Murders & Minivans

This week’s bad news starts with three cold cases that finally moved.

In 1986, Mary Ann Turner was strangled in a Spokane alley while searching for her runaway daughter. An anonymous tipster named a suspect early on, but the case went cold. Nearly 40 years later, detectives sent him paperwork about his stolen car and got his DNA off the envelope he mailed back. David Tibbett, 74, has been arrested for second-degree murder.

In 2008, a man broke into a San Jose assisted living facility and raped a 61-year-old woman. His DNA sat unmatched in CODIS for 16 years, un...

No case this week. For Halloween, Tali and Stephanie each wrote an original horror story, and we’re reading them to you. Two stories. Two buildings. Two sets of rules.

Sitting Up (written and read by Tali) It’s 1987. A home health nurse takes on a new patient in Pell’s Crossing: Miss Iris Ashby, 96, who lives alone in a 41-room house at the top of the hill. Every house in town faces the river. That means every house has its back to the Ashby place. Iris has rules. Don’t go above the second floor. Keep the lamp...

This week on Bad News Good News, Tali brings the bad news and Stephanie balances it out.

On October 15, a 16-year-old shot through the locked doors of Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon, and targeted a special education classroom. He killed three children, ages 5, 8, and 11, and 25-year-old teacher Meghan Lambert. A 7-year-old student and a 54-year-old teacher were critically wounded. Five-year-old Rhoam Summer is believed to be the youngest person killed in a U.S. school shooting since tracking began in the 1960s. One teacher slowed the shooter by throwing her phone at him...

In November 1974, Ronald “Butch” DeFeo Jr. walked through his family’s home at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, New York, with a hunting rifle and shot his parents and four siblings as they slept. Thirteen months later, George and Kathy Lutz moved into the same house with three kids and a dog. They lasted 28 days.

What they said happened next became The Amityville Horror: a bestselling “true story,” a hit movie, and more than 40 films with Amityville in the title. Flies in December. Green slime oozing from the walls. Red eyes in the window. A pig named Jodie.

This...

newly released bodycam footage shows the moments after a six-year-old shot his teacher at richneck elementary. three men are found guilty in the murders of two australian brothers and their american friend on a surf trip in baja. and the fort hood shooter has an execution date. this is bad news good news from murders and minivans. tali covers the week’s crime news. stephanie brings the good news.

in this episode: the richneck elementary bodycam, sealed for more than three years abby zwerner’s $10 million verdict and where she is now guilty verdicts in the baja kill...

In March 2015, Denise Huskins was taken from her boyfriend's home in Vallejo, California, held for two days, and assaulted. When she came home, police held a press conference calling it a hoax, and the media named her the real Gone Girl. The only reason anyone believed her was that her kidnapper attacked another family and left his phone behind.

A year and a half later, a Redding mom named Sherri Papini vanished on a jog. She turned up on Thanksgiving morning, chained and branded, and said two Hispanic women had taken her. Law enforcement believed her for...

this week on bad news good news, tali brings the bad news and stephanie balances it out.

caleb flynn has been sentenced. a jury convicted the former american idol contestant on all nine counts in the murder of his wife, ashley flynn. the judge ordered him to serve 16 years for firearm specifications and evidence tampering before his life sentence begins. statements from his two young daughters were read in court. ashley's father said the family forgives him and asked for the harshest sentence possible. flynn still says he's innocent. his attorney plans to appeal.

the...

On the evening of May 8th, 2008, Sharon Randolph and her husband went out for dinner and a movie. Mother's Day was that Sunday. She was forty-seven years old and she loved going to the theatre.

Just after 9:30 that night, her husband called 911 and told the dispatcher that a masked intruder had shot his wife in the hallway of their home, and that he had shot the intruder five times.

When Las Vegas Metro arrived, the scene read cleanly. A dead woman. A dead man in a ski mask with a bag of jewellery beside him...

this week on good news bad news, tali brings the bad news and stephanie balances it out.

first up is caleb flynn. the former american idol contestant and church worship leader is on trial in ohio for the murder of his wife, ashley flynn. he told 911 an intruder broke in. prosecutors say the evidence tells a different story. we cover the secret affair, the deleted messages, the missing gun, the step counter data, and the two dogs that never barked. closing arguments are done. now the jury decides.

then the cornell 7. a former cornell student...

On Super Bowl Sunday 2007, four-year-old Ella Bennett was killed in her bed in Abilene, Texas. The person responsible was her thirteen-year-old brother, Paris. He has said Ella wasn't his target. Their mother was.

Two years later in St. Martins, Missouri, nine-year-old Elizabeth Olten walked to a friend's house and never came home. Fifteen-year-old Alyssa Bustamante had dug a grave days earlier. She told investigators she wanted to know what killing felt like.

In this episode, we look at both cases side by side. We cover:

17 Years. 16 Bombs, 3 dead, $50 million dollars and 150 full time investigators, and at the end of it a 53 year old man in a 10x12 foot cabin with no electricity and a lot of books.

everybody knows the outline. what most people know beyond it is a story about Harvard, a Psychologist, and the CIA. that story is about to get a Netflix film. so this week we went and did a deep dive...

what we found is that the experiment was real, it was genuinely unethical, and the claim that it created the Unabomber is contested by...

On June 30, 2009, a black Nissan Sentra was found submerged at the Kingston Mills locks on the Rideau Canal with four bodies inside: Zainab Shafia, 19, Sahar Shafia, 17, Geeti Shafia, 13, and Rona Amir Mohammad, 52. The family called Rona the girls' aunt. She was their father's first wife, in a polygamous marriage Canadian immigration knew nothing about.

Within three weeks, Mohammad Shafia, his wife Tooba Yahya, and their 18-year-old son Hamed were charged with four counts of first-degree murder. A jury convicted all three in fifteen hours.

But the murders are not the hardest part of this case...

mica miller: the trial that isn't about her death

mica miller was found dead on april 27, 2024, at lumber river state park in robeson county, north carolina, about seventy miles from her home in myrtle beach. she was 30. the robeson county sheriff's office determined she died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. the north carolina medical examiner ruled her death a suicide. investigators said there was no evidence her estranged husband was involved in it.

that is where most cases end. this one didn't.

on december 18, 2025, a federal grand jury in columbia indicted john-paul miller, 46...

between april 1971 and september 1972, six young Black girls disappeared from southeast washington, d.c. they were ten to eighteen years old. they were walking home from the store. going to work. going to night class. coming home from a boyfriend's house.

their bodies were found along highways in and around d.c. and maryland.

Carol Spinks. Darlenia Johnson. Brenda Crockett. Nenomoshia Yates. Brenda Woodard. Diane Williams.

at first the murders were not connected. different detectives worked different cases in a city overwhelmed by homicides. the media barely covered it. by the time investigators...

On August 4, 1892, Andrew and Abby Borden were killed in their home in Fall River, Massachusetts. Ten months later, Andrew's daughter Lizzie was tried for both murders and acquitted in about ninety minutes. Nobody else was ever charged.

Everyone knows the rhyme. Almost none of it is true. The weapon was a hatchet. Abby was Lizzie's stepmother. And the autopsy records eighteen wounds to Abby and ten to Andrew, not forty and forty-one.

This episode isn't an attempt to solve it. The case can't be solved. The volume of the inquest transcript holding Lizzie's first day...

Seven people in Chicago died in three days in 1982 after taking Extra Strength Tylenol laced with cyanide. Nobody has ever been charged. Every seal on your medicine bottle comes from this case.

On September 29, 1982, a twelve-year-old girl in Elk Grove Village named Mary Kellerman took a capsule for a sore throat before school. She was dead within hours. By the end of that week, six more people were dead across the Chicago suburbs, including three members of the same family who took capsules from the same bottle on the same afternoon.

It took two off-duty...

Laci Peterson was eight months pregnant when she was reported missing from her modesto home on christmas eve 2002. four months later, her body and the body of her unborn son conner washed up in the san francisco bay, just miles from where her husband scott said he had been fishing alone that day.

this episode walks through the full case. we cover the timeline of Laci's disappearance, scott's shifting story, his affair with amber frey, the wiretapped phone calls, and the evidence that led to his conviction. we also get into the 2020 ruling that overturned his death...

Nolan Xavier Wells was an 18 year old wide receiver from ocean springs, mississippi, preparing for his freshman season at southwest mississippi community college. on july 4, 2026, he traveled to horn island with a large group of friends on multiple boats. the boat he rode out on took on water from a failed bilge pump and turned back early. nolan was not on it. his body was found in the water on july 6.

in this episode we walk through the full case in order: who nolan was, the geography and currents of horn island, the boat that took on...

in october 1989, ten-year-old amy mihaljevic left her school in bay village, ohio to meet a man she had spoken to on the phone. he told her that her mom had gotten a promotion. he said he wanted her help picking out a gift. she was never seen alive again.

her body was found four months later in a field in ashland county, more than fifty miles from home.

what most people don't know is that amy wasn't the only girl who got a call. other girls in the area received the same kind of pitch...

everyone remembers the verdict. almost nobody knows about the google search the jury never saw. on the last day Caylee Anthony was seen alive, someone in the anthony home searched "fool-proof suffocation" — and the state never found it, because investigators checked the wrong browser. this week: the full casey anthony case from the primary record. the 31 days, zanny the nanny, the deputy who wouldn't walk thirty yards, the chloroform number that collapsed mid-trial, and the two web sleuths who found what the state missed using free software. this isn't the story of a jury getting it wrong. it's the st...

This is not a regular episode. An eleven-year-old boy has been missing in Calgary since Thursday, July 16, 2026, and as of today he has not been found. Parker is autistic and non-verbal. He cannot call for help, and he cannot tell a stranger his name or where he lives.

There is no speculation in this episode, because there is nothing to speculate about. Calgary police have said there is nothing to indicate foul play. This is a bulletin: what police have confirmed, what the search has covered so far, and what you can actually do today.

...

She spent 88 days in jail for a crime that never happened. The person who framed her was her own ex-fiancé: a deputy U.S. Marshal.

This is the true story behind Netflix's A Toxic Love Story (2026).

In 2016, Michelle Hadley was a 29-year-old grad student with a marketing job at Disney when Anaheim police arrested her for stalking, criminal threats, and six counts of attempted rape. Her bail was set at $1 million. She was facing life in prison.

The problem? She had never done any of it.

Michelle's ex-fiancé, deputy U.S. Ma...

on a friday morning in december 2017, two real estate agents walked a couple through a mansion in north toronto. downstairs by the lap pool, they found the owners. barry and honey sherman. fully dressed, sitting upright, necks looped to a low railing with leather belts. one agent thought it was some kind of weird yoga. they had been dead for almost two days.

barry built apotex into the largest canadian-owned drug company and a multibillion-dollar fortune. he was brilliant, famously cheap, and he ran his business on lawsuits. honey was one of the most connected philanthropists in...

This week we're covering Kouri Richins, the Utah mother, real estate investor, and children's book author who was convicted in March 2026 of poisoning her husband Eric with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl. We get into the debt, the fraud, the affair, the life insurance policies, the failed Valentine's Day attempt, the Moscow Mule, and the book that made this one of the most talked-about cases in recent true crime.

IN THIS EPISODE Who Kouri and Eric Richins were, and how different their upbringings were The real estate empire built on a forged power of attorney...

On June 12, 1994, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were stabbed to death outside her condo on Bundy Drive in Brentwood. Nicole was nearly decapitated. Ron had defensive wounds on his hands. He was 25 and had just stopped by to return a pair of glasses.

OJ Simpson was arrested five days later, but only after a slow-speed chase down the 405 in a white Ford Bronco that 95 million people watched live. He had a passport, a disguise, and $8,000 in cash in the car.

The trial lasted nearly nine months. The prosecution had blood, DNA, a history of...

this week we're covering the 1992 murder of Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common, London.... one of the most mishandled cases in metropolitan police history.

Rachel was 23 years old when she was attacked and killed during a morning walk with her two-year-old son, Alex, and their dog molly. the case that followed lasted sixteen years and destroyed the life of an innocent man before dna evidence finally identified the real killer: Robert Napper, a serial rapist already detained at broadmoor hospital.

we cover:

In October 2020, 21-year-old Reagan Simmons-Hancock was found murdered in her home in New Boston, Texas. She was 35 weeks pregnant. Her daughter Braxlynn Sage was removed from her body and died hours later. Reagan's three-year-old daughter Kynlee was found hiding in another room of the house, physically unharmed.

The person responsible was Taylor Parker — a woman Reagan knew well enough to let photograph her wedding.

This episode covers the full story of the Taylor Parker case: the ten-month fake pregnancy, the elaborate fraud schemes running parallel to it, the meticulous planning that went into October 9th, 2020, an...

The Murdaugh Murders, Part 2: The Trial, the Verdict, and the Reversal

On June 7, 2021, Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were found shot to death at the family's Moselle property in Colleton County, South Carolina. Alex Murdaugh called 911 seventeen seconds after his GPS placed him at the scene. He had told investigators he was never there.

This is Part 2 of our Murdaugh family coverage. We walk through the investigation, the six-week trial, and the unanimous South Carolina Supreme Court ruling that overturned Alex's double murder convictions in May 2026.

The crime scene. Two victims. Two weapons. No...

Before Alex Murdaugh shot his wife and son at the family's South Carolina hunting estate, he spent decades building a lie so elaborate that almost no one saw it coming. In Part 1 of this two-part series, we go back to the beginning — not just to June 7, 2021, but to 1920, when the Murdaugh family first seized control of the criminal justice system in the South Carolina Lowcountry and didn't let go for 86 years.

This episode covers the full family dynasty, the mechanics of Alex's $12 million fraud operation, his opioid addiction, the death of housekeeper Gloria Satterfield, Paul Murdaugh's abuse of...

Beverly Hills. August 20, 1989. José and Kitty Menendez are watching a James Bond movie in the den of their $13.5 million mansion. By the end of the night, they'll be shot a combined sixteen times by their own sons.

This week on Murders & Minivans, we're going deep on one of the most complicated — and most misunderstood — cases in American true crime history. Lyle and Erik Menendez. The killings. The spending. The trial. The abuse claims. And the letter that sat undiscovered for over thirty years.

We talk about who José and Kitty Menendez actually were — not the shorthan...

Thallium is element 81. A heavy metal banned in the United States since 1972. Colorless, odorless, and tasteless in its soluble form. It mimics potassium so convincingly that your cells invite it in. It starts with nausea, fatigue, stomach pain — things that look like a hundred other conditions. Weeks later, the hair falls out in fistfuls. By then, the nervous system has already taken serious damage.

The antidote is called Prussian blue. Doctors almost never think to use it, because they almost never think to test for thallium. That gap between exposure and diagnosis is exactly what makes it a...

This is the first episode in our new pod studio! Tali's mic was not co-operating until about 8:20 which is right about when the case starts ◡̈

A Harvard law professor. A bitter divorce. A dentist with a Ferrari and a god complex. Two Miami gang members. And a mother-in-law who, the day after her son was convicted of murder, booked a one-way flight to a country with no extradition treaty.

This is the murder of Daniel Markel.

Dan Markel was 41 years old, a tenured law professor at Florida State, a devoted father to two lit...

The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints operated in plain sight for decades — a polygamist cult running across the American Southwest, into rural Texas, and up into the mountains of southeastern British Columbia. What they built wasn't a church. It was a supply chain for the sexual exploitation of children, protected by theology, enforced by economics, and ignored by governments for half a century.

This episode covers the full history: the 1953 Short Creek raid that backfired and gave the FLDS fifty years of immunity, Rulon Jeffs and the doctrine of absolute obedience, Warren Jeffs' rise to...

kaitlin armstrong googled "can pineapples burn your fingerprints" after killing someone. she sold her jeep for cash two days later. flew to new york. used her sister's passport to get to costa rica. got a nose job, changed her name, dyed her hair, and started teaching yoga on the beach. she responded to a fake job listing posted by u.s. marshals and got arrested in a hostel lobby 43 days after the murder.

the jury took two hours.

but before any of that, there was Mo. Anna Moriah Wilson. 25 years old, dartmouth engineering grad, professional...

On February 28, 1993, seventy-six ATF agents pulled up to a property outside Waco, Texas, in cattle trailers. Fifty-one days later, the building was gone and seventy-six people were dead inside it. Twenty of them were children.

This is the story of Vernon Wayne Howell, the ninth-grade dropout from Houston who memorized the Bible, renamed himself David Koresh, and convinced over a hundred people to follow him into an armed standoff with the federal government. It's also the story of what the ATF and FBI did, what they chose not to do, and why the question of who actually...

Moscow, Idaho hadn't seen a murder in seven years. It was the kind of town where parents felt okay dropping their kid off at college and driving away. Small. Quiet. Safe.

Then, sometime between 4:00 and 4:25 in the morning on November 13th, 2022, someone entered a house on King Road and stabbed four people to death in 25 minutes. Kaylee Goncalves. Madison Mogen. Xana Kernodle. Ethan Chapin. Two of them were weeks away from graduating. One of them was only there because it was the weekend and he was staying with his girlfriend.

The internet caught fire. Tips...

In March 1995, Maurizio Gucci was shot four times outside his Milan office. He had the money, the girlfriend, the peace. What he didn't have was any idea that a chain of people — a socialite, a psychic, a hotel porter, and a broke pizzeria owner — had been quietly building toward that morning. This is the story of a dynasty that ate itself alive, a woman who described $860,000 a year as a bowl of lentils, and a brand that only got good once the family was gone.

For source info, comments questions: [email protected]

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In March 1995, Maurizio Gucci was shot four times outside his Milan office. He had the money, the girlfriend, the peace. What he didn't have was any idea that a chain of people — a socialite, a psychic, a hotel porter, and a broke pizzeria owner — had been quietly building toward that morning. This is the story of a dynasty that ate itself alive, a woman who described $860,000 a year as a bowl of lentils, and a brand that only got good once the family was gone.

=For questions, comments or source info, email us at murdersminivans@gmai...

Fabio Sementilli spent thirty years building something remarkable. An Italian-Canadian kid who left school early to follow his sister into hairstyling, he climbed all the way to VP of Education at Wella Professionals, managing 500 employees, running studios across North America, mentoring thousands of stylists who called him Big Daddy. The day before he died, he posted about how blessed he felt. The next afternoon, his sixteen-year-old daughter came home from school and found him stabbed to death on his own patio. This week we're covering the full story: who Fabio actually was, the affair his wife had been hiding...

On the night of November 16th, 2012, a thirteen-year-old girl in a quiet Ohio suburb called 911 while her mother was being stabbed to death. The person holding the knife was an eighteen-year-old foster daughter named Sabrina Zunich. And for ten months, that's where the story seemed to end; a troubled teenager, a horrific act, a grieving family.

Then Sabrina started talking.

What came out was a case that gets darker the deeper you go: a 41-year-old man who spent months grooming a vulnerable foster child in his own home, coaching her on which knife to use...