True Crime Campfire

Many of the stories we cover revolve around the disintegration of a marriage. It’s often a deeply traumatic event, upending entire lives and making an imagined future just vanish into nothing. It can drive some people kind of crazy. But other people are just built differently, and can move effortlessly from one marriage to the next as easily as changing a pair of socks. The woman in this week’s case certainly could do that, and she took that same casual attitude into matters of life and death.

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Life, obviously, is easier with money. Without having to scrabble and hustle just to survive, you can be free to pursue whatever interests and fascinations you like. But wealth doesn’t make you immune to the realities of human life. Families still have drama, hearts still get broken, dreams still get crushed into dust. This week’s story is about someone who started life with every possible advantage, but despite all her privilege, still descended into darkness.

Sources:

Deadly American Beauty by John Glatt

https://www.smh.com.au/world/jury...

If you’re unlucky, you might have at least one person in your life who just drives you crazy, someone with whom every interaction has an edge of mutual antipathy, that makes you feel like you’re always on the brink of a screaming argument. Sometimes two particular human beings just do not fit together. And because human beings are strange, sometimes a couple like that hook up and stay together for years before finally spinning apart. But that undercurrent of anger can remain, a little toxic flame that doesn’t need much fuel to erupt into an inferno that d...

Every night in the city, there are people out looking for something. Usually it’s just fun and excitement, but there are also those who go out looking to fulfill darker desires, who view the night city as a hunting ground where they will get what they want, no matter what. And sometimes, what they want is a nightmare of pain and suffering that shocks the conscience.

Note: This episode is about a serial killer, and the descriptions of his crimes are more graphic than most. Listener discretion is advised.

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It’s hard to convict someone of murder without a body. Even if it’s plain to everyone with a lick of common sense that the victim is dead and this is the guy who killed her, a prosecutor is wary of going to trial without being able to say with absolute certainty, this person is dead, and we know because we have her body. This week’s story is about a killer whose crime was apparent almost immediately, but who dragged on the crumbling pretense of a normal life for long weeks afterwards, until the horrific results of his ac...

Thanks to books and movies, and very occasionally real life, the idea of the genius killer has become pervasive. But most murderers are not dazzlingly creative schemers. If they have a plan at all, it’s usually simple and dumb—but unfortunately, that doesn’t necessarily mean the plan will fail. This week’s story is about a man who got away with one murder, and then tried to repeat the trick almost exactly.

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Love is supposed to make you better. Your partner should push lift you up and make you want to improve yourself, improve life for you both. Sometimes, though, there are couples that do nothing but make each other worse. They become jealous, resentful, and cruel. Their relationship is a disgusting mire that sucks in the couple and everyone in their orbit. Everyone knows a couple like that. But today, we’re going to talk about a couple who committed one of the most heinous crimes we ever heard of to satisfy their own jealousy.

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In the cases we cover, there are types of relationship that frequently crop up between killer and victim, romantic partners or romantic rivals most of all. Sometimes, though, the relationship that is broken by murder is more shocking: a parent killing a child, or a child killing a parent. And sometimes that killer is still literally a child, someone you would never suspect to be capable of such brutal action. Case 1: The Murder of Jackie Bartlam. Case 2: The Murder of Gina Padilla. 

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Legendary Conservationist Steve Irwin said, “We don’t own the planet Earth, we belong to it. And we must share it with our wildlife.” It’s such a lovely sentiment. We have a responsibility to protect and care for creatures that can’t protect themselves. It’s something that almost every person on earth would agree with. But what happens when someone loves something so much they throttle the life out of it? What if one man’s selfish wants pushed him to sacrifice over 50 animals that he claimed to love? Heads-up: If you're really sensitive about harm to animals, you might want...

Come join us for CrimeWave 2.0, February 8-12, 2027 on Royal Caribbean's beautiful Oasis of the Seas. We're going to the Bahamas! See Katie and Whitney, plus Casefile, Last Podcast on the Left, True Crime Garage, Crime Time Teatime, Scared to Death, A Paranormal Chicks, No Sleep, Unexplained, Sinisterhood and Crime with Kourt. Live shows, meet and greets, pool parties, game shows, and new friends for life!

Tickets go on sale Friday, February 13th--to get $100 off your cabin and a private meet and greet with us, go to crimewaveatsea.com/CAMPFIRE

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In a lot of ways, the world is smaller now than it ever has been. With a few clicks of the mouse, I can watch a live camera feed of Sydney harbor, or read a newspaper from any country I can think of. Just five hours in an airplane can get you from the US to Europe, and pretty much anyone on the planet can listen to a couple of nerds like us on a podcast. But, obviously, the world is not in fact shrinking. It is still just as vast and potentially perilous as it was in the days...

Winston Churchill once said, “Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm.” That’s a nice sentiment—I mean, by and large it’s good to let failure be a learning experience, to not let it discourage you from following your dreams. But…hear me out here: What if you’re just a hot mess? What if every time you go from one failure to the next, you leave a pile of bodies in your wake? Can you be a little TOO good at failure? Should you sometimes maybe acknowledge “Hey, maybe this thing I’m trying to do isn’t...

On the surface, Blanche Taylor Moore looked like a model of small-town virtue: a devoted caregiver, a churchgoing woman, a trusted neighbor. But behind that carefully maintained image lay a wild heart with few limits on what it was capable of. Murder certainly wasn’t beyond her, and those closest to her were in the most danger, consuming their own deaths with every bite of Blanche’s carefully prepared dinners. She turned domestic intimacy into a lethal weapon.

Sources:
Jim Schutze, Preacher’s Girl 
Court papers: https://law.justia.com/cases/north-carolina/supreme-court/1994/556a90-0.html https...

A lot of the murder cases we cover feature slow-boiling resentments, or criminal schemes hatched with an explicit target in mind. Killings by strangers are rare—and terrifying. You can just be going about your life with no idea that a predator is hunting you, a twisted mind that has no more connection to your life than a shark does. And then, out of the night, they strike. 

Join us for the chilling story of a would-be serial killer stopped after his first murder.

Stick around after the outro for a funny blooper! 

Sources:
C...

In the early 1990s, a beloved first-grade teacher in Pennsylvania began receiving harassing, threatening letters from an anonymous sender. Her school principal, fellow teachers, and the parents of some of her students soon began receiving them too. As the ordeal wore on, the stalker slowly escalated from taunts to vile accusations and death threats—and then, finally, violence. From early on in the case, the police thought they knew the tormentor’s identity, but it took 18 months to finally gather the evidence needed for an arrest. The trial to follow would be one of the most bizarre the state had ever...

In Part Two of this story last week, we learned how serial husband and waste of DNA Randy Roth seduced, married, and almost certainly murdered his second wife Jan for a life-insurance payout, and tried and failed to use the same scheme on wife number three, Donna Clift. And if you already hate Randy, that’s only going to get worse after the tragic conclusion to his story this week.

Sources: 
Fatal Charm, Carlton Smith
A Rose For Her Grave, Ann Rule
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/shes-got-her-name-back-teenager-murdered-in-1977-finally-identified-with-new-dna-technique-and-genetic-genealogy/

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Last week, we introduced you to Randy Roth, and described his early life and his escalation from ridiculous loser and petty criminal, to the chief suspect in the death of his second wife, Jan. Jan plummeted to her death from Beacon Rock, on the Washington-Oregon border, leaving behind a young daughter and a hefty life-insurance policy with Randy Roth as the beneficiary. This week, we find out more about Randy and Jan, and learn how close yet another wife came to death at the hands of a husband she barely knew at all. Join us for part 2 of this chilling...

The story of Bluebeard has a mostly happy ending, with the killer’s newest bride being rescued in the nick of time by her brothers. Good for her, less good for his previous wives, who she’d discovered hanging on hooks from the walls of a bloody closet. There are countless real-life stories of spouses being killed for money, with no muscular siblings breaking down the door with swords in hand. It’s much rarer for a killer to make victims of multiple spouses, but the central character in this week’s story had the spirit of Bluebeard in his heart, a...

When we last left you, former Amishman Eli Stutzman was having a little trouble with the law. He’d abandoned the Amish lifestyle after the suspicious death of his wife and was currently going on a tour of the US, sleeping with any man with a pulse. His son, Danny, was starting to show signs of severe abuse, but no one in his life stepped forward to report it. Finally, Eli’s roommate/employee was found murdered in a ditch in Texas. Join us now for the conclusion of this chilling true story.

Sources: 
Gregg Olsen, Abandoned Praye...

The thing about serial killers is that it seems so obvious to us after the fact, right? Their behavior is so outrageous and so antisocial that we’re always left wondering why no one noticed. Eli Stutzman’s strange behavior was written off by everyone that knew him. He was quiet and odd, but being raised Amish, who could blame him? To the Amish, his time spent with the Englisch gave him some strange habits. No one really blinked when he stabbed himself in order to get himself out of a sticky situation. No one wondered about why he lied cons...

Comedian Simon Amstell said, “If you are somebody who is going to at some point be revealed as not like everyone else, then to be in an insular community is a problem.” Here Amstell was discussing how it felt growing up gay and going to a religious school. Insular religious communities shut themselves off from the world in order to keep their views unchanged by the outside. It’s extremely effective. The Amish are one such community. Most of their followers aren’t allowed to use electricity or have indoor plumbing. They view modern conveniences as threatening to their religious beliefs...

Last week, we did our first-ever live show on the Crimewave true crime cruise! We covered three cases, a sort of "sampler platter" to give new listeners an idea of what kind of stories we usually tell on TCC. Case 1 is the bizarre story of a parody website that ended up bringing dozens of would-be killers to justice. Case 2 is the murder of chef Dan Brophy by his mystery-novelist wife. Case 3 is the true story of Stede Bonnet, bumbling pirate wannabe and possible boyfriend of the dread pirate Blackbeard. Thank you so much to IRL Events for the opportunity to...

We tell a lot of wild stories about crimes that happened right here in the States—but it’s worth noting that our cousins across the pond are misbehaving just as badly. Y’know, same crimes, different accent. Today we’ve chosen two cases that each mirror so many of the ones we’ve covered from here: A woman consumed by her toxic obsession for the man she wanted to marry, and a man more interested in playing soldier and spy than he was in building himself a real life. Case 1: Jane Andrews, the murder of Thomas Cressman. Case 2, fantasist Michael Ne...

It’s hardly a revelation that physical attraction can cloud judgment. It’s one of the oldest traps in human nature—that spark of chemistry that overrides caution, turning common sense into background noise. For most people, the fallout is little more than a red face or a broken heart. But every so often, that same impulse leads someone much farther—into danger. Because behind the charm, the warmth, and the allure, there are those who hide something far darker: a heart devoid of empathy, and intentions that are anything but loving. When desire blinds you to the truth, the price ca...

In part one of this story last week, we learned about Utah millionaire Franklin Bradshaw, who over the years had gained both a stupendous fortune and a strained relationship with some of his family—in particular with his youngest and wildest daughter, Frances. Frances had for years been pressuring and manipulating her mom, Berenice, to steer some of the family fortune her way, and whenever Frank got in the way of that, Frances would be furious. At the end of last week’s episode, we met Frances’s own young family, two boys, Marc and Larry, that she was strangely insist...

All the money in the world can’t buy peace of mind. Family life, with its jealousies and rivalries, carries the same pressures no matter the size of the bank account—but when wealth is measured in millions, those pressures can twist into something far darker. Arguments over favoritism, inheritance, and control—the kind of disputes most families recognize in small ways—become battles with stakes that can determine the course of lives. And when greed collides with resentment, and morality is already thin on the ground, the results can be catastrophic. This week’s story is about what happens when the b...

The Buddha said, "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and common sense." Ignore that advice, and you might find that you're clouding your vision--that instead of seeing what's really in front of you, you're filtering everything so it fits in with your beliefs. An unwavering, unquestioned belief in anything--a philosophy, an institution, or a person--can lend us strength sometimes, but it can also make us vulnerable. And there are plenty of people out there just waiting to exploit that vulnerability...

We deal with a lot of real-life horror stories, and because it’s real life, they’re often chaotic and cruel. Justice might ultimately be served, but more often than not, the victims are already cold in the ground. If someone is dead-set on killing you, there’s a very good chance they’ll succeed. In the most satisfying fictional horror stories, of course, there’s a survivor, someone who faces the monster or killer and lives to tell the tale, someone who finds deep wells of courage and resilience inside themself and defeats the horrors the world throws at them. And...

If there’s one constant in the kind of people we cover, it’s this—they’re liars. Con artists trying to scam their way into money, murderers denying their crimes, spouses with secret affairs, liars, all of them. This week’s case is about a man who checks all three of those boxes, a man who learned that, if he didn’t have a conscience, deceit could make him more money that hard work ever did. Once he’d learned that lesson, nothing was going to stop him from lying his way to more and more wealth. Certainly not the continued...

Most of us grew up loving superhero stories. My favorite was always the X-Men. I liked the idea of these people who were born with mutations that initially made them targets of bigotry or fear, then harnessing those differences to do good in the world. I’ve always been a big believer in “give what you’ve got”—if you have a special gift or talent, use it to make the world better. But here’s the thing: Most of us recognize that superheroes are a metaphor for this idea. You’re not supposed to literally dress up in a cape and tight...

Cell phones are amazing, aren’t they? You have a little magic box in your pocket that you can look at and use to call halfway across the world. New parents can send photos of their babies to their loved ones that live hours away, best friends can start a podcast even though they don’t live in the same state, and soulmates can meet, even from entirely different countries. Of course, we can’t have good things without someone using it for evil. Some people use phones as a means of harassment, of control. In today’s case, a stalker...

Home is the one place in the world that’s ours and ours alone. It’s the place we’re meant to feel completely safe and comfortable. The warm, beating heart of our lives. So when that sacred space is violated, where does that leave us? Can we ever really feel safe again? This is the story of one of the strangest home invasions ever investigated, and the aftermath that left two innocent people’s lives changed forever.

Join Katie and Whitney, plus the hosts of Last Podcast on the Left, Sinisterhood, and Scared to Death, on the very fir...

No is a powerful word. It can stop a naughty dog in its tracks, it can get you out of a night out with friends when you just want to rot in your bed, and most of all, it’s supposed to mean something when you don’t want anything to do with someone romantically. Unfortunately for society, some people can’t handle being told no. It fills them with unfounded rage because how dare anyone deny them something they want. Today, we’re discussing a case where someone handled rejection so pathetically that it resulted in the murder of 4 people an...

Mark Twain, always a good man for a quote, said about getting old: “Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” There is generally a broad unspoken societal agreement over what the elderly are supposed to be like, the shape their lives are supposed to have. There are always people who don’t fit into this preconception, of course, I’m sure plenty of you have encountered some weird and wild senior citizens—but probably not as wild as the people in this week’s story., who turned their lives into their own person...

There’s an old saying that if you hear hoofbeats, you should think horses, not zebras. It means that in most situations, the simplest, most likely explanation is probably the right one. But you know we deal in “stranger than fiction” here, folks, and sometimes you turn around expecting horses and you get a stampeding herd of zebras instead. Things are not always what they seem at first glance. And today, we’ll tell you two stories where digging down below the surface pulled investigators through the looking glass, and into the strangest cases they’d ever seen.

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There’s a saying that goes, “All regulations are written in blood.” And it’s true. If given the opportunity, companies will cut corners and find loopholes to make their jobs easier or cheaper or skirt some kind of oversight. And when it all goes wrong, when there’s blood on their hands, when there’s a dozen microphones in their face, the people in charge always look contrite. And that’s infuriating, isn’t it? The mundanity of that kind of evil. They wanted to save a couple of bucks and now people are dead and hurt and they’re sorry. Today, w...

In last week’s episode, we learned about the troubled early life of Earle Nelson, and witnessed his first steps towards becoming one of the most prolific serial killers in North American history. This week, his journey of mayhem across America really kicks into high gear. Join us for part 2 of this terrifying true story.

Join Katie and Whitney, plus the hosts of Last Podcast on the Left, Sinisterhood, and Scared to Death, on the very first CRIMEWAVE true crime cruise! Get your fan code now--tickets go on sale February 7: CrimeWaveatSea.com/CAMPFIRE

Sources:
Bestial by...

If you think about the 1920s in the United States, a few things might come to mind—jazz, prohibition, Babe Ruth, and, right at the end, the Wall Street Crash. And if you think of crime, you probably think of Al Capone, bootlegging, and fast-talking wise guys with Tommy guns. But the 1920s were also in some ways the nation’s introduction to crimes that could shock and horrify the entire country. Leopold and Loeb’s thrill killing, the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the utter horror of child-killer and cannibal Albert Fish. And possibly the most prolific killer...

I saw a meme one time that said, “It’s funny how sometimes the people you’d take a bullet for are the ones behind the trigger.” Most of the time that’s just a metaphor, a way to describe the way it feels when a loved one betrays you. But not always. Sometimes betrayals come written in blood—and more often than not, from somebody you loved and trusted. You couldn’t find a clearer example of that than this week’s case, a story where two of the most powerful forces in the world—love and greed—clash, and three innocent p...

Motivational speakers started really gaining popularity in the 70s and 80s, the golden age of “self-help.” And in recent years, they’ve been even more in-demand, especially in the business world. You can’t swing a dead cat these days without hitting some self-proclaimed entrepreneurial guru who claims to have the formula for success and would be happy to share it with you, if you sign up for their seminar for the low-low price of thousands of dollars. Or buy their TikTok course. But you don’t have to get certified or trained to be a motivational speaker, and their industry i...