Murder: True Crime Stories

In 2006, a 27-year-old Ohio State medical student named Brian Shaffer walked into a crowded Columbus bar to celebrate the end of finals with friends and vanished without a trace. Surveillance cameras captured him entering the Ugly Tuna Saloona but never showed him leaving. His mother had died of cancer just weeks earlier, he had a vacation flight booked for Monday, and in the days before he disappeared, he had swung between asking his girlfriend to elope and telling her to move on without him. In this episode of Murder: True Crime Stories, host Carter Roy examines the baffling disappearance...

In Part 2 of Murder: True Crime Stories, host Carter Roy follows the investigation into the 1981 Wonderland murders in Los Angeles. Four people were bludgeoned to death in a Laurel Canyon townhouse, and a fifth barely survived with severe brain damage. Detectives had bloody palmprints, a long list of suspects, and a trail that led straight to nightclub owner Eddie Nash and former pornstar John Holmes. But fractured loyalties, shifting stories, and the tangled world of drugs and celebrity made building a case nearly impossible. It took two decades, multiple trials, and a legal battle that stretched the limits of...

In the summer of 1981, a group of drug dealers known as the Wonderland Gang were living in a townhouse in LA's Laurel Canyon, broke, desperate, and with a contract already out on their heads. Their solution was to rob Eddie Nash, one of the most powerful and dangerous nightclub owners in Los Angeles, with the help of a washed-up pornstar who was in debt to both sides. The heist netted $100,000 in cash, drugs, and jewelry. Two days later, a group of men armed with hammers and lead pipes showed up at the townhouse at 4 AM. In Part 1 of Murder...

In 1973, a 7-year-old girl was taken from her tent at a Montana campsite while her family slept. The FBI had no evidence, no witnesses, and no leads, but two agents in a basement at Quantico thought they could describe the killer based on the crime scene alone. What they built would be tested on some of the most notorious cases in American history, including the Ted Bundy manhunt, the Atlanta child murders, and the hunt for BTK. It also raised a question that still doesn't have a clean answer: can you really look at a crime scene and know...

She married them fast, drugged their food, and emptied their bank accounts. Then they died. Melissa Ann Shepard did it for decades, moving between Canada and Florida, leaving a trail of dead and disabled husbands behind her. The drug was always the same. The pattern was always the same. And no one could stop her until one man survived long enough to tell someone what was in his coffee. In this episode of Murder: True Crime Stories, host Carter Roy follows the Internet Black Widow from her first kill to her last arrest, and the question that haunted every...

In Part 2 of Murder: True Crime Stories, host Carter Roy follows Andrew Cunanan's cross-country killing spree from Minneapolis to Miami Beach. After murdering two men he knew personally, Andrew killed a wealthy Chicago real estate developer and a New Jersey cemetery worker before driving south to Florida, where he spent two months hiding in plain sight just miles from Gianni Versace's Ocean Drive mansion. On the morning of July 15th, 1997, Gianni stepped out for magazines and coffee. He never made it back through his front door. What followed was a massive manhunt, an eight-day standoff that ended on a...

Gianni Versace was the Italian fashion designer who turned bold prints, bare skin, and celebrity culture into a global empire. From his mother's seamstress studio in southern Italy, he rose to dress everyone from Princess Diana to Tupac Shakur, building a brand that generated over $800 million in annual sales by the mid-1990s. In Part 1 of Murder: True Crime Stories, host Carter Roy traces Gianni's creative journey from small-town Calabria to the top of the fashion world, while introducing the man who would destroy it all: Andrew Cunanan, a 27-year-old con artist whose carefully constructed life of lies was...

In the 1920s, members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma were among the wealthiest people on the planet, thanks to massive oil reserves beneath their land. Then they started dying: poisoned, shot, and blown up in their own homes. Local law enforcement wouldn't help, and some of them were in on it. There was no FBI to call. Not the way we know it. This is the story of the conspiracy that targeted the Osage for their oil money, and the investigation that transformed a small federal agency into the most powerful law enforcement organization in the country. This...

On August 31st, 1997, Princess Diana died in a car crash in a Paris tunnel. She was 36 years old. The official investigation concluded it was a tragic accident caused by a drunk driver and high-speed paparazzi pursuit. But for millions of people around the world, the explanation never quite fit. Questions about the events leading up to that night, the role of the British establishment, and what Diana herself had feared in the months before her death have fueled debate for nearly three decades. In this episode of Murder: True Crime Stories, host Carter Roy examines the life, the crash...

By the mid-1970s, Sal Mineo's Oscar-nominated Hollywood career had collapsed. He was broke, deeply in debt, and sleeping in a rented apartment with rented furniture. But a sold-out stage run in San Francisco had the critics raving again, and a deal to direct his first feature film was finally coming together. On the night of February 12th, 1976, Sal left rehearsal for the LA run of his comeback show, stopped for cupcakes and cigarettes, and pulled into his usual parking spot. He never made it to his front door. In Part 2 of Murder: True Crime Stories, host Carter Roy...

Before he was a Hollywood star, Sal Mineo was a scrappy kid from the Bronx who couldn't stop getting into fights. His mother enrolled him in dance lessons to keep him out of trouble, and by 11 he was on Broadway. By 15 he was in his first film. By 16, he was reading lines poolside at the Chateau Marmont with James Dean, cast as one of three leads in Rebel Without a Cause. It was the kind of rise that seemed destined to last forever. It didn't. In Part 1 of Murder: True Crime Stories, host Carter Roy traces Sal's path from...

You know the words by heart: "You have the right to remain silent." But do you know the crime behind them? In 1963, a man named Ernesto Miranda confessed to a violent crime in a Phoenix police station, was convicted, and sentenced to decades in prison. Three years later, the Supreme Court threw out his conviction, not because he was innocent, but because of how he'd been questioned. The ruling changed the rules for every police interrogation in America, and what happened to Miranda afterward is one of the strangest stories in criminal justice history. This is episode 1 of The...

He was called the Visalia Ransacker, the East Area Rapist, and the Original Night Stalker before anyone realized they were chasing the same man. Over more than a decade, he committed over 100 burglaries, approximately 50 sexual assaults, and 13 murders across California. Then he vanished for 40 years, raising a family in the suburbs while his victims spent decades checking their locks and flinching at unknown calls. He had studied criminal justice and worked as a cop on an anti-burglary unit just miles from the homes he was ransacking. It took a public genealogy database and a tissue in a trash can...

In Part 2 of Murder: True Crime Stories, Carter Roy explains what happened after a 21-year-old British student named Meredith Kercher was found murdered in Perugia, Italy in November 2007. Investigators quickly fixated on her American roommate Amanda Knox. Not because of hard evidence, but because of the way she acted. What followed was a years-long legal battle shaped more by tabloid speculation than forensic fact, while the man convicted of the killing, and Meredith herself, faded from public view.

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In November 2007, 21-year-old British student Meredith Kercher was found murdered in her home in Perugia, Italy, just five weeks into a semester abroad she had spent months dreaming about. What should have been a straightforward search for justice became a global media spectacle, one that centered not on the victim, but on her American roommate, Amanda Knox. In Part 1 of Murder: True Crime Stories, Carter Roy traces Meredith's life, her final days, and the chaotic scene that unfolded when her body was discovered.

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In November 2006, Abraham Shakespeare won 30 million dollars in the Florida Lottery. He couldn't read or write and had spent most of his life scraping by on odd jobs in Lakeland, Florida, but overnight he became one of the wealthiest men in town. He gave most of it away within two years, paying off mortgages, covering funeral costs, and helping nearly anyone who asked. Then a woman named Dee Dee Moore showed up, promising to protect what was left. Within months, she had his house, his insurance, and his power of attorney. Not long after that, Abe vanished, and the...

In Part 2 of Murder: True Crime Stories, Carter Roy and Katie Ring, host of America's Most Infamous Crimes, follow the case against Kaitlin Armstrong in the 2022 murder of rising gravel racing star Mo Wilson. Digital forensics revealed months of obsessive surveillance, but a clerical error let Armstrong walk out of the police station before the murder warrant was ready. Within days, she had sold her Jeep, stolen her sister's passport, and fled to Costa Rica, where she paid cash for plastic surgery and assumed a fake identity. What followed was a 43-day international manhunt, a forensic goldmine hidden in...

In May 2022, 25-year-old Moriah "Mo" Wilson traveled to Austin, Texas, for a gravel race that was supposed to kick off her biggest season yet. A former elite ski racer turned dominant cyclist, Mo had overcome two ACL tears to become one of the top gravel racers in the country, with journalists calling her the future of the sport. But on the evening of May 11th, after a swim and dinner with a fellow racer, she returned to a friend's apartment and never came out alive. In Part 1 of Murder: True Crime Stories, Carter Roy is joined by Katie Ring...

On the night of April 11, 1981, three people were brutally killed inside Cabin 28 at the Keddie Resort in northern California, and a 12-year-old girl was taken into the night, never to be seen alive again. In this episode of Murder: True Crime Stories, Carter Roy examines the botched investigation, the suspects who may have confessed and walked free, and the conspiracy theories that suggest someone powerful wanted this case to stay cold. Content warning: this episode contains graphic descriptions of violence.

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In Part 2 of Murder: True Crime Stories, host Carter Roy continues the investigation into the 1998 disappearance of 23-year-old Amy Bradley from a Royal Caribbean cruise ship. Multiple witnesses claimed to have seen Amy alive across the Caribbean in the years that followed, but every lead ran cold, and a con man posing as a Special Forces operative bilked her family out of more than $200,000. Decades later, the Bradleys still believe Amy is out there, and they're still waiting for the day she comes home.

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In March 1998, 23-year-old Amy Bradley boarded a Royal Caribbean cruise ship in San Juan, Puerto Rico, with her family, and vanished without a trace three days into the voyage. When her father checked the balcony at dawn, her shoes and shirt were still in the cabin, but Amy was gone. In Part 1 of Murder: True Crime Stories, host Carter Roy traces Amy's life in Virginia, the night she disappeared, and the investigation that quickly stalled in international waters.

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On March 16, 1978, former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro was kidnapped off a busy Rome street by the Red Brigades terrorist group, his five bodyguards killed in seconds. For 55 days, he wrote 86 letters begging for his life, while his own government called his death a spiritual victory. In this episode of Murder: True Crime Stories, Carter Roy examines the assassination, the political forces that may have sealed Moro's fate, and the questions that no official investigation has ever fully answered.

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In Part 2 of Murder: True Crime Stories, Carter Roy follows the 44-year investigation into the 1974 murder of 19-year-old Arlis Perry at Stanford University's Memorial Church. Serial killer David Berkowitz's cryptic claims of a nationwide satanic cult network kept the case alive for decades. But it was a mislabeled piece of evidence and advances in DNA technology that finally revealed the truth.

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In October 1974, 19-year-old Arlis Perry stepped inside Stanford University's memorial church late one Saturday night to pray after an argument with her husband, and never came out. When a security guard found her body the next morning, detectives encountered one of the most disturbing crime scenes they had ever seen, with evidence suggesting the killing was deliberate, ritualistic, and deeply personal. In Part 1 of Murder: True Crime Stories, host Carter Roy traces Arlis's life in small-town North Dakota, her whirlwind move to California, and the investigation that quickly ran cold.

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Dr. Harini Bhat is a clinical pharmacist and storyteller obsessed with the moments in history that still can't be fully explained. Every week she investigates real events that defy easy explanation. Mass hysterias. Vanished civilizations. Medical oddities. Strange signals. Unexplained phenomena that keep repeating across centuries, as if history is trying to tell us something.

Hidden History doesn't dismiss ancient events as myth or superstition. It treats them as open case files, shaped by the limits of knowledge, technology, and record-keeping. Because the unknown isn't a failure of explanation. It's a constant in human experience, one that...

In 1892, a woman calling herself Lottie Bernard checked into the Hotel del Coronado alone, sick, and afraid — and was found dead five days later, the bullet in her body not matching the gun she bought. Over forty years later, a young man registered as Roland T. Owen sat alone in a dark Kansas City hotel room with the door unlocked, as if waiting for whoever came to kill him. In this episode of Murder: True Crime Stories, Carter Roy investigates both cases — separated by decades and a thousand miles, but united by fake names, unanswered questions, and killers who were...

In Part 2 of Murder: True Crime Stories, Carter Roy picks up where the Greenbrier Ghost case left off. After Zona Heaster Shue's exhumed body reveals a broken neck and fingerprints on her throat, prosecutor John Preston builds a case against her husband Edward — a man who had already buried two wives under suspicious circumstances. The trial that follows tests the limits of what a jury will accept as evidence, culminating in testimony that no American courtroom had ever heard before or since.

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In 1897, 23-year-old Zona Heaster Shue was found dead in her rural West Virginia home, and the doctor quickly ruled it natural causes — but her new husband's suspicious behavior and a history of violence told a different story. In Part 1 of Murder: True Crime Stories, host Carter Roy traces Zona's life, her whirlwind marriage to the charming but dangerous Edward Shue, and the events of the cold January afternoon she was found at the foot of her stairs.

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In November 2022, four University of Idaho students — Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin — were stabbed to death inside their off-campus home in Moscow, Idaho, after a night out with friends. For weeks, the case gripped the nation as investigators traced a circling white Hyundai Elantra and a lone DNA clue to criminology PhD student Bryan Kohberger. In this episode of Murder: True Crime Stories, Carter Roy describes the crime, the arrest, the trial, the guilty plea followed, and the questions that still remain.

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After the discovery of 16-year-old Jeannette DePalma’s body in a New Jersey quarry, investigators were left with more questions than answers. With no clear cause of death and a crime scene that some believed pointed to something ritualistic, rumors of the occult quickly took hold and began to shape both public fear and the direction of the case. In Part 2 of Murder: True Crime Stories, Carter Roy examines how speculation and early theories may have derailed the investigation, the suspects who emerged as detectives searched for answers, and the possible connections to other murders in the area. As th...

In 1972, 16-year-old Jeannette DePalma disappeared from her quiet suburban neighborhood in Springfield, New Jersey, and at first, no one treated it as a crisis. Known as a rebellious teenager with a complicated reputation, many believed she had simply run away. But as weeks passed with no word, that assumption began to unravel. In Part 1 of Murder: True Crime Stories, Carter Roy examines Jeannette’s life, the conflicting perceptions that shaped her story, and the early investigation that struggled to gain traction. When her remains were discovered weeks later in a nearby quarry under unsettling circumstances, the case took a da...

In 1945, a series of shocking murders gripped Chicago, each more disturbing than the last, and one marked by a message scrawled in lipstick that would haunt the city. Police soon arrested 17-year-old William “Bill” Heirens, who quickly became known as the Lipstick Killer. In this episode of Murder: True Crime Stories, Carter Roy examines the investigation, the intense interrogation that led to Heirens’ confession, and the lingering doubts that have fueled decades of debate over whether the right person was held responsible.

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After suspicion fell on Shrien Dewani in the murder of his wife, Anni, the case quickly expanded into an international legal battle over whether he would be extradited to South Africa to stand trial. As prosecutors worked to build their case, the question of what truly happened on the couple’s honeymoon became even more contested. In Part 2 of Murder: True Crime Stories, Carter Roy examines the fight over Dewani’s extradition, the courtroom proceedings that followed, and the testimony surrounding Anni’s killing. The prosecution argued that the attack had been carefully orchestrated, while the defense challenged the credib...

In 2010, newlyweds Anni and Shrien Dewani arrived in Cape Town for what was meant to be a luxury honeymoon, but within days, Anni was found shot to death in a hijacked taxi in a crime that quickly made international headlines. What initially appeared to be a tragic robbery soon took a darker turn as investigators uncovered signs that the attack may have been planned. In Part 1 of Murder: True Crime Stories, Carter Roy examines the couple’s relationship, the events leading up to the night of the killing, and the early investigation that led to multiple arrests. As witness st...

In 2005, an American teenager vanished during a high school graduation trip to Aruba, sparking an international search and years of unanswered questions. Natalee Holloway was last seen leaving a bar with three young men, and what followed became one of the most widely covered missing persons cases in modern history. In this episode of Murder: True Crime Stories, Carter Roy examines the disappearance of Natalee Holloway, the shifting accounts and stalled investigations, and the long, complicated pursuit of answers that has kept her case in the public eye for nearly two decades.

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At the height of his career, Sam Cooke was more than a music icon. He was becoming an increasingly outspoken figure in the civil rights movement, using his platform to challenge injustice while navigating the pressures of fame, business, and a rapidly changing America. In Part 2 of Murder: True Crime Stories, Carter Roy examines the final chapter of Cooke’s life, including his growing activism, the events leading up to a fateful night in Los Angeles, and the violent confrontation that left him dead at just 33 years old. As authorities quickly ruled the killing justified, questions began to surface ab...

In 1964, Sam Cooke was one of the biggest stars in America, a pioneering soul singer whose voice and business instincts were reshaping the music industry. Behind the success, Cooke was navigating growing personal pressures and a shifting cultural landscape as the civil rights movement gained momentum. In Part 1 of Murder: True Crime Stories, Carter Roy traces Cooke’s rise from gospel prodigy to crossover icon, his fight for ownership and control in a segregated industry, and the tensions that defined his life offstage. As his influence grew, so did his willingness to challenge the status quo, culminating in a pi...

In 2021, a powerful South Carolina legal dynasty was rocked by a brutal double murder that quickly drew national attention. Alex Murdaugh, a prominent attorney from a family with deep ties to the region’s justice system, soon became the focus of an investigation that extended far beyond the killings. In this episode of Murder: True Crime Stories, Carter Roy examines the Murdaugh murders, the unraveling of a legacy built on influence and control, and how a local tragedy exposed a pattern of deception that shocked the nation.

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After the indictment of Quinton Tellis, the case against him moved to trial, but the search for justice for Jessica Chambers proved far from straightforward. In Part 2 of Murder: True Crime Stories, Carter Roy examines the courtroom battles that followed Jessica’s brutal murder, where prosecutors centered their case on her alleged final words and the circumstantial evidence surrounding Tellis. Defense attorneys challenged the reliability of that evidence, while forensic questions and conflicting interpretations complicated the prosecution’s case. Two trials ended without resolution, leaving Jessica’s family in painful limbo and the community still searching for answers. More than a...

In December 2014, 19 year old Jessica Chambers was found severely burned beside her car on a rural road in Courtland, Mississippi and soon passed away from her injuries. The horrifying crime quickly became one of the most haunting unsolved murder cases in recent memory. Before she died, Jessica reportedly identified her attacker, and her final words quickly became one of the most debated pieces of evidence in the case. As investigators searched for answers, the case exploded online, with social media users and amateur sleuths dissecting every rumor, clue, and theory. In Part 1 of Murder: True Crime Stories, Carter Roy...