10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

The Peacemaker: Jesse Alvarez and the Murder of Mario Fierro

On February 1, 2021, Mario Fierro, a 37-year-old social studies teacher and football coach at Cathedral Catholic High School in San Diego, California, was shot and killed outside his home by Jesse Milton Alvarez, the ex-boyfriend of Fierro's fiancée, fellow teacher Amy Gembara. Alvarez had been systematically stalking Gembara for over a year before the homicide, and despite Gembara filing a domestic violence restraining order application in January 2020, a San Diego Superior Court judge denied her petition, citing insufficient evidence of abuse under the legal definitions in place at t...

Black Swan Murder: The Trial of Ashley Benefield

In Lakewood Ranch, Florida, on September 27, 2020, retired U.S. Navy intelligence officer Douglas Benefield was fatally shot by his wife, Ashley Benefield, a former professional ballerina and Trump campaign staffer. The Manatee County homicide investigation led to a July 2024 murder trial in which Ashley mounted a battered spouse syndrome defense, resulting in a manslaughter conviction and a 20-year prison sentence handed down December 3, 2024.

Doug and Ashley Benefield met at a Palm Beach political dinner in August 2016, and thirteen days later they were married. Thirteen. They launched a ballet...

Carroll Edward Cole: The Man Who Asked to Be Stopped

Carroll Edward Cole was convicted of murdering at least thirteen women across California, Nevada, Wyoming, and Texas between 1971 and 1980, making him one of the most prolific and underdocumented serial killers of the twentieth century. Despite repeated contact with law enforcement, psychiatric evaluation at multiple state hospitals, and documented confessions of violent homicidal urges, Cole was discharged and released each time, enabling a decade-long killing spree that left investigators scrambling to connect cases spanning half the country.

This is not a story about a killer who hid...

Six Months of Warnings: What Rochester Missed Before the Brom Massacre

In February 1988, sixteen-year-old David Brom murdered his parents, Bernard and Paulette, and two of his younger siblings, Diane and Richard, with an axe at their home in Rochester, Minnesota, in what became the most notorious mass killing in Minnesota state history. The investigation by the Olmsted County Sheriff's Office, the subsequent trial involving competing psychiatric testimony, and a landmark insanity defense ruling would shape Minnesota criminal law for decades.

The Brom family was everything a quiet Catholic suburb was supposed to produce. Polite. Organized. Deeply...

Britain's Most Disturbing Love Story: The Moors Murders

Ian Brady and Myra Hindley abducted and murdered five children between July 1963 and October 1965 in and around Manchester, England, burying their victims on Saddleworth Moor in what became the most devastating criminal investigation in British history. The case, known as the Moors Murders, led to their conviction in 1966, fundamentally altered British penal law, and left one wound that has never closed: the body of victim Keith Bennett has never been recovered.

There are true crime cases that disturb you, and then there are cases that change the way...

This is a sample from an episode of a new podcast called True Crime Blueprint. It's still hosted and created by me, Joe. But it's longer and more of a deep dive into selected and curated cases. 

To follow and subscribe, go here:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/43zuDpH01HtdIrH0ShCAid?si=86b2281063334139



Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/true-crime-blueprint/id1877878404


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De...

The Rise and Fall of Pretty Boy Floyd: Corn Liquor and Submachine Guns

In October 1934, FBI agents shot and killed Charles Arthur Floyd, known nationwide as "Pretty Boy" Floyd, in an Ohio cornfield, closing the book on one of the most controversial manhunts in American criminal history. Floyd, a Sequoyah County, Oklahoma bank robber elevated to Public Enemy Number One by J. Edgar Hoover's newly formed FBI, was linked to multiple homicides and suspected involvement in the 1933 Kansas City Massacre, a shooting that left four law enforcement officers dead and reshaped the entire architecture of federal law enforcement...

The Phantom of Heilbronn: The Most Dangerous Woman Nobody Could Find

For over a decade, European law enforcement hunted a woman they called the Phantom of Heilbronn, a suspected serial killer whose DNA appeared at more than forty crime scenes across Germany, Austria, and France. Her profile connected murders, burglaries, drug offenses, and eventually the killing of a police officer in broad daylight. Investigators swabbed over three thousand women, logged sixteen thousand overtime hours, and posted rewards of up to three hundred thousand euros.

She was not real.In this episode, we follow one of the...

This is a sample from an episode of a new podcast called True Crime Blueprint. It's still hosted and created by me, Joe. But it's longer and more of a deep dive into selected and curated cases. 

To follow and subscribe, go here:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/43zuDpH01HtdIrH0ShCAid?si=86b2281063334139



Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/true-crime-blueprint/id1877878404


iHeartRadio: https://iheart.com/podcast/323307878


Amazon Music/Audible: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/b7d5eaae-9d27-40f9-8efb-6864c2af8055


De...

The Teflon Don: How John Gotti Ran New York and Lost Everything

In 1985, John Gotti orchestrated the assassination of Gambino crime family boss Paul Castellano outside Sparks Steak House in Midtown Manhattan, setting off one of the most aggressive FBI investigations in organized crime history. The RICO prosecution that followed resulted in Gotti's 1992 conviction on five counts of murder, racketeering, and extortion, marking the effective end of the old-school New York mob era.

What keeps the Gotti story compelling decades later runs deeper than the Brioni suits and tabloid headlines. The real architecture is a kid...

The Smiling Confession: How Alyssa Bradburn Planned Her Father's Death

In June 2024, 68-year-old Timothy Bradburn flew home from Hawaii to fix a leaking roof at his Spokane, Washington house. He walked through the front door holding his suitcase and his keys, and he never set them down.

His daughter Alyssa had been planning this for three weeks. She practiced at a gun range. She wrote a journal detailing exactly what she intended to do and left it on the table for police to find. She told her father she was sick so he would walk in...

This is a sample from an episode of a new podcast called True Crime Blueprint. It's still hosted and created by me, Joe. But it's longer and more of a deep dive into selected and curated cases. 

To follow and subscribe, go here:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/43zuDpH01HtdIrH0ShCAid?si=86b2281063334139



Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/true-crime-blueprint/id1877878404


iHeartRadio: https://iheart.com/podcast/323307878


Amazon Music/Audible: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/b7d5eaae-9d27-40f9-8efb-6864c2af8055


De...

Ice Cream and a Shallow Grave: The Bobby Greenlease Kidnapping

In September 1953, six-year-old Bobby Greenlease was abducted from his Kansas City Catholic school and murdered within hours, setting off the largest ransom demand in American history. The FBI investigation into the murder of Robert Greenlease Jr. by Carl Austin Hall and Bonnie Brown Heady led to a swift federal conviction, a double execution, and a police corruption scandal surrounding $312,000 in ransom money that has never been found.

This one starts with a lie told in a school hallway, and it gets stranger and darker from there...

The Pine Barrens Body: Who Killed Cody MacPherson?

In September 2017, 20-year-old Cody MacPherson disappeared from Pemberton Township, New Jersey, launching a six-month investigation that eventually drew in New Jersey State Police homicide detectives, Ocean County prosecutors, and a forensic team working largely skeletal remains discovered near the Colliers Mills Wildlife Management Area. Alan McGinnis, a 26-year-old Burlington County man with deep roots in the Pemberton community, was arrested, charged, and convicted of first-degree murder, ultimately sentenced to 30 years without parole.

Cody played bass guitar, sang in choir, and had a daughter back in Indiana he was...

Who Killed the Rhoden Family? The Wagner Family's Pike County Massacre Explained

In April 2016, eight members of the Rhoden and Gilley families were found shot execution-style across four separate locations in Pike County, Ohio, in what became one of the most extensive homicide investigations in American history. After two years of surveillance, wiretaps, ballistics analysis, and a homemade silencer recovered from the bottom of a well, the Wagner family of four was arrested in November 2018 and charged with aggravated murder, conspiracy, and related offenses.

What started as a custody dispute over a baby girl became the...

The Chelsea Perkins Case: A Veteran, a Double Life, and an Execution in the Woods

In March 2021, the body of Matthew Dunmire, 31, was found in a remote ravine inside Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Valley View, Ohio. The federal homicide investigation led agents to Chelsea Perkins, a 35-year-old United States Coast Guard veteran who had driven 300 miles from Alexandria, Virginia, to commit the crime. Forensic evidence including GPS tracking, DNA analysis, and a recovered deleted file from her phone resulted in a federal conviction. On May 27, 2025, Perkins pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 270 months in...

Alaska Serial Killer Robert Hansen: The Baker Who Hunted His Victims Like Game

In 1983, Anchorage, Alaska investigators connected respected local businessman Robert Christian Hansen to the murders of at least seventeen women, building their criminal profile case through FBI behavioral analysis, forensic evidence recovered from a hidden attic cache, and the survivor testimony of seventeen-year-old Cindy Paulson, who escaped Hansen in handcuffs before her scheduled flight into the Alaskan wilderness. Hansen pleaded guilty to four counts of first-degree homicide and was sentenced to life plus 461 years without the possibility of parole. Robert Hansen sold donuts. He had hunting...

Bodies in Barrels: The True Story of the Snowtown Murders

In May 1999, South Australian police breached the vault of a disused bank building in the remote town of Snowtown and found eight barrels of human remains, uncovering what would become the most prolific serial murder case in Australian history. The Snowtown murders, also known as the Bodies in Barrels case, resulted in the convictions of John Justin Bunting, Robert Wagner, James Vlassakis, and Mark Haydon for the murders of twelve victims between 1992 and 1999, following an investigation that stands as the longest and most complex in South Australian legal...

The High Priest of New Castle: Frank Costal and the Kadunce Ritual Murders

On July 11, 1978, Kathy Kadunce, age 25, and her four-year-old daughter Dawn were found stabbed to death inside their New Castle, Pennsylvania home in what investigators would eventually classify as a ritualistic homicide connected to a Satanic cult operating in Lawrence County. The cold case investigation sat dormant for three years before a convicted serial killer named Michael Atkinson provided testimony pointing to Frank Costal Jr., a self-styled occult high priest who maintained a following of alienated young men, as the architect of the killings.

...

Missing in Cleveland: The True Story of the Seymour Avenue Abductions

In 2002, Michelle Knight became the first victim in a kidnapping investigation that would span eleven years in Cleveland, Ohio, as Ariel Castro abducted three women and held them captive at 2207 Seymour Avenue in one of the most significant missing persons failures in American criminal history. Detectives failed to connect the disappearances of victims Amanda Berry in 2003 and Gina DeJesus in 2004, leaving three open cases while the suspect drove a school bus, played bass in local bands, and attended vigils for the very girl he had locked in...

The Zombie Hunter Murders: Phoenix's Most Haunting Cold Case Finally Solved

In November 1992, Angela Brosso, age 21, was murdered and decapitated on a Phoenix, Arizona canal path on the eve of her 22nd birthday. Ten months later, 17-year-old Melanie Bernas was found in the same canal system, staged in clothing that didn't belong to her. For 22 years, the Phoenix Canal Murders stood as one of Arizona's most haunting cold cases until forensic genealogy and a glass of water at a Chili's finally put a name to the killer: Bryan Patrick Miller.

What makes this one so hard...

Operation Misty: The Undercover Sting That Caught a Serial Killer

In October 1997, the body of Samantha Class, a 29-year-old mother of three, was discovered partially submerged in the muddy foreshore of the River Humber near North Ferriby, England. DNA evidence pointed directly at suspect Gary Arthur Allen, but in a 2000 trial at Sheffield Crown Court, Allen walked free. Twenty-one years later, in 2018, Alena Grlakova, a 38-year-old mother of four from Slovakia, vanished from Rotherham. Her body was found months later in a nearby stream, strangled and discarded just like Samantha had been. What followed was one of the...

The Wrong Mother: How Julie Rea Was Convicted of Killing Her Own Son

In October 1997, ten-year-old Joel Kirkpatrick was stabbed to death in his bed in Lawrenceville, Illinois, in a homicide investigation that would expose the catastrophic consequences of tunnel vision policing, junk forensic science, and the weight a single courtroom assumption can carry. His mother, Julie Rea, a PhD student in educational psychology, was convicted and sentenced to 65 years in prison despite no physical evidence connecting her to her son's death.

What followed was nearly a decade of wrongful imprisonment, a true crime author who...

Sheila and Clay Fletcher: The Parents Who Let Their Daughter Die

On January 3, 2022, first responders entered a home in Slaughter, Louisiana, and discovered 36-year-old Lacey Fletcher deceased, the victim of years of catastrophic neglect committed by her parents, Sheila and Clay Fletcher. The investigation resulted in second-degree murder charges, a surprising plea deal, and a sentencing that ignited national outrage about vulnerable adult protections, caregiver accountability, and the failures of community oversight. What makes this case almost impossible to process is that Sheila Fletcher was a town alderman and court clerk, someone literally employed to uphold justice, while...

This is a sample from an episode of a new podcast called True Crime Blueprint. It's still hosted and created by me, Joe. But it's longer and more of a deep dive into selected and curated cases. 

To follow and subscribe, go here:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/43zuDpH01HtdIrH0ShCAid?si=86b2281063334139



Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/true-crime-blueprint/id1877878404


iHeartRadio: https://iheart.com/podcast/323307878


Amazon Music/Audible: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/b7d5eaae-9d27-40f9-8efb-6864c2af8055


De...

The Shadow of the Adirondacks: Robert Garrow and the Lawyers Who Kept His Deadly Secrets

In the summer of 1973, serial killer Robert Garrow launched an 18-day murder spree through New York's Adirondack wilderness, triggering the largest manhunt in state history and leaving investigators with a map marked with 26 red dots and far too few answers. The homicide investigation surrounding victims Alicia Hauck, Daniel Porter, Susan Petz, and Philip Domblewski eventually led to a courtroom revelation that cracked American legal ethics wide open. Two defense attorneys knew where the bodies were buried and said nothing for five months, while...

Jeffrey Mundt and Joseph Banis: The Fourth Street House of Horrors

In December 2009, Jamie Carroll, a 37-year-old master hair stylist from Louisville, Kentucky, disappeared after a night of drugs and sex at a Victorian mansion on Fourth Street in Old Louisville. His body wouldn't be discovered for six months, sealed in a 50-gallon container and buried five feet beneath the basement floor. The investigation exposed a complex homicide case involving methamphetamine addiction, a sophisticated counterfeiting operation, and two men who each claimed the other was the killer. Federal agencies including the Secret Service and CIA became involved after...

This is a sample from an episode of a new podcast called True Crime Blueprint. It's still hosted and created by me, Joe. But it's longer and more of a deep dive into selected and curated cases. 

To follow and subscribe, go here:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/43zuDpH01HtdIrH0ShCAid?si=86b2281063334139



Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/true-crime-blueprint/id1877878404


iHeartRadio: https://iheart.com/podcast/323307878


Amazon Music/Audible: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/b7d5eaae-9d27-40f9-8efb-6864c2af8055


De...

Justin Mohn: How Right-Wing Radicalization Led to Father's Beheading

On January 30, 2024, 68-year-old Michael Mohn, a civil engineer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, was shot and beheaded in his Levittown, Pennsylvania home by his 33-year-old son Justin Mohn. The murder investigation revealed forensic evidence including a Sig Sauer 9mm pistol purchased 24 hours before the killing, a notebook containing detailed plans labeled "Boom" and "Slice," and online search history going back at least five years showing research on handgun purchases, bullet penetration of skulls, and explosive-making instructions. Justin then uploaded a 14-minute YouTube video titled "Mohn's Militia...

Hello 10 Minute Murder listeners. This is a sample epiosde of a new podcast created by and hosted by Joe... the same as 10 Minute Murder. If you like what you hear in this episode, there are more to listen to. Go subscribe to True Crime Blueprint, right now!

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/43zuDpH01HtdIrH0ShCAid?si=86b2281063334139



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iHeartRadio: https://iheart.com/podcast/323307878


Amazon Music/Audible: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/b7d5eaae-9d27-40f9-8efb-6864c2af8055
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Julissa Thaler: The Mother Who Bought a Shotgun After Losing Custody Battle

In May 2022, Orono police discovered six-year-old Eli Hart's body in the trunk of his mother Julissa Thaler's vehicle during a routine traffic stop in Minnesota. The investigation revealed Thaler had shot Eli up to nine times with a 12-gauge shotgun just ten days after regaining full custody. Evidence included the weapon purchase six days after the father filed for custody, Google searches about child blood loss and life insurance payouts, and ammunition specifically requested to "blow the biggest hole." Despite 21 police calls to Thaler's home, documented...

Mississippi Civil Rights Murder: The Medgar Evers Case Explained

In June 1963, NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers was shot in the back outside his Jackson, Mississippi home by white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith. The assassination triggered a 31-year investigation involving forensic evidence, FBI fingerprint analysis, two hung jury trials, and shocking interference by Mississippi's governor and a state-funded spy agency called the Sovereignty Commission that actively worked to protect the suspect from conviction.

While Medgar was bleeding out in his driveway at 12:30 in the morning, his wife and children heard him trying to reach their door...

Larry Gene Bell: The Sadistic Killer Who Tortured Families by Phone

In May 1985, seventeen-year-old Shari Faye Smith was abducted from her family's driveway in broad daylight near Lexington, South Carolina, sparking one of the most intensive FBI investigations in the region's history. The perpetrator, Larry Gene Bell, tortured Shari's family with phone calls for days before killing nine-year-old Debra May Helmick two weeks later, turning the Midlands into a landscape of fear during what became known as the "Summer of Terror."

This case has everything that makes true crime both fascinating and deeply unsettling. Bell didn't...

Four Dead in Ohio: The Kent State Shootings Investigation

In May 1970, National Guardsmen fired 67 rounds in thirteen seconds at Kent State University students protesting the Vietnam War's expansion into Cambodia, killing Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer, and William Schroeder, and wounding nine others. The FBI investigation, civil trials, and forensic analysis of audio evidence would span decades, with questions about whether guardsmen received an order to fire remaining central to the case.

Four days. That's all it took for a college campus in Ohio to go from burying a copy of the Constitution as a...

Herbert Mullin: The Santa Cruz Killer Who Believed Murder Prevented Earthquakes

In 1972, Herbert Mullin murdered thirteen people across Santa Cruz, California, during a six-month killing spree that terrorized the community already known as the "Murder Capital of the World." The homicide investigation revealed victims ranging from a hitchhiking college student to a Catholic priest killed inside a confessional booth, with forensic evidence and detective work eventually connecting the seemingly random murders to one disturbed killer whose conviction would hinge on whether his paranoid schizophrenia diagnosis proved legal insanity.

Herb Mullin genuinely believed he was saving California...

From First-Round Pick to Murder Conspiracy: The Fall of Rae Carruth

In November 1999, Charlotte real estate agent Cherica Adams was shot four times in an ambush on Rea Road orchestrated by her boyfriend, Carolina Panthers wide receiver Rae Carruth, who faced mounting child support obligations and refused to accept her pregnancy. The investigation revealed a murder-for-hire conspiracy involving career criminal Van Brett Watkins, drug dealer Michael Kennedy, and Stanley Abraham, with forensic evidence including Adams' 12-minute 911 call and handwritten hospital notes identifying Carruth before her death 28 days later.This is the story of a first-round NFL draft pick...

Ray Lewis and the Super Bowl Murders: The Buckhead Stabbing Case

In January 2000, Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis and two friends were charged with the murders of Jacinth Baker and Richard Lollar outside an Atlanta nightclub during Super Bowl weekend. The investigation revealed tactical knives purchased days before, a missing blood-soaked suit, destroyed photographs, and a code of silence that nearly derailed the entire case. What started as a champagne bottle to the head ended with two young men from Akron bleeding out on a Buckhead street, while one of football's biggest stars faced life in prison. The...

Route 40 Killer: Steven Brian Pennell and the Blue Van of Death

There's something deeply unsettling about a killer who looks like everyone else. Steven Brian Pennell was a married electrician with two kids, the guy who'd wave to you from his driveway while mowing the lawn. Between 1987 and 1988, he turned a stretch of highway in Delaware into his own personal nightmare factory. Route 40 became a place where women disappeared into a blue van and were found days later showing signs of torture that would make seasoned homicide detectives need a minute. This is the story of how a...

The Assassination of Nipsey Hussle in South LA

In March 2019, rapper and community leader Nipsey Hussle was shot and killed outside his Marathon Clothing store at the intersection of Crenshaw and Slauson in South Los Angeles. The murder investigation revealed that Eric Holder Jr., a fellow Rollin' 60s Crips member, fired over ten shots at Hussle following a brief conversation about street rumors. The homicide trial of Eric Holder Jr. resulted in a first-degree murder conviction and a sentence of 60 years to life in prison.

So here's what makes this case absolutely devastating. Nipsey wasn't killed...

The Girlfriend in the Cooler: The Wade Allen Case

Wade Allen strangled and dismembered his girlfriend Kelly Jean Warner in May 2019 in Sturgis, Michigan. Police discovered her mutilated remains stored in two coolers inside Allen's apartment after an anonymous tip. The 39-year-old pleaded no contest to second-degree homicide, attempted dismemberment, and attempted third-degree criminal sexual conduct. While incarcerated at St. Joseph County Jail, Allen sexually assaulted a cellmate who had reported his murder confession to authorities. A judge sentenced Allen to 39-60 years for murder with consecutive sentences for assault, effectively ensuring he'll likely die in prison.
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