Crime House 24/7

In December 2020, a 200-pound guard dog attacked housekeeper Maria Avila at singer Chris Brown's Los Angeles home, leaving her permanently disfigured and unable to return to work. This week, more than five years later, a Los Angeles jury ordered Brown to pay her and her family more than $13 million in a civil verdict — after hearing that when Maria lay bleeding on the ground, Brown left the scene without calling 911. Vanessa walks you through the attack, the trial, and where this fits into a legal history that stretches back more than fifteen years.

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This afternoon, Vanessa is bringing you a preview from another one of her shows: Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, co-hosted with forensic psychologist Dr. Tristin Engels. In this episode, they dive into the case of the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run — a 1930s serial killer whose crimes gave rise to one of the first modern criminal profiles, decades ahead of its time. This is Part 1. For Part 2, follow Serial Killers & Murderous Minds on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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In India, a 26-year-old businessman fell 400 feet to his death while trekking with his fiancée at Lohagad Fort — just weeks before their palace wedding. What was first ruled an accident is now something else entirely. His fiancée and a man police say was her secret lover have been arrested and charged with murder and conspiracy in a plan investigators allege was months in the making. Vanessa walks you through the case: the alleged practice run, the signal to push, the financial trail, and the viral Instagram tribute now being examined as evidence.

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On June 24th, 19-year-old Marly Kinney went out on a rented pontoon boat on Kentucky's Grayson Lake with a group of friends. By the end of the afternoon, she was gone. For five days, hundreds of searchers — divers, helicopters, drones, cadaver dogs, and volunteers — combed the lake. On Sunday, the search ended in tragedy. The man driving the boat has been charged with boating under the influence after registering nearly twice the legal limit. Vanessa walks you through the case so far — what's known, what's not, and the open questions that will shape what comes next.

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In 1979, six-year-old Etan Patz vanished walking to his school bus stop alone for the first time, a case that put his face on the side of milk cartons and sparked the modern missing-children movement. Forty-seven years later, the U.S. Supreme Court has reinstated the murder conviction of Pedro Hernandez in a 6-to-3 ruling. Vanessa walks you through the case from that spring morning in SoHo to the Court's decision, and what it really decides for confessions, federal authority, and a family still waiting for an answer.

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In Utah, David Vander Meer was charged with the 2006 murder of his wife Bernadette, who fell 1,200 feet from Angel's Landing at Zion National Park in what was ruled an accident at the time; a reinvestigation revealed he had allegedly told a teenage girl from his church youth group that his wife would need to die for them to be together, and had quadrupled her life insurance policy before the trip. He was arrested in Las Vegas last week and died from self-inflicted injuries in custody four days later, before extradition, leaving Bernadette's family without the trial they spent twenty...

In Los Angeles, a federal jury deadlocked ten to two in favor of acquittal in the arson trial of Jonathan Rinderknecht, the former Uber driver accused of setting the brush fire that prosecutors say became the catastrophic Palisades Fire, which killed twelve people and destroyed more than 6,800 structures; a mistrial was declared Friday after jurors said they were unwilling to change their positions. The government announced it will retry the case in October, while the neighborhood of Pacific Palisades, where only seventeen homes have been certified for occupancy, still waits for accountability.

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In Maine, Stephen Bouchard, 63, has been charged with the 1987 murder of his then-girlfriend Alice Hawkes, who was found with her throat slit in their Westbrook apartment; a judge denied bail this week after prosecutors presented evidence including an alleged statement by Bouchard that he had committed the perfect crime. The case was cracked open by a 2025 reinvestigation by the Maine State Police Major Crimes Unit-Unsolved, nearly four decades after Alice's family first began pushing for answers.

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In Delaware County, Pennsylvania, Michelle Zajko has been indicted for the 2022 murders of her parents, shot to death in their Chester Heights home on New Year's Eve; charges came after shell casings from her Vermont property matched the murder weapon and investigators found a note on her phone titled "There are so many things we f---ed up." The case is the last unsolved chapter in a string of six deaths linked to the Zizians, a cultlike group of highly educated tech workers connected to violence across three states.

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In Ventura County, Stephen Chavez was sentenced to one year in county jail and three years of probation for the felony incest of his 18-year-old daughter Makayla Settles, who died by suicide five months after the assault; prosecutors had requested the maximum three-year state prison sentence, but the judge cited Chavez's lack of a prior criminal record. Makayla's family and a nationwide public campaign had pushed for stronger charges and a harsher sentence throughout the case.

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In Nashville, the murder trial of Blaise Taylor, charged with fatally poisoning his five-months-pregnant girlfriend Jade Benning with cocaine dissolved in her drink, got underway this week; prosecutors say the concentration found in her system was the highest the medical examiner had ever encountered, while the defense points to the medical examiner's ruling of undetermined manner of death. Jade died on her 25th birthday; her unborn daughter died two days after the poisoning.

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The Kowalski family, whose story was told in Netflix's "Take Care of Maya," won a $261 million verdict against a Florida hospital, then watched an appeals court erase it entirely. Now they're suing the attorneys who represented them for eight years, alleging millions in settlement funds were diverted to vacation homes, a boat, a private jet, and American Express bills.

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Nearly five months after 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie vanished from her Tucson home, a bombshell ransom note kept secret since February has finally surfaced...and its contents are devastating.

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In Florida, Susan Avalon is accused of shooting two ex-partners in two different counties on the same December afternoon, then driving home and wiping down her minivan with bleach when detectives arrived. When they told her they were there about her ex-husband, she looked at them and asked, "Which one?" She now faces a first-degree murder charge in Hillsborough County, where prosecutors have filed notice they are seeking the death penalty.

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Sean "Diddy" Combs is now scheduled to walk out of federal prison on February 23, 2028, more than four months earlier than his original release date, and the Bureau of Prisons isn't saying why. At the same time, a federal judge dismissed Dawn Richard's civil lawsuit against him on statute of limitations grounds, though her legal team says they are refiling in state court.

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In Butte County, California, Sansue Bee Vang, the founder of a Hmong religious organization he built around himself as a self-declared prophet, has been sentenced to 225 years to life in prison after being convicted on eleven counts of abuse against six victims, including children. He moved his congregation from Wisconsin to California, hand-selecting families to follow him, and used his spiritual authority to silence those he harmed for years.

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With Luigi Mangione's state murder trial locked in for September 8th and a federal trial to follow in October, the case against the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson is moving fast. A sealed court hearing, a major evidence ruling that kept the gun and notebook in play, and $1.5 million in public donations to his defense fund have made this one of the most closely watched trials in years.

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In Broomfield, Colorado, Kristil Krug spent months documenting her terrifying stalker, going to police, hiring a private investigator, and drilling her kids on intruder scenarios. The stalker turned out to be her own husband, who had spent months building a fake identity to terrorize her.

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Joseph Ashley Garcia poured tiki-torch fluid on his 68-year-old father, lit him on fire, and then took the stand at his own murder trial to explain himself. His father died ten days later. The argument that started it all? A dog. Now, Garcia's insanity defense was thrown out, and the Santa Barbara County DA has called this one of the most disturbing cases his office has ever prosecuted.

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In Los Angeles, Myung Jin Kim, 31, landed at LAX this week after being transferred from Laos, which had never before handed over a fugitive to the United States; he is accused of orchestrating a 2016 murder-for-hire in San Jose that killed the wrong man, and of shooting a friend six times in a CVS parking lot in 2018 while out on bail. He will face prosecution in two separate California counties.

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In Miami, a federal judge has reversed course and ordered Timothy Hudson detained pending trial after prosecutors filed sealed evidence described as newly disclosed test results; Hudson, charged as an adult with the first-degree murder and sexual assault of his 18-year-old stepsister Anna Kepner aboard a Carnival cruise ship, had been free on electronic monitoring for two weeks before the judge ruled no conditions of release could adequately contain the danger he poses. His trial is set for September 2026.

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In Duxbury, Massachusetts, the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy, charged with strangling her three young children in January 2023, begins July 20th; prosecutors say she calculated her husband's absence to carry out the killings, while the defense argues she was in the grip of a severe postpartum psychiatric crisis and was failed by the medical system. This week, prosecutors filed motions to admit Patrick Clancy's 911 call as evidence and to bring the jury to view the family's former home.

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In Rochester, Minnesota, a judge has refused to dismiss the murder indictment against Dr. Connor Bowman, charged with poisoning his 32-year-old pharmacist wife Betty with a lethal dose of colchicine; prosecutors say he researched fatal dosages calibrated to her exact weight using his poison control work database, ordered the drug through his Mayo Clinic email, and was active on a dating app listing himself as a widower before she had even died. Betty Bowman died on August 20, 2023, four days after drinking a smoothie her husband made her; no trial date has been set.

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Crime House’s Murder: True Crime Stories presents a special series for America’s 250th Birthday: The Crimes That Built America. Listen every Monday until July 6th on Murder: True Crime Stories. Join Crime House+ to get all 4 episodes right now ad-free. To subscribe, go to crimehouseplus.com or if you are listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page.

250 years ago, a brand-new country declared its independence, and in the centuries since, some of the worst crimes this country has ever seen reshaped America. Four murders. Four turning points. The crime...

In Anchorage, Alaska, Army soldier Zarrius Hildabrand is on trial for the murder of his 21-year-old wife Saria, who was shot in the head on the night of his birthday party. Prosecutors say he spent the days after her death shopping for a trash can, new bedsheets, and hydrogen peroxide, while telling friends she had simply walked to work. Her body was found four days later in a storm drain 100 yards from their front door.

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In San Diego, the murder trial of Larry Millete is underway, five years after his wife Maya vanished the same afternoon she called a divorce attorney. Prosecutors are painting a portrait of a controlling husband who spent over $1,000 on magic spells to keep Maya from leaving.

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In Brooklyn, 88-year-old Harvey Marcelin was sentenced to life without parole for the murder and dismemberment of 68-year-old Susan Leyden, whose torso was found in a shopping cart on a Brooklyn street in 2022; it was his third conviction for killing a woman, after being paroled twice despite a documented pattern of violence, most recently in 2019 when he was 81 and used a wheelchair. The sentencing judge told him plainly: "Every time you were released, you killed someone else."

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In Texas, Netflix's new documentary Maternal Instinct is bringing fresh attention to the 2020 murder of 21-year-old Reagan Simmons-Hancock, killed in her own home by Taylor Parker, who had spent months faking a pregnancy using a silicone belly and forged ultrasounds; when her fabricated due date arrived with no baby, she drove to Reagan's home and killed her, attempting to take her unborn daughter. Parker was convicted of capital murder in 2022, sentenced to death, and the Supreme Court declined to intervene two weeks ago, leaving her legal options nearly exhausted.

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In Charlotte, a federal judge ruled this week that DeCarlos Brown, charged with the August 2025 stabbing death of 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on a light rail train, is not competent to stand trial; he has been committed to a federal psychiatric facility for up to four months of treatment, with no trial date on either the federal or state track. Zarutska had fled the war in Ukraine, built a life in Charlotte working two jobs and studying English, and was stabbed from behind by a stranger while riding home after her shift; her family, still in Ukraine, continues...

In Minneapolis, Vance Boelter pleaded guilty Thursday to the assassination of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, and the shooting of state Senator John Hoffman and his wife, who were each shot multiple times and survived; he will serve two consecutive life terms plus forty years in federal prison. He had arrived at their homes disguised as a police officer carrying a hit list of nearly seventy Democratic officials. State charges remain pending and the Hoffman family's civil lawsuit is ongoing.

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Ten years ago, 22-year-old singer Christina Grimmie was shot and killed by a stranger after a concert in Orlando while signing autographs for fans. On the anniversary of her death, New Jersey has officially designated June 10th as Christina Grimmie Day, and her family is marking a decade of grief, advocacy, and keeping her legacy alive through the foundation they built in her name.

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In Collin County, Texas, a jury convicted now 19-year-old Karmelo Anthony of murder and sentenced him to 35 years in prison for the stabbing death of 17-year-old Austin Metcalf at a high school track meet in April 2025. Anthony's defense argued self-defense; prosecutors called it murder plain and simple. After two hours of deliberation, the jury agreed.

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The Karen Read case is back in the spotlight after her legal team filed an 87-page lawsuit against the Massachusetts State Police and the Town of Canton, alleging a decade of institutional corruption, and thousands of text messages between the two lead investigators that her attorneys are calling evidence of deep-seated bias.

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Nick Reiner, the 32-year-old son of legendary director Rob Reiner, is charged with the first-degree murders of both his parents and is now fighting in probate court for access to a $1.5 million trust fund they established for him decades ago; money he says was supposed to be released when he turned 30, and that he needs to re-hire the high-powered attorney who already walked away from his case.

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In Oregon, a family says an 83-year-old man's rare Star Wars LEGO collection, assembled over decades and valued at over $200,000, disappeared after a franchise store changed hands; a YouTuber's viral investigation drew millions of viewers, nearly $400,000 in GoFundMe donations, two arrests, criminal charges, and a lawsuit before the company announced this week it would compensate the family and close the store.

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In Mexico, the murder trial of Aurora Phelps got underway last week; federal prosecutors allege she used dating apps to meet trusting older men, built relationships with them, then drugged them, drained their accounts, and in at least three cases left them dead. One victim was buried in a Mexico City pauper's grave under a false name for over two years before DNA confirmed his identity. 

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The South Carolina Supreme Court has thrown out Alex Murdaugh's double murder convictions and ordered a new trial, and newly released records reveal just how deep the corruption went. Court clerk Becky Hill allegedly tampered with jurors, leaked sealed crime scene photos, and may have engineered the removal of a key juror whose transcripts prosecutors are now seeking to unseal for the first time.

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In Fairfax, Virginia, former IRS criminal investigator Brendan Banfield has been sentenced to life without parole for the murders of his wife Christine and an innocent stranger he lured to the house as part of an elaborate staged home invasion planned over months with his au pair, who was also having an affair with him.

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In McKinney, Texas, opening statements got underway in the murder trial of Karmelo Anthony, the teen accused of fatally stabbing fellow athlete Austin Metcalf at a Frisco track meet last year; prosecutors called it a sneak attack while the defense argued self-defense, and the trial begins with no Black jurors after the judge overruled a formal challenge from the defense. And in Portland, the man already charged with four murders across a hundred-mile stretch of the Pacific Northwest has now been charged with a fifth, bringing all five victims into the same case for the first time; Wednesday marked...

In Washington, a federal judge has set a September 2027 trial date in the civil lawsuit brought by the families of the four University of Idaho murder victims against Washington State University, alleging the university received more than a dozen complaints about Bryan Kohberger's threatening behavior toward women and failed to act before the killings. And in Northern Ireland, YouTuber Stephen McCullagh has been sentenced to a minimum of 31 years for murdering his pregnant girlfriend while a pre-recorded gaming stream played as his alibi; she was watching that same stream, believing he was home, as he drove to her house...