DEADLY INTENT

In 1762, thousands of Londoners, including lords, clergymen, and the famous dictionary writer Samuel Johnson, crowded into a narrow street to question a ghost. One knock meant yes. Two knocks meant no. And "Scratching Fanny" had a shocking answer: she said she had been poisoned.

The man she accused was William Kent, a Norfolk moneylender whose late partner, Fanny Lynes, had died of smallpox. The man behind the haunting was Kent's landlord, parish clerk Richard Parsons, who owed him money.

On this Halloween edition of Brewed With Intent, we pour...

Charles Manson never fired a shot at the Tate house, so how did he become the man behind the most notorious murders in American history? In this episode of Deadly Intent, we look at the Manson Family murders of 1969 through the lens of intent and psychology: how a drifter built a following out of lonely young people, how ordinary people were led to kill strangers, and who was truly responsible for the deaths of Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski, Steven Parent, Leno LaBianca, and Rosemary LaBianca.

We also cover Gary Hinman...

In 2002, John Darwin paddled a canoe out to sea off the coast of northeast England and was presumed drowned. Five years later he walked into a London police station claiming he couldn't remember who he was. In this Saturday bonus episode of Brewed With Intent, we look at the debts, the hidden doorway, the stolen name of a baby, the photograph from Panama, and the question at the center of every long lie: how many times can you choose to keep going?

Content note: This episode discusses fraud, deception, and a family's false grief...

For about a decade, Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight were missing posters on Cleveland's west side. All that time, they were inside a house on Seymour Avenue, held by a man who played bass in local bands, drove a school bus, and attended vigils in their names.

This week on Deadly Intent, we look at the Ariel Castro case through the psychology behind it: the early pattern of control and domestic violence, the way he used familiarity to lure each woman, the system of captivity he ran for years, and the sentencing...

Amy Archer-Gilligan, known as "Sister Amy," ran a Connecticut nursing home where residents kept dying, and her story is often linked to the dark comedy Arsenic and Old Lace. In this Saturday bonus episode of Brewed With Intent, we look at the lifetime-care contracts, the arsenic, the sister who refused to accept an easy explanation, and the question that still matters today: who benefits when someone doesn't live as long as expected?

Content note: This episode discusses poisoning and the deaths of elderly people. Nothing is graphic. If you're concerned about an older person...

In April 1981, in the tiny railroad town of Keddie, California, three people were killed inside Cabin 28 and a 12-year-old girl was gone. Three years later, her remains were found about 60 miles away. More than forty years on, the Keddie Cabin Murders are still unsolved.

This week on Deadly Intent, we walk through the night of April 11, 1981, and the case that followed: the crime scene, the surviving children, the two men long named as suspects, an anonymous tip that named the missing girl, and the new evidence investigators say could still crack the case. We...

In 1983, a blocked drain in a quiet North London house exposed Dennis Nilsen, the MuswellHill Murderer, who confessed to killing as many as sixteen young men. Behind his dull civil-servant exterior was a man who said he killed because he couldnot bear to be alone. This week on Deadly Intent, we trace his life from a Scottish fishing harbor to the Old Bailey. We examine his childhood loss, his detachment, his ritual, and why the system failed the survivors who tried tospeak up. Then we ask the question at the heart of the case: was he insane, or simply...

In January 1995, four teenagers signed up for a Job Corps center in Knoxville, Tennessee. Three came back. Nineteen-year-old Colleen Slemmer did not.

The crime became infamous for its brutality, the pentagram, and a piece of evidence that shocked the country. The woman convicted of it, Christa Pike, has spent nearly thirty years on Tennessee's death row, and her execution date this fall madenational headlines.

This week on Deadly Intent, we look past the headlines and into the mind. We follow Christa from a childhood of abuse and a juvenile system that punished her instead ofhelping...

On the night of June 9, 1912, after a Children's Day program at their church, Josiah and Sarah Moore, their four children, and two young sisters staying over for the night went to sleep in a small house in Villisca, Iowa. By morning, all eight were dead. The murder weapon was Josiah's own axe. Every mirror in the house had been covered, every victim's face hidden under bedclothes, and a slab of raw bacon lay on the floor beside the axe. Before the day was over, hundreds of townspeople had walked through the crime scene.

More than a century...

In 1954, a young Maine mother named Constance Fisher drowned her three children in a bathtub, then tried to take her own life. She was found not guilty by reason of insanity, spent five years in a state hospital, and was sent home "cured." Twelve years later, she did it again — three more children,the same method, the same house. This week, in the case that's been resurfacing everywhere since the Lindsay Clancy trial began dominating headlines, we go back to where this conversation actually started: postpartum psychosis, a legalsystem that didn't yet have the language for it, and a me...

Intent doesn't lie. People do.

Episode 60. This week: three mothers, three unraveling minds, and the same devastating question — where does love end and delusion begin? To mark 60 episodes, we revisit the cases of Diane Downs, Taylor Parker, and "The Doomsday Mom," three stories that circle the same haunting territory of maternal violence and psychological collapse. Consider this part one — Constance Fisher, a case that started this conversation decades before any of us were born, arrives next Wednesday.

Diane Downs — The Mother Who Shot Her Own Children
Taylor Parker — Maternal Instinct: Fetal Abductio...

On January 24, 2023, Lindsay Clancy — a labor and delivery nurse and mother of three — strangled her children in the basement of their Duxbury, Massachusetts home,then tried to take her own life. Three and a half years later, her murder trial ended not in a conviction, not in an acquittal, but in a mistrial: eleven jurors on one side, a single holdout on the other, and a country still arguing over whether she's a victim or a killer.

This week on Deadly Intent, we go inside the case that split the nation. What is postpartum psychosis, and w...

In the ruins of post-war Germany, young men vanished from a Hanover train station for six years — and the man taking them wasn't hiding. He was a police informant, a familiar face, trusted by the very people meant to stop him. Fritz Haarmanncalled it a frenzy he couldn't control. But you don't build a life around a compulsion by accident. This week, we sit inside the hardest question there is: when a killer says he never meant it, do we believe him? For the boys the world had already decided not to look for, intent doesn't lie. People do.

In February 2025, in a quiet corner of west Georgia, a married couple was shot to death in their bed as they slept. There was no forced entry, and the killer took the weapon with them. For five months the case looked like an unsolved tragedy —and the grieving teenage daughter who called 911 became one of its most public mourners, posting tribute after tribute online and begging the internet to care. Then the sheriff’s office named her as the person accused of pulling thetrigger.

This week on Deadly Intent, we sit with a case that is still unfo...

It was supposed to be one of the good days. A district track meet in Frisco, Texas. Hundreds of high schoolers. An ordinary spring Wednesday.

Then a thunderstorm rolled in, and everyone scrambled for cover under the pop-up tents. Under one of them — a tent belonging to a school he didn't attend — seventeen-year-old Karmelo Anthony took shelter from the rain. Within about aminute, a dispute over who got to stand under that canopy ended with another seventeen-year-old, Austin Metcalf, bleeding to death in the arms of his twin brother.

There was no whodunit. Anthony admitted from...

In May 1924, fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks got into a car with someone he knew and trusted. Minutes later he was dead — not for money, not out of hatred, but as anexperiment. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb had every advantage the world could offer: brilliant minds, immense wealth, futures wide open. And they spent nearly a year planning the murder of a child to prove a single idea they heldabout themselves — that they were exceptional enough to stand above the rules that bind everyone else.

This week on Deadly Intent, we sit with the case that this whole...

At 5:30 on a July morning in Strongsville, Ohio, a silver Camry accelerated down an empty suburban road to nearly 100 miles an hour, held a dead-straight line for three-quarters of a mile, and drove head-on into a brick wall. Two young mendied. The seventeen-year-old girl behind the wheel survived — and what investigators pulled from the car's black box turned a tragedy into a homicide case.

The accelerator was floored. The brake was never touched. And two weeks earlier, Mackenzie Shirilla had allegedly threatened to crash the car with her boyfriendinside it.

This week...

Rex Heuermann didn't just kill eight women. He wrote down how to do it — and then revised the document between murders.

For seventeen years, the Long Island Serial Killer left women along Ocean Parkway, fifteen minutes from his house in Massapequa Park. For thirteen more yearsafter their bodies were found, Suffolk County didn't catch him — despite a burner phone he bought with his own credit card. In April 2026, Heuermann pleaded guilty to seven murders and admitted to an eighth. In June, he was sentenced to life.

This episode is about the piece of evidence that make...

On the night of February 16, 2022, Jared Bridegan stopped his car on a quiet road in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, to move a tire out of the lane. His two-year-old daughter was in the back seat. He never got back in. Four shots were fired — two into Jared, two into the SUV where his toddler sat.

Prosecutors say it wasn't a robbery or a road-rage killing. They say it was a planned, rehearsed ambush — and that the people behind it were Jared's ex-wife, Shanna Gardner, and her second husband, Mario Fernandez Saldana. Both have pleaded not guilty. As of this...

The murder of Tabatha Bryant (Penfield, New York, 2003)

Listen at: https://carman-carrion.com

#DeadlyIntent #TrueCrime #TabathaBryant #MurderForHire #CoerciveControl #TrueCrimePodcast#Betrayal #DomesticAbuse #CriminalPsychology #Podcast #JusticeForTabatha

A successful attorney nearly twice his wife’s age. A young woman he first noticed at church. A marriage that curdled into control, degradation, and exploitation — and endedwhen he hired the one person she trusted most, her own half-brother, to murder her in her sleep for $5,000 and an insurance payout. This episode traces the Tabatha Bryant case from the beginning: who she was, how a p...

In November 1988, 17-year-old Junko Furuta was abducted on her way home from her part-time job. For 44 days, she endured unimaginable torture while multiple adults who could have saved her chose to look away. This is not just a story of four teenage criminals—it's the story of how an entire system failed one girl.

#DeadlyIntent #TrueCrime #JunkoFuruta #JapaneseCrime #SystemicFailure #CriminalPsychology #Podcast #TrueCrimePodcast #JusticeForJunko #CriminalIntent#SocietalResponsibility

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Dead...

Christian Longo had the picture-perfect family — the boyish good looks, the devoted wife, three beautiful children, the boat in the driveway. Almost none of it was real.

For years, Longo built an elaborate false self out of fraud, forged checks, stolen cars, and lies he told his own father, his church, and the wife who never stopped believing in him. And in December 2001, when the lie was finally about tocollapse — when eviction would have exposed exactly who he'd always been — he made a choice. He decided the people closest to him, the ones who could see the truth...

In May 1999, police opened the vault of a disused bank in the tiny South Australian town of Snowtown and found barrels — and bodies dissolving in acid inside them. It wasthe end of the worst series of killings in Australian history: at least eleven people murdered over seven years.

But almost nobody died in Snowtown. The town just owned the vault. The real horror happened in the suburbs of Adelaide, carried out by a group of men led by JohnBunting — a charismatic, certain man who believed he was a hero. He kept a wall of names. He to...

Content Warning: Before we begin, a warning that's heavierthan usual. This episode deals with the murder of pregnant women, the death of infants, and the loss of pregnancy. If you are pregnant, recently postpartum, or grieving a pregnancy loss, please take care of yourself. This one can wait. It'll be here when you're ready.

Netflix's MATERNAL INSTINCT made Taylor Parker a namepeople can't stop searching. But the crime it shows isn't a one-off — and one nearly identical case happened 30 minutes from my front door.

In this bonus episode of Deadly Intent, we go pas...

She arrived at the emergency room too calmly. A little blood on her arm, a story about a bushy-haired stranger on a dark Oregon road, and three shot children in the back seat. One of them — 7-year-old Cheryl — was already gone. The other twowould survive scarred: 8-year-old Christie fighting back from a stroke, 3-year-old Danny paralyzed for life.

There was no stranger.

Diane Downs shot her own children in May 1983 to clear the path to a man who'd told her he didn't want kids. Her motive wasn't madness or mercy — it was arit...

He was a police officer. A father. A neighbor who waved from his driveway and tended his yard like anyone else. For over a decade, Joseph James DeAngelo moved through California neighborhoods like a shadow — cutting phone lines, tying knots, and leaving behind a trail of trauma that spanned 11 counties, 13 murders, and more than 50 sexual assaults.

He was the Visalia Ransacker. The East Area Rapist. The Original Night Stalker. The Golden State Killer. All the same man. All the same hands.

For 44 years, he was nobody's suspect.

In this episode of Deadly Intent, we...

She was a devoted mother. A beauty queen. A woman who posted family vacations and birthday celebrations on social media. And then, somewhere along the way, she became something else entirely.

Lori Vallow Daybell convinced herself — and those around her — that her own children were possessed by dark spirits. Zombies who needed to be eliminated. What followed was a calculated campaign of murder that claimed the lives of 7-year-old JJ Vallow, 16-year-old Tylee Ryan, and Tammy Daybell — all while Lori collected her children's Social Security benefits and honeymooned in Hawaii.

This is the story of faith...

In June 1967, 75-year-old widow Louisa Dunne was raped and murdered in her Bristol home. When her newspaper sat uncollected on her garden wall the next morning, neighbors knew something was terribly wrong. Police found a palm print on her window and biological evidence at the scene—but in 1967, forensic science couldn't identify the killer. The case went cold for fifty-eight years.

Until 2024, when DNA technology finally caught up to a predator who thought he'd gotten away with murder.

This is the story of Britain's longest-running cold case, the elderly women who were targeted by a se...

After thirteen years of silence, the BTK Killer resurfaces in 2004—and his desperate need for recognition becomes his fatal mistake. In Part 2, we follow the investigation that finally brought Dennis Rader down: the taunting letters, the psychological chess match with police, and the floppy disk that ended a thirty-year reign of terror. 

From the metadata that exposed him to the shocking confession that revealed the true depths of his narcissism, this is the story of how intent—that core psychological drive—became both his motivation and his downfall. We also examine the devastating impact on his family, the vic...

January 15, 1974. Four members of the Otero family are found murdered in their Wichita, Kansas home. Three months later, police receive a letter from the killer, signing it "BTK" - Bind, Torture, Kill.

For the next seventeen years, Dennis Rader will terrorize Wichita. He'll kill ten people, send taunting letters to police and media, and then simply... vanish. But he never really left. He was there the whole time - teaching Sunday school, coaching Little League, citing people for lawn violations, living the most ordinary life imaginable.

This is Part 1 of the BTK story: the murders...

Enjoy this ad free episode compliments of Carman’s Crypt:
 
When Jenna stops at a deserted rest stop in the middle of the night, she finds expired snacks from 1987, a logbook full of desperate warnings, and an exit ramp that's disappeared. Some places don't just trap you in space—they trap you in time. And the travelers who stopped before her? They never really left.

A chilling tale about the roads between places, the liminal spaces we pass through without thinking, and the horrifying possibility that sometimes... you can't go home again.

After 42 episodes exploring the darkest corners of criminal psychology, we're closing Season 1 with the five cases that haunted you the most.

This isn't just a replay. I've revisited each case with fresh analysis, new research, and 2026 updates on where these investigations stand today.

In this episode:

In August 2021, 22-year-old Gabby Petito vanished during a cross-country van life trip with her fiancé Brian Laundrie. What started as an Instagram-perfect adventure ended in tragedy when her body was found in Wyoming's Grand Teton National Park.

Two weeks before Gabby was murdered, police in Moab, Utah pulled the couple over after witnesses reported a domestic dispute. Body camera footage captured Gabby crying, apologizing, and taking all the blame while Brian stayed calm and collected. The officers let them go.

It was a fatal mistake.

This episode examines the warning signs everyone missed, t...

The photographs don't lie. On June 4, 2008, a camera accidentally captured a murder in progress—twenty-seven stab wounds, a slashed throat, and a final gunshot. Travis Alexander was killed by his ex-girlfriend Jodi Arias, a woman who couldn't accept that their relationship was over. She drove 1,000 miles with gas cans to avoid detection, changed her appearance, and turned off her phone. Then she spent hours with Travis—taking intimate photos, having sex—before brutally killing him in his own shower. When caught, she told three different stories: she wasn't there, intruders killed him, she acted in self-defense. The jury saw throug...

On Christmas Eve 2002, 27-year-old Laci Peterson—eight months pregnant—disappeared from her Modesto, California home. When her body and that of her unborn son washed ashore in San Francisco Bay months later, her husband Scott was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to death for their murders.

 The case seemed straightforward: Scott was having an affair, didn't want to be a father, and killed his family to start fresh. He acted guilty—emotionless at vigils, lying to his mistress, fleeing toward Mexico with dyed hair and cash. America watched and agreed: he did it. 

But twenty-two years later, t...

Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka looked like the perfect couple—young, attractive, successful. But behind closed doors, they were responsible for the kidnapping, sexual assault, and murder of at least three young women between 1990 and 1992, including Karla's own 15-year-old sister. When police finally caught them, Karla claimed she was a battered wife forced to help. Then the videotapes surfaced. Intent doesn't lie. People do.

National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233 | thehotline.org 

RAINN (Sexual Violence): 1-800-656-4673 | rainn.org

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On July 15, 2008, Cindy Anthony called 911 to report her granddaughter missing. Two-year-old Caylee had been gone for thirty-one days—and her mother Casey hadn't said a word. What followed was a media firestorm, a controversial trial, and an acquittal that left the nation divided. But beyond the courtroom drama lies a darker psychological portrait: a young mother who constructed elaborate fictional realities, who partied while her daughter's body decomposed, and who has spent the years since her acquittal rewriting her own narrative. This is the story of thirty-one days that revealed intent in its rawest form—and a verdict that coul...

In December 1987, Ronald Gene Simmons committed the deadliest family massacre in United States history, killing 16 people over the span of a week 14 of them his own family members. But this wasn't a crime of passion or a sudden snap. Simmons planned for two months, kept detailed lists, and lived with the bodies of his victims for four days before calmly going Christmas shopping at Sears.

This episode of Deadly Intent examines not just what Simmons did, but why family annihilators kill and what made Simmons different from the typical profile. Unlike most family annihilators who die by...

The Monster of Florence terrorized Italy for seventeen years, claiming sixteen lives in a series of ritualistic murders that remain partially unsolved to this day. Between 1968 and 1985, young couples seeking privacy in the Tuscan countryside became targets of a predator whose methodical precision, forensic awareness, and psychological compulsion make him one of the most organized serial offenders in European history. 

This episode examines the complete timeline of attacks, the psychological profile of a killer driven by profound paraphilia, and an investigation that spiraled into wrongful convictions, conspiracy theories, and prosecutorial overreach. We explore the intent behind the r...

For years, Israel Keyes operated in the shadows.

He was methodical, patient, and terrifyingly organized. He buried “kill caches” across the United States, filled with weapons and supplies. He traveled thousands of miles to commit murders far from home. And he studied law enforcement tactics so carefully that investigators later said he seemed to be following the FBI playbook better than the FBI itself.

For more than a decade, the system worked.

Then, in 2012, everything collapsed because of a single mistake.

After murdering 18-year-old Samantha Koenig in Anchorage, Alaska, Keyes attempted some...