Hitched 2 Homicide

The Salem Witch Trials of 1692: Witch Hunts, Executions, and Salem's Haunted History Part 2

The Salem Witch Trials remain one of the most disturbing cases of mass hysteria, false accusations, and judicial injustice in American history.

It began when two young girls in Salem Village exhibited strange behavior that frightened their families. Soon, accusations of witchcraft spread like wildfire. Enslaved wo...

The Salem Witch Trials of 1692: Witch Hunts, Executions, and Salem's Haunted History

The Salem Witch Trials remain one of the most disturbing cases of mass hysteria, false accusations, and judicial injustice in American history.

It began when two young girls in Salem Village exhibited strange behavior that frightened their families. Soon, accusations of witchcraft spread like wildfire. Enslaved woman Ti...

The Villisca Axe Murders of 1912: Eight Victims, One Axe, and a Killer Who Was Never Caught

On a quiet Sunday evening in June 1912, the Moore family attended a children's church program in the small, close-knit community of Villisca, Iowa. Afterward, Josiah and Sarah Moore returned home with their four children and two young sisters, Lena and Ina Stillinger, who had been invited for a sleepover.

It should have been an ordinary summer night.

Instead, it would become one of the most horrifying chapters in American true crime history.

Sometime during the...

They believed Nelson Rehmeyer had cursed them. Their solution was murder.

Blymire and his accomplices, John Curry and Wilbert Hess, sought Rehmeyer’s copy of The Long Lost Friend or a lock of his hair, believing these could help break the alleged curse. Their quest ended in a fatal...

The Greenbrier Ghost is the name given to Elva Zona Heaster Shue, a young bride murdered in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, in January 1897.

After only a few months of marriage to blacksmith Edward “Trout” Shue, Zona was found dead in their home. A local doctor called it heart disease. She was buried the next day at what is now Soule Chapel Methodist Cemetery near Smoot. Her husband had dressed the body, packed her neck in a high collar and scarf, and discouraged a full examination.

Zona’s mother, Mary Jane Heaster, refused that story. She later...

In March 1954, 25-year-old Constance Fisher was living with her husband, Carl, and their three young children in Waterville, Maine. In part one of this case, we look into Constance's struggle with severe mental illness following childbirth. Following a voice she believed was God's, she drowned her three children–Richard, 6, Daniel, 4, and baby Deborah in the family home before attempting to take her own life. She was committed to Augusta State Hospital, where doctors treated her for serious psychiatric illness.

Five years later, Constance was released and returned to her husband. The couple rebuilt their life and had mo...

In March 1954, 25-year-old Constance Fisher was living with her husband, Carl, and their three young children in Waterville, Maine. In part one of this case, we look into Constance's struggle with severe mental illness following childbirth. Following a voice she believed was God's, she drowned her three children–Richard, 6, Daniel, 4, and baby Deborah in the family home before attempting to take her own life. She was committed to Augusta State Hospital, where doctors treated her for serious psychiatric illness.

Five years later, Constance was released and returned to her husband. The couple rebuilt their life and had mo...

Helen Golay and Olga Rutterschmidt looked more like retirees than ruthless killers, but prosecutors said the two women spent years building an elaborate life insurance murder scheme in Los Angeles.

Their victims, Paul Vados and Kenneth McDavid, were vulnerable men living on the margins when Golay and Rutterschmidt entered their lives with offers of food, housing, and help. Behind that apparent generosity, the women secured multiple life insurance policies, fabricated personal and financial relationships, and waited for the policies to mature.

Then both men died in separate apparent hit-and-run incidents.

What first looked...

In September 1921, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was one of the most recognizable figures in American entertainment: a silent-film comedian, director, and major Paramount star. Virginia Rappe was a model, designer, and working actress with ambitions of her own in the young film industry.

After both attended a Labor Day gathering in Arbuckle’s suite at San Francisco’s St. Francis Hotel, Rappe became critically ill. She died four days later from peritonitis associated with a ruptured bladder. What happened in the hotel rooms—and what caused her fatal injury—became the subject of competing accounts, disputed medical testimony, and one of t...

On August 23, 1987, teenagers Don Henry and Kevin Ives were struck by a Union Pacific freight train near the Crooked Creek trestle in Alexander, Arkansas. The first official explanation was shocking: authorities said the friends had become incapacitated by marijuana, fallen asleep on the tracks, and died in a tragic accident.

Their families did not accept it.

Independent medical opinions challenged the THC-intoxication theory, the original accidental finding was changed to “undetermined,” and a Saline County grand jury later classified the deaths as a probable homicide. Yet despite the finding, no one was ever charged.

In...

On December 10, 2003, the Whitaker family sat down for what they thought was a graduation dinner. By the time they got home, a masked gunman was waiting inside their house — and two of them wouldn't survive the night. On the surface, it looked like a burglary interrupted. But within days, investigators discovered that the "victim" sitting in the back seat, 24-year-old Bart Whitaker, had actually orchestrated the entire attack — and that this wasn't even his first attempt.

In this episode, we dig into the disturbing timeline of the Whitaker family murders in Sugar Land, Texas: the failed 2000 plot invo...

FROM THE H2H VAULT:

On June 27, 1977, one of Minnesota’s grandest mansions became the scene of a brutal double murder.

Inside Glensheen, the sprawling Congdon family estate overlooking Lake Superior in Duluth, 83-year-old heiress Elisabeth Congdon was found smothered in her bed. Her night nurse, Velma Pietila, had been beaten to death nearby. What followed was a sensational investigation involving family money, inheritance, an adopted daughter with a troubled history, and the son-in-law prosecutors believed was willing to kill for a fortune.

Suspicion soon centered on Elisabeth’s adopted daughter, Marjorie Congdon Cald...

In the fall and early winter of 1982, two young women were abducted and brutally murdered within weeks of each other in Morris County, New Jersey.

Eighteen-year-old Amie Hoffman disappeared on November 23 after leaving her job at the Morris County Mall. Two days later, her body was discovered in a secluded water-retention tank. On December 5, twenty-five-year-old Deirdre O’Brien was run off the road, abducted, sexually assaulted, and repeatedly stabbed. Although she was found alive, she died before she could identify her attacker.

With fear spreading across the community and few solid leads, investigators consulted Nancy We...

In the early morning hours of June 3, 1991, 23-year-old Denise Huber vanished after a flat tire left her stranded along a California freeway. Her abandoned car was discovered, but Denise was nowhere to be found. For three agonizing years, her family searched for answers—until a suspicious truck in Arizona led investigators to a horrifying discovery: Denise’s body, handcuffed and frozen inside a chest freezer.

The investigation exposed John Famalaro, a seemingly ordinary house painter who had abducted and brutally murdered Denise before preserving her body and possessions as trophies. Known as California’s “Cold Storage Killer,” Famalaro w...

In October 1961, 19-year-old Betty Gail Brown — a promising sophomore at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky — was found brutally murdered in her car on campus. Strangled to death with her own brassiere, her killer has never been brought to justice. This remains one of Kentucky’s most haunting unsolved murders.

On this episode of Hitched 2 Homicide, we dive deep into the shocking true story of the Betty Gail Brown case: a young woman full of potential whose life was cut short in a place meant for learning and safety. We examine the chilling details of that fateful night, the bo...

In October 2019, 47-year-old Ella Jackson disappeared from her home in Richmond, Kentucky. Her cellphone, wallet, vehicle, and five-year-old son were left behind—but her husband, Glenn Jackson, claimed she had simply walked away.

Ella’s family knew better. Days before she vanished, the Ukrainian-born mother of two had met with a domestic violence advocate and consulted a divorce attorney. Investigators later discovered a large bloodstain and a knife in the trunk of Glenn’s vehicle. Six months after Ella disappeared, her partial skeletal remains were found in a remote wooded area of Pulaski County near property Glenn owned...

When Ron Ruse Jr. ended his relationship with Linda Ricchio, he hoped for a clean break. Instead, he became the target of an ex‑girlfriend whose obsession escalated from constant phone calls and public confrontations to full‑blown stalking and death threats.

In this episode, we take a deep, narrative‑driven look at the case that would become known as the “Fatal Attraction Killer”:

Bathsheba Ruggles Spooner’s life had all the makings of a tragedy long before there was blood in the snow.

Born into privilege as the favored daughter of Loyalist Brigadier General Timothy Ruggles, Bathsheba married wealthy farmer Joshua Spooner and settled in Brookfield, Massachusetts. Behind the facade of status and respectability was a deeply unhappy, allegedly abusive marriage—and a woman who would come to say she felt “an utter aversion” toward her husband.

In March 1777, a teenage Continental soldier named Ezra Ross fell ill near the Spooner home. Bathsheba took him in, nursed him back to...

A young biotech worker is found dead in his La Jolla apartment, his body carefully laid out on a bed sprinkled with rose petals and framed by a wedding photo. His wife—an ambitious county toxicologist with access to some of the most powerful drugs in the world—tells police it was suicide. Investigators aren’t so sure.

In this episode, we unpack the chilling “American Beauty” murder of Gregory de Villers and the calculated actions of his wife, Kristin Rossum. We trace their relationship from whirlwind romance to toxic spiral, exploring Kristin’s hidden meth addiction, her affair w...

In December 2020, 21-year-old Texas State University student Jason Landry left San Marcos, Texas, headed home to Missouri City for Christmas break. He never made it.

Just after midnight, Jason’s wrecked Nissan Altima was found on a rural gravel road near Luling, Texas, with the lights on, the keys in the ignition, and Jason nowhere in sight. His phone, wallet, backpack, and clothing were later found in or near the crash scene—but Jason had vanished into the cold Texas night.

In this episode of Hitched 2 Homicide, we take a deep dive into the mysterious disa...

In the early hours of July 31, 2022, a 2018 Toyota Camry slammed into a brick building in Strongsville, Ohio at nearly 100 mph. Two young men — Dominic Russo (20) and Davion Flanagan (19) — were killed instantly. The driver, 17-year-old Mackenzie Shirilla, survived. What followed was one of Ohio’s most disturbing true crime cases of the decade.

In this deep-dive episode, we examine every angle of the Mackenzie Shirilla case: the toxic on-again, off-again relationship with Dominic Russo, the chilling vehicle black box data showing full acceleration with no braking, the dramatic bench trial, and the judge’s scathing “literal hell on whe...

Before Kansas had fully shaken the dust of the frontier from its boots, a small homestead in Labette County became a house of horrors. In the early 1870s, travelers moving along the Osage Trail stopped at the Bender family’s roadside inn for a meal, a bed, or a glimpse of Kate Bender—the self-proclaimed healer and spiritualist who promised supernatural insight to the desperate and curious.

But behind the canvas curtain inside that one-room cabin, something far darker waited.

Known to history as the Bloody Benders, the family—John Bender Sr., Elvira “Ma” Bender, John Jr...

In September 2006, the quiet Black Bear Bed & Breakfast in Newry, Maine became the center of one of the state’s most disturbing murder cases. Over Labor Day weekend, Christian Charles Nielsen shot and killed four people: inn owner Julie Bullard, her daughter Selby Bullard, handyman James “Jimmy” Whitehurst, and Selby’s friend Cynthia “Cindy” Beatson.

What began with a supposed fishing trip to Upton, Maine ended in a horrifying chain of murders at a peaceful mountain inn near Sunday River. Nielsen, a cook who had been living at the Black Bear B&B, later confessed to killing all four vic...

Katherine Knight is one of Australia’s most notorious female killers. She murdered, butchered and dismembered her lover before cooking his head. But behind the infamous headlines is the story of John Price, a father who saw the danger coming and tried to protect himself and his children.

In this episode of Hitched 2 Homicide, we examine the disturbing case of Katherine Knight, the former abattoir worker convicted of murdering John Price in Aberdeen, New South Wales. From her violent relationships with David Kellett, David Saunders, and John Chillingworth to the escalating domestic abuse, restraining order, and brutal mu...

They planned it in prison. Then they built the van. Now the toolbox is open… and the girls are disappearing.

In Part 2 of this chilling true crime series, Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris take their deadly prison pact on the road. Their custom-built torture van—dubbed “Murder Mac”—becomes a rolling chamber of horrors as the pair begins hunting young women across Southern California in 1979.

What follows is one of the most sadistic and disturbing killing sprees in American history. Hitchhikers are lured in, driven to remote mountain roads, and subjected to unimaginable torture using pliers, vi...

️Content Warning: This episode contains detailed discussion of abduction, violence against women, and murder. Listener discretion is strongly advised.

They called themselves "the Toolbox Killers." But before they had a name, before the tape recorder, before the tools — there were two men who found each other inside a California prison and made a pact that would shock even the most hardened FBI profilers for decades to come.

In Part 1 of this two-part series, we go deep into one of the most disturbing true crime cases in American history—the murders carried out by Lawrence Sigmund Bittak...

Joey Banis was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Jeffrey Mundt was acquitted of murder and released after one year. Same crime. Same house. Same body buried in the same basement. Two men who pointed at each other across three years of legal proceedings — and two juries that reached completely opposite conclusions.

In Part 2 of Buried Under Fourth Street, Kris and Rob go inside the courtrooms for the 2013 trials of Jeffrey Mundt and Joey Banis for the murder of Louisville hairstylist and drag queen Jamie Carroll — the case at the center of HBO's 2026 docuseries Murd...

In December 2009, a Louisville hairdresser and beloved drag queen named Jamie Carroll walked into a Victorian mansion in Old Louisville — and never walked out. For seven months, he lay buried beneath the basement floor while the two men who killed him went on with their lives above his grave. Nobody reported him missing. Nobody came looking. Until a 911 call, a domestic dispute, and four words spoken in the back of a squad car changed everything.

In Part 1 of Buried Beneath Fourth Street, Kris and Rob introduce you to Jamie Carroll — hairstylist by day, drag queen Ronica Reed by n...

She was 26 years old, self-employed, literate, and by every account exceptional. Bridget Cleary was a dressmaker in rural County Tipperary who made her own money, kept her own chickens, and lived life largely on her own terms — which, in 1895 Ireland, made her unusual. It may also have made her a target.

When Bridget fell ill in late February 1895, her husband Michael didn't call a doctor. He called Jack Dunne — a local man known throughout the community as an expert in fairy belief and folk cures. Dunne's diagnosis was swift and devastating: the woman in the bed was not...

*This is Part 2 of our series on the murder of Eric Richins. Start with Episode 1 if you haven't already.

March 4th, 2022. Eric Richins, a 39-year-old husband and father, is found dead in his Kamas, Utah home. Toxicology reveals illicit fentanyl at five times the lethal concentration. He had no history of drug use.

As the official investigation stalled, Kouri Richins — Eric's wife — quietly began filing claims on his life insurance policies. His family, unconvinced by the narrative she was spinning, hired a private investigator.

What he uncovered changed everything. A pattern of financial frau...

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In March 2022, Eric Richins was found dead in his Kamas, Utah bedroom. He was 39. He had four children. And he had enough fentanyl in his system to kill four people. His wife, Kouri Richins, told investigators she found him unresponsive. But prosecutors told a different story — one involving forged documents, fraudulent mortgages, multiple life insurance policies, and what they alleged was a prior poisoning attempt months earlier. Then came the detail that stopped the country: while awaiting trial for her husband's murder, Kouri Richins published a children's book about coping wi...

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Content Warning: This episode contains detailed discussion of serial murder, sexual sadism, fetishistic violence, the abduction and killing of young women, and disturbing descriptions of post-mortem criminal behavior. Some details may be graphic and are not suitable for all listeners. Please take care of yourself and listen at your own discretion.

He seemed like any other married man in 1960s Oregon — a job, a wife, a house in the suburbs. But behind closed doors, Jerry Brudos was keeping secrets that would make him one of the mo...

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She wasn’t a real doctor—but she convinced patients fasting would heal them, then starved them to death. From Minneapolis (1901) to Washington’s “Starvation Heights” and her 1911 arrest, we break down the victims, the fraud, and the shocking medical abuse behind Linda Hazzard.

sources used for this podcast: https://www.hitched2homicide.com/post/dr-linda-hazzard-the-starvation-doctor

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