Daily Crime and Justice | Daily Trial Coverage, Murder Cases, and True Crime News

Four life sentences, a boy band singer with the FBI at his door, and the criminal trial of the assistant principal who watched the warnings stack up and did nothing.

Garret Fisher closes the book on a case we have been with you for since January — Paul Caneiro, the New Jersey man who slaughtered his own brother's family, sentenced to four consecutive life terms. Then a brand-new murder-for-hire plot — Why Don't We singer Jack Avery, the FBI knocking on his door, and the Florida attorney and TikTok influencer charged with allegedly trying to have him...

All four guilty in the rapper’s birthday-party ambush — and a Tampa jury chooses life without parole over execution; plus quick turns in the Mangione, Woods, and David files.

Daily Crime and Justice returns to the daily desk after the Fighting Back series with four developments — and one of them is a finish line. In Tampa, the year-and-a-half saga of murdered rapper Julio Foolio reaches its end: all four defendants convicted of first-degree murder, and a jury rejecting the state’s push for the death penalty in favor of life without parole. Garret Fisher walks th...

Daily Crime and Justice returns from its two-week vacation hiatus with an entire episode devoted to one case: the sentencing of Kouri Richins. In March, a Utah jury convicted the children’s grief-book author of murdering her husband, Eric, with a lethal dose of fentanyl. Last week, on what would have been Eric’s 44th birthday, a judge sentenced Richins to life without parole. Garret Fisher recaps the case, walks through a wrenching sentencing hearing where three young sons asked a judge to keep their mother imprisoned forever, and examines Richins’ defiant, tearless courtroom statement — a self-described love letter that never on...

A drifter. A pool hall. A prison cell. And the most consequential letter ever written in pencil on prison stationery.

Garret Fisher closes the Fighting Back series with the one story in ten that ends with complete, unambiguous victory — and the one that keeps the whole series honest. Clarence Earl Gideon was a 51-year-old Florida drifter with an eighth-grade education and a long record of minor nonviolent offenses when he was charged with breaking into a pool hall in Panama City in 1961. He couldn't afford a lawyer. The state wouldn't give him one. He represented himself, di...

Oklahoma, 1974. A plutonium plant. A whistleblower. A meeting she never made. And documents no one has ever found.

Garret Fisher covers the Karen Silkwood case — one of the most haunting whistleblower stories in American history, and the one that refuses to resolve into a clean ending. Silkwood was a lab technician at a Kerr-McGee plutonium plant in Crescent, Oklahoma, who became convinced the company was falsifying safety records and endangering its workers. She was elected to the union bargaining committee, testified before the Atomic Energy Commission, and gathered documentation she believed proved the violations. On November 13, 1974, sh...

2,600 lawsuits. $11 billion moved into private trusts. A bankruptcy designed as a shield. And a Supreme Court that said no.

Garret Fisher concludes the Purdue Pharma story — covering the wave of lawsuits that broke against the company, the bankruptcy filing the Sacklers used to try to insulate their personal fortune from accountability, and the families of overdose victims who showed up to depositions of Sackler family members holding photographs of their dead children and refused to be treated as a line item. Then the Supreme Court's landmark June 2024 ruling that struck down the deal shielding the Sacklers fr...

They called it a miracle of pain management. Their own salespeople called it a drug. Their own documents called it a franchise.

Garret Fisher opens the two-part Purdue Pharma story — the most destructive corporate drug case in American history. In 1996 the Sackler family's privately owned pharmaceutical company launched OxyContin with a marketing campaign built on a lie: that this powerful opioid was less addictive than existing painkillers because of its slow-release formula. Internal documents show the company knew the 12-hour dosing claim was false. They knew. They told their salespeople to say it anyway. They paid do...

The largest direct-action settlement in American history. And the town that won it is still dying.

Garret Fisher concludes the Erin Brockovich story — covering the legal strategy that turned 634 plaintiffs into the most powerful class-action force PG&E had ever faced, the $333 million settlement that made history, and the $2.5 million bonus check that changed Erin's life overnight. Then the part the movie doesn't show: the chromium plume that kept growing after the settlement. The school that closed. The houses that were bought and bulldozed. The fire captain whose parents died from the water she grew up dr...

No law degree. No formal training. Three kids, a borrowed car, and a town full of people dying of cancers nobody could explain.

Garret Fisher kicks off week two of Fighting Back with one of the most iconic David vs. Goliath stories in American legal history — and one of the best arguments for why the civil justice system exists in the first place. Erin Brockovich was a twice-divorced single mother of three with $74 in her bank account when she stumbled onto a file that would change her life and save hundreds of others. PG&E...

A 79-year-old grandmother. Third-degree burns across 16 percent of her body. Eight days in the hospital. And a corporation that spent millions making her the punchline.

Garret Fisher takes on one of the most successfully distorted stories in American legal history: Liebeck v. McDonald's Restaurants. Almost everything the public thinks it knows about this case is wrong — and that's not an accident. McDonald's coffee in 1992 was served 30 to 40 degrees hotter than any competitor, hot enough to cause third-degree burns in under three seconds. The company had received more than 700 burn complaints. Stella Liebeck as...

The company knew. The scientists knew. The executives took precautions to protect themselves. And then they told two hundred young women the paint was perfectly safe.

Garret Fisher covers one of the most infuriating corporate cover-up stories in American history: the Radium Girls of Orange, New Jersey. Beginning in 1917, young women at the United States Radium Corporation were instructed to point their paintbrushes with their lips before dipping them in radium-laced paint — lip, dip, paint, hundreds of times a day. The company's own scientists wore lead shields and used tongs when handling the material. They told the workers it...

Garret Fisher concludes the Central Park Five story — picking up where Part 1 left off, inside the adult prisons where Korey Wise spent his twenties. In 2001, Wise crossed paths with Matias Reyes at Auburn Correctional Facility. Reyes confessed. DNA confirmed it. And then New York City spent years trying not to admit what two juries, a press corps, and a real estate developer with $85,000 to burn had done to five innocent kids. This is the story of the exoneration, the eleven-year fight for a settlement, and what happened to five men who refused to let the system be the last word on...

Garret Fisher opens the Fighting Back series — two weeks of David vs. Goliath while the production team vacations — with one of the most devastating wrongful conviction stories in American history. April 19, 1989. A woman is attacked in Central Park. Five Black and Latino teenagers aged 14 to 16 are hauled in for questioning with no lawyers, no sleep, and interrogations lasting up to 30 hours. By the time it was over, four of them had confessed to a crime the DNA evidence already proved they didn't commit. And a real estate developer named Donald Trump spent $85,000 on newspaper ads calling for their execution. This is P...

Three trials. Three accused. Three different ways to dodge accountability.

A socialite already serving life. A teenage gunman who took the stand in his own murder trial. A girlfriend recorded saying “I’m free” the day after her boyfriend’s six-year-old son died. Garret Fisher walks you through Friday’s tearful testimony from former MLB shortstop Royce Clayton in the Rebecca Grossman wrongful death civil trial — where Scott Erickson’s hamburger and IPA the day after the crash say everything. Then Cape Coral, where Thomas Stein takes the stand for shooting fifteen-year-old Kayla Rincon-Miller. And La Crosse...

Three stories where the people in charge stopped pretending. From Oakland to Hollywood Hills to Fort Worth, this is what privilege, predation, and pathology look like in the open.

Day three of Musk versus Altman, and the world’s richest man finally meets a question he can’t bully. We bring you the cross-examination, the term sheet meltdown, and the Tesla AGI tweet that came back to bite him. Then to Hollywood, where the David case took a hard turn this week. The preliminary hearing was supposed to start today. Instead, prosecutors filed a brie...

Tanner Horner's defense plays the trauma card in Texas, four men face capital charges for a rapper's birthday ambush, and a Georgia father escapes execution for unspeakable crimes.

Garret returns with three death penalty stories pulling the system in different directions. In Texas, Tanner Horner's defense team marches teachers, a former pastor, an ex-girlfriend, and brain scientists past the jury — every lever pulled for the man who admitted murdering seven-year-old Athena Strand. In Florida, opening statements begin in the trial of four men accused of hunting down Jacksonville rapper Julio Foolio at his Tampa birthday party. An...

Two of the richest men on Earth, one charity, and a federal jury that has to figure out who’s lying.

Garret Fisher delivers a special full-episode breakdown of the most consequential courtroom showdown in tech history. Elon Musk is suing OpenAI for one hundred and fifty billion dollars, accusing Sam Altman of stealing the charity Musk helped found in 2015. OpenAI says it’s sour grapes from a billionaire who quit, lost, and started a competitor. Day One brought opening statements, a near-gag-order, and Musk on the witness stand declaring that the entire foundation of c...

The Hollywood murder case’s silent survivors finally speak, a British defendant tries his case on YouTube, and forty terabytes of digital evidence are still being sorted.

Garret Fisher walks through three cases with court dates this week. Jake Reiner, the eldest son of the murdered Rob and Michele Reiner, has broken a four-month silence in a devastating Substack essay days before his brother Nick returns to court for a discovery hearing. Russell Brand, six months out from his October rape trial in London, sat down with Megyn Kelly and admitted to “exploitative” sex with a sixtee...

A teacher of the month, a Caltech engineer, a hotel room on the 10th floor — and the night gunfire reached the President's first Correspondents' Dinner.

On Saturday, April 25th, the White House Correspondents' Dinner had barely begun when shots rang out near the magnetometers outside the Washington Hilton ballroom. President Trump, the First Lady, the Vice President, and members of the Cabinet were rushed to safety. A Secret Service agent took a round in his vest. The accused gunman: Cole Tomas Allen, 31, a Caltech-educated teacher and indie video game developer from Torrance, California — a man with no r...

Plus: a trial date for the Florida man who allegedly murdered a suicidal British woman he met online, and a Salvadoran housekeeper sues Kylie Jenner.

Garret Fisher returns to the Athena Strand trial as the defense’s mitigation case opens in Fort Worth with testimony from Tanner Horner’s mother. Before that, jurors heard from Athena’s parents, the forensic DNA team, and the audio of her final moments. Then: the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner finally reveals the cause of death for 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez, whose body was found last September in a Tesl...

A Florida death row closes. A Virginia family dies in the basement. And a suburban serial killer finally tells his wife the truth.Garret Fisher brings you three hard stories.

Florida executes Chadwick Willacy thirty-six years after he bound, strangled, and set fire to his neighbor Marlys Sather during a lunch-hour burglary. Former Virginia Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax shoots his estranged wife Cerina in the basement of their home and kills himself upstairs while their two teenage children are inside. And the Peacock finale of The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secrets drops tonight, featuring Asa...

Plus: four dead girls, a TikTok about wrestling, and a Bay Area town eating itself alive — one year after the fireball on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard.

The d4vd case moves from arrest to formal charge: LA County DA Nathan Hochman announces first-degree murder with three special circumstances — lying in wait, murder for financial gain, and the killing of a witness. The death penalty is on the table. Then to Provo, Utah, where the prosecution rested in the Tracey Grist "family trap" trial and the defense put the sixty-year-old grandmother on the stand as their first witn...

A surgeon who took out the wrong organ. An anchor's death his family never accepted. And four witnesses finally firing back at Karen Reed.

A Florida surgeon is indicted for manslaughter after allegedly removing a seventy-year-old patient's liver instead of his spleen — and his lawyer says it's not the first wrong organ he's pulled out. Nearly five years after Birmingham anchor Christopher Sign was found hanged in his home office, his family still refuses to accept the suicide ruling — no full autopsy, a forty-eight-hour cremation, a widow who allegedly told his sister 'this was a terrible mist...

Plus: the Athena Strand trial turns devastating as DNA evidence lands — and we meet Tracey Grist, the Utah mother who Googled a famous murder-for-hire before her son-in-law was lured to his death.

Garret Fisher returns to the D4vd case months after it went quiet — and the quiet is over. LAPD Robbery-Homicide kicked open the gate of his Hollywood Hills mansion Thursday afternoon and arrested 21-year-old David Anthony Burke for the murder of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez. He is being held without bail. Then: the Athena Strand trial hits Days 7 and 8 with DNA evidence, a mother's test...

The internet's worst tourist gets six months of hard labor, a jury finally calls the concert giant what it is, and SantaCon's president had a very different charity in mind — himself.

Garret Fisher has three stories that should make you feel something today. Johnny Somali — the livestreamer who mocked World War II's comfort women, harassed strangers across Asia, and showed up to court drunk in a MAGA hat — has been sentenced to six months of hard labor in South Korea. A New York jury has found Live Nation and Ticketmaster operated as an illegal monopoly, overcharging fans b...

Plus: New rape testimony rocks the Athena Strand sentencing phase — and Sherrone Moore walks out of court a free man.

She was eighteen months old when she fell into a well in Midland, Texas, and the whole world held its breath for fifty-eight hours. Baby Jessica became America's child. This week, Jessica McClure Morales — now forty years old — was arrested at her Midland home on domestic violence charges. We have the story. Then: the sentencing phase of the Tanner Horner trial has delivered its most devastating testimony yet — two women who say Horner raped them as teenager...

Plus: A Real Housewife caught shoplifting — for six months. And a cold case from Boca Raton that has never let go.

A federal grand jury has indicted Anna Kepner's sixteen-year-old stepbrother as an adult on charges of first-degree murder and aggravated sexual abuse — five months after the Florida cheerleader was found dead beneath a bed on a Carnival cruise ship. We've followed this case since the beginning. Today, the indictment. Also: Real Housewives of Pretoria star Melany Viljoen and her husband were arrested in Boca Raton after allegedly stealing over five thousand dollars in groceries from a Pu...

A dream voyage on a boat called Soulmate has turned into a nightmare — and the only witness is in custody.

A Michigan woman vanishes from a dinghy in the Bahamas while sailing with her husband. He paddles to shore. She doesn't. Nine days later, Lynette Hooker is still missing — and her husband Brian is in Bahamian custody, questioned on probable cause, not yet charged. Her daughter says she knows what happened. Brian's lawyer says he's heartbroken. The truth is somewhere in the water. Also: Former University of Kentucky cheerleader Laken Snelling pleads not guilty at her mans...

He confessed. Then he pled guilty. Now a jury must decide whether he lives or dies.

On Tuesday we introduced you to Tanner Lynn Horner — the FedEx contract driver who killed seven-year-old Athena Strand in November 2022. Since then, the trial in Fort Worth has delivered four days of testimony the likes of which few courtrooms have ever seen. He pleaded guilty moments before the trial began. The jury's only job now: death or life in prison. This episode covers the prosecution's case, the defense's mitigation strategy, the alter ego named Zero, the children's clothing found at hi...

The anesthesiologist is found guilty. The Long Island serial killer finally says the word. And the woman who sold Matthew Perry the drugs that killed him is heading to federal prison.

Friday, April 10th, 2026. Three separate courtrooms. Three verdicts that landed within 48 hours of each other. Gerhardt Konig — the Maui anesthesiologist who beat his wife with a rock at a cliffside in Oahu — was convicted by a jury, though not of everything prosecutors asked for. Rex Heuermann — the Long Island architect who murdered at least eight women over three decades — stood in Suffolk County Court and said the...

A Little House on the Prairie reunion nobody wanted, a 28-year-old disappearance finds new leads, and a man who already admitted it — in court at last.

Garret Fisher covers three stories that have been years — in some cases, decades — in the making. The West Wing's Timothy Busfield is back in headlines as wife Melissa Gilbert goes on national television to defend him, revealing she knew about prior allegations before they married. Then: Amy Bradley disappeared from a Royal Caribbean cruise ship in 1998 at age twenty-three, and a Netflix documentary may have cracked the case wide open — the FBI...

A son who allegedly shot his parents over money. A man who killed a seven-year-old because she was going to tell her dad. And a woman who drove 78 miles an hour through a red light high on pink cocaine and told cops she was from the future. Humans. Suck.

Garret Fisher covers three cases that will test your faith in humanity — and your patience for the justice system. A former NYPD officer is charged with shooting his elderly parents to death in their Florida apartment, allegedly motivated by money and a two-hundred-thousand-dollar loan he ha...

Back in March, we told you about a sixty-seven-year-old Massachusetts woman named Judy Church who was on trial for poisoning her live-in boyfriend with antifreeze — a man she also secretly insured, threatened to kidnap, and filmed while he was dying. Today, we tell you what happened. The jury deliberated for more than eight hours. The judge had something to say at sentencing. The family had more. Judy Church stood there and said nothing. This is the complete story of Leroy Fowler — who knew he was in danger, said so out loud, and went back anyway. He was fifty-five years old...