-or-treating in Deer Park, Texas, excited to sample his candy haul. Among the treats was a Pixy Stix — one that would become infamous in American true crime history. Within hours, Timothy was dead, poisoned by cyanide.
Investigators soon discovered that the killer wasn’t a mysterious stranger slipping poison into Halloween candy. It was someone much closer to home — his own father, Ronald Clark O’Brien. His crime forever changed the way parents across the United States viewed Halloween, giving rise to decades of fear over tampered sweets.
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For nearly two decades, a nondescript farm outside Pretoria was the epicenter of South Africa’s most covert and brutal campaign of state-sponsored terror. Known as Vlakplaas, it served as headquarters for a police death squad targeting anti-Apartheid activists. Under the leadership of Colonel Dirk Coetzee and later Eugene de Kock – dubbed “Prime Evil” – Vlakplaas was responsible for countless abductions, torture, and murders masked by secrecy and political protection.

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Anna Anton thought she'd found safety in small-town Nebraska, living below a police officer who had sworn to protect and serve. Instead, she became the victim of the very person she trusted most. In this episode, we uncover the shocking betrayal that shattered the peace of Lyons, Nebraska, and explore how one man's abuse of power led to a seven-year international manhunt.
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In the 1980s, the MS Viking Sally ferry became synonymous with tragedy and terror on the Baltic Sea. What began as a luxurious passenger vessel soon earned a sinister reputation when two brutal murders occurred on board just one year apart—in 1986 and 1987. The ship that was meant to provide safe passage between Finland and Sweden instead became the scene of unspeakable violence, earning it the nickname "the cursed ship." But the Viking Sally's dark legacy didn't end there. 

The vessel would later be renamed the MS Estonia and become the site of one of Europe's worst maritime dis...

Ireland’s Vanishing Triangle is an area around Dublin from where multiple women have mysteriously vanished in the 1990s. Most of the cases have the same characteristics and remain unsolved. Were they taken by a serial killer? Irish Police created Operation Trace in 1998 to actively solve the disappearances but have not been able to do so. A €10,000 reward has been offered for information resulting in the recovery of a body, as it is presumed that the victims are no longer alive.

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Between September 2003 and July 2004, Seoul was terrorized by one of the most brutal serial killers in Korean history. Yoo Young-chul, known as the "Raincoat Killer," murdered at least 20 people in a shocking spree that exposed deep social inequalities and reignited debates about capital punishment. In this episode, we delve into the chilling details of his crimes, examine the psychological factors that drove him to kill, and explore how his case continues to influence Korean society today.
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On the night of April 11, 1981, the quiet mountain resort town of Keddie, California, became the scene of one of the most brutal and mysterious murders in American history. Four members of the Sharp family—Sue, Johnny, Dana, and twelve-year-old Tina—were victims of a horrific attack that left three dead and one missing. Despite decades of investigation, the case remains officially unsolved, though recent developments have shed new light on the crimes. In this episode, we explore the devastating night that changed everything, the botched investigation that followed, and the ongoing quest for justice that continues to this day.

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In February 2000, professional travel writer Claudia Kirschhoch arrived at Sandals Beaches Resort in Jamaica to resolve a simple visa issue. She was organized, experienced, and living her dream life exploring the world through her writing. But what began as a routine travel complication quickly spiraled into one of the most baffling missing persons cases in recent memory. More than two decades later, her disappearance still haunts those left behind, raising disturbing questions about evidence tampering, institutional failures, and the vulnerability of solo travelers. In this episode, we examine the mysterious circumstances surrounding Claudia's vanishing and explore why no one has...