Case Files: True Crime Stories

In 2011, eight of John Wayne Gacy's victims still had no names — until DNA, a sheriff's reopened investigation, and one family's cheek swab began bringing them home. This season finale traces how William Bundy, Jimmie Haakenson, and Francis Wayne Alexander were identified decades later, and why five young men are still waiting for their names. New episodes daily — one complete case every season. Music by SINIUS (Free Music Archive, CC-BY 4.0).

John Wayne Gacy spent fourteen years on death row at Menard Correctional Center — appealing his sentence, painting hundreds of clown portraits that sold at auction, and insisting on his innocence while victims' families waited. This episode traces those fourteen years, from the 1980 death sentence through the denied appeals to his execution on 10 May 1994, and asks what justice meant for the families left behind. New episodes daily — one complete case every season. Music by SINIUS (Free Music Archive, CC-BY 4.0).

In February 1980, John Wayne Gacy stood trial in Chicago on thirty-three murder charges — the largest number ever brought against one person in the United States. This episode follows the five-week trial: the families who testified, the insanity defence, the survivor who broke down on the stand, and the jury that took less than two hours to return guilty verdicts on every count. How did a respected neighbour, businessman and clown convince a courtroom he was insane — and why did the jury reject it so fast? Marcus traces the prosecution's case for planning and control, the battle of the psychiatrists, and the...

In December 1978, investigators digging beneath John Wayne Gacy's Chicago house found not one grave, but dozens — 26 bodies in a dirt crawl space, more on the property, and four more recovered from the river. This episode follows the weeks-long excavation and the painstaking work of naming the victims through dental records, X-rays, and the families who never stopped looking. A flashlight in the dirt. A grid mapped in the ground. Names, one by one, coming back into the light. New episodes daily — one complete case every season. Music by SINIUS (Free Music Archive, CC-BY 4.0).

Between 1975 and 1978, young men kept vanishing around Chicago contractor John Wayne Gacy — employees arguing over unpaid wages, teenagers digging trenches in a crawl space, friends out together — and nobody connected the disappearances until it was far too late. This episode traces the vanishing years: John Butkovich, Gregory Godzik, John Szyc, and the warnings their families gave that went unheard. A car with the keys still in the ignition. A dead boy's car, sold on. How many warnings does a city need? New episodes daily — one complete case every season. Music by SINIUS (Free Music Archive, CC-BY 4.0).

It is three in the morning in a Chicago bus terminal, and a sixteen-year-old boy waiting for his bus home will never board it. In this episode, Marcus tells the story of Timothy McCoy — John Wayne Gacy's first known victim — and the long, quiet years when young men vanished around Chicago and nobody saw the pattern. How did a boy on a layover become Body Nine, and why did the warnings keep arriving alone? New episodes daily — one complete case every season. Music by SINIUS (Free Music Archive, CC-BY 4.0).

Ten days after Robert Piest vanished, police finally got inside the house on Summerdale Avenue — and what they found in the crawl space changed everything. In this episode, Marcus follows the first search warrant of 13 December 1978, the photograph receipt, the week of surveillance, and the second warrant on 21 December that uncovered human remains beneath the floorboards. New episodes daily — one complete case every season. Music by SINIUS (Free Music Archive, CC-BY 4.0).

He was Pogo the Clown, a respected contractor and the neighbour everybody trusted — until a fifteen-year-old boy walked out of a Des Plaines pharmacy and never came home. In this season opener, Marcus traces how John Wayne Gacy built his respectable double life, and how Robert Piest's disappearance on 11 December 1978 finally brought police to the house on Summerdale Avenue. A mother waited in the pharmacy for her son; the answers waiting under that house would shock America. New episodes daily — one complete case every season. Music by SINIUS (Free Music Archive, CC-BY 4.0).

Thirty-one years after the first murder, Dennis Rader stands in a Wichita courtroom and pleads guilty to ten murders — then describes them in a flat, chilling voice. In this season finale, Marcus follows the thirty-two-hour confession, the families' devastating courtroom statements, the August 18, 2005 sentencing to ten consecutive life terms, and Kerri Rawson's journey from disbelief to speaking out. The case is closed, but the names of the ten victims are the ones worth remembering. New episodes daily — one complete case every season. Music by SINIUS (Free Music Archive, CC-BY 4.0).

A purple floppy disk, a deleted file, and a name hidden in its metadata — this is how thirty-one years of fear in Wichita ended. In S4 E7, host Marcus traces the nine days from the disk's arrival on February 16, 2005 to Dennis Rader's quiet arrest near his Park City home on February 25, 2005, and the DNA match that made it possible. New episodes daily — one complete case every season. Music by SINIUS (Free Music Archive, CC-BY 4.0).

Thirty years after his first murders, BTK could not stand being forgotten — so he wrote again, and asked police one fatal question: can a floppy disk be traced? In this episode, Marcus follows the 2004 taunt that ended a thirty-one-year hunt: the anniversary story, the cereal-box packages, the classified-ad trap, and the deleted file whose metadata named Dennis and Christ Lutheran Church. New episodes daily — one complete case every season. Music by SINIUS (Free Music Archive, CC-BY 4.0).

The killer installed burglar alarms in homes terrified of BTK — because he was BTK. In this episode, Marcus uncovers Dennis Rader's double life: fourteen years at ADT Security, president of his church council, Cub Scout leader, and Park City's feared compliance officer, hiding in plain sight for thirty-one years. New episodes daily — one complete case every season. Music by SINIUS (Free Music Archive, CC-BY 4.0).

Seventeen years, ten lives: in this episode, Marcus follows BTK's return — Shirley Vian in 1977, Nancy Fox the same year, then the long silence before Marine Hedge in 1985, Vicki Wegerle in 1986, and Dolores Davis, his final victim, in 1991. The pattern held even when the calendar went quiet. New episodes daily — one complete case every season. Music by SINIUS (Free Music Archive, CC-BY 4.0).

October 1974: a phone call to the Wichita Eagle leads police to a letter hidden inside a library book — the letter in which a killer gave himself the name BTK. In this episode, Marcus follows the letters of 1974 to 1979: the library book, the 1978 KAKE television package, the poems, and the 1979 packages sent to Anna Williams, the woman who was not home — and why the letters stopped, and what they left behind. New episodes daily — one complete case every season. Music by SINIUS (Free Music Archive, CC-BY 4.0).

April 4, 1974: Kathryn Bright, 21, comes home with her brother Kevin — and walks into the killer's trap. In this episode, Marcus tells how Kevin Bright became the first person ever to survive BTK and describe him, the composite sketch that flooded Kansas with tips, and why the sister who fought back matters more than the killer's name. New episodes daily — one complete case every season. Music by SINIUS (Free Music Archive, CC-BY 4.0).

Wichita, Kansas, January 15, 1974: four members of the Otero family are murdered in their own home, and the city has no suspect, no motive, and no witness. In this season opener, Marcus traces the crime that started it all — the weeks of watching, the cut phone lines, the three children who came home from school — and the letter nine months later in which the killer gave himself a name: BTK. New episodes daily — one complete case every season. Music by SINIUS (Free Music Archive, CC-BY 4.0).

Ted Bundy spent ten years denying everything — then, with the execution date set, he finally started talking. In this season finale, we follow his last interviews, the confession to thirty murders, the morning of January 24, 1989 in the Florida death chamber, and the astonishing 2026 DNA breakthrough that closed Laura Ann Aime's case fifty-two years after her death. The man is gone, but the evidence keeps speaking.

New episodes daily — one complete case every season.

Music by SINIUS (Free Music Archive, CC-BY 4.0).

Miami, summer nineteen seventy-nine: Ted Bundy walks into court in a suit, defends himself, and becomes the first murder defendant broadcast live on national television. Tonight on Case Files: the Chi Omega trial, the bite-mark evidence that convicted him, the witnesses who refused to look away, and the Orlando trial where he married a witness on the stand — and earned his third death sentence. New episodes daily — one complete case every season.
Music by SINIUS (Free Music Archive, CC-BY 4.0).

February ninth, nineteen seventy-eight: twelve-year-old Kimberly Leach walked out of her first-period class at Lake City Junior High — and never came back. Tonight on Case Files: the abduction of Ted Bundy's youngest and final victim, the seven-week search, the stolen orange Volkswagen Beetle, and the one o'clock in the morning traffic stop in Pensacola where Officer David Lee finally put a name to the most wanted man in America. New episodes daily — one complete case every season.
Music by SINIUS (Free Music Archive, CC-BY 4.0).

January fifteenth, nineteen seventy-eight: just two weeks after escaping jail, Ted Bundy slipped into Florida State University's Chi Omega sorority house — and committed the crimes that would finally convict him. Tonight on Case Files: the murders of Margaret Bowman and Lisa Levy, the two survivors who lived to testify, the one eyewitness on the stairs, and the bite-mark evidence that matched Bundy's teeth in court. New episodes daily — one complete case every season.
Music by SINIUS (Free Music Archive, CC-BY 4.0).

He jumped from a second-story courthouse window in Aspen, then starved himself thin enough to slip through a hole in his jail cell ceiling. Twice, Ted Bundy escaped — and twice, the system let it happen. In this episode, Case Files traces the six days on the run in Colorado, the months of sawing in the dark at Garfield County Jail, and the FBI's Ten Most Wanted poster that never reached Florida — where a college town had no idea what was coming.

New episodes daily — one complete case every season.

Music by SINIUS (Free Music Archive, CC-BY 4.0).

Ted Bundy came to Utah to start over — law school, church, a quiet rented room. Instead, Utah became the place his mask cracked. A fake police officer in a mall parking lot, a seventeen-year-old who escaped a handcuffed nightmare, the police chief's own daughter, and a Halloween night that stayed unsolved for fifty-two years. This is the story of the Utah years — where the survivors began to talk, and the killer learned the walls were closing in.

New episodes daily — one complete case every season.

Music by SINIUS (Free Music Archive, CC-BY 4.0).

On the fourteenth of July, nineteen seventy-four, Ted Bundy abducted two young women from a crowded beach in broad daylight — Janice Ott, twenty-three, and Denise Naslund, nineteen. This episode reconstructs that hot Sunday afternoon at Lake Sammamish State Park: the sling, the sailboat that never existed, the eight witnesses, the two hundred tips a day, and the composite sketch on the evening news that his own girlfriend, professor, and coworkers recognized — while detectives insisted a clean-cut law student could not be the killer.
New episodes daily — one complete case every season.
Music by SINIUS (Free Music Archive, CC-BY 4.0).

Season 3 opens on the Ted Bundy case — the most infamous name in true crime. This episode peels back the mask: the law student, the crisis-hotline volunteer, the charming boyfriend — and the winter of 1974, when young women began vanishing across Washington state. From the folded nightgown in Lynda Ann Healy's bedroom to the crowded beach at Lake Sammamish, where a handsome stranger called himself "Ted," hear how police got his name, his car, and his face — and still looked the other way.
New episodes daily — one complete case every season.
Music by SINIUS (Free Music Archive, CC-BY 4.0).

After forty years and eighty-seven victims, the Golden State Killer finally faces the people he destroyed. This episode takes you inside the extraordinary sentencing at Sacramento State — three days of survivor statements, a guilty plea to thirteen murders, and eleven consecutive life sentences without parole. Hear how Joseph DeAngelo was caught, what he admitted, and why the victims' voices — not his — close this case. The season finale of the Golden State Killer arc.

New episodes daily — one complete case every season.

Music by SINIUS (Free Music Archive, CC-BY 4.0).

The manhunt lasted forty-four years. In S2 E7, it ends with a trash bag on a Tuesday morning — investigators watch 72-year-old Joseph James DeAngelo wheel his bin to the curb in Citrus Heights, and discarded DNA finally names the Golden State Killer. The quiet grandfather arrested in his own driveway, the cop-turned-predator's unmasking, and the survivors who waited decades for this moment.
New episodes daily — one complete case every season.
Music by SINIUS (Free Music Archive, CC-BY 4.0).

The Golden State Killer hunted California for more than a decade — then vanished for forty years. In S2 E6, investigator Paul Holes and genetic genealogist Barbara Rae-Venter build a family tree from a single DNA sample, tracing distant cousins through public genealogy databases to one quiet suburban man. This is how forensic genetic genealogy cracked the most famous cold case in American history.
New episodes daily — one complete case every season.
Music by SINIUS (Free Music Archive, CC-BY 4.0).

Before Joseph James DeAngelo was caught, one woman hunted him for five years — writer Michelle McNamara, who coined the name "Golden State Killer" and gave forty years of scattered crimes a single identity. Her book I'll Be Gone in the Dark became a bestseller after her death in 2016 — and two months after it was published, the killer was finally arrested.
She never saw the arrest. She never wrote the ending. But she dragged the case into the light anyway. New episodes daily — one complete case every season.
Music by SINIUS (Free Music Archive, CC-BY 4.0).

For thirty-two years, the man behind the Golden State Killer case was a ghost — a DNA profile with no name. This episode traces the cold decades: the 2001 DNA breakthrough that proved the East Area Rapist and the Original Night Stalker were one man, the national database that came back empty, the detective who never stopped working the boxes, and the California DNA system this case helped build.

New episodes daily — one complete case every season.

Music by SINIUS (Free Music Archive, CC-BY 4.0).

He stopped leaving survivors. After three years of terror in Sacramento, the East Area Rapist moved south down the California coast and became the Original Night Stalker — the prowler who murdered couples in their beds across Goleta, Ventura, Dana Point and Irvine from 1979 to 1981, hiding behind county lines no detective could cross. This episode follows the botched October 1979 attack whose victims were the only ones who ever escaped, the ten lives he took, and the lone 1986 killing that DNA would finally tie to the same hands.

New episodes daily — one complete case every season.

Music by SINI...

After Visalia, the prowler became a predator. This episode follows the East Area Rapist's reign of terror over Sacramento from 1976 to 1979 — the taunting phone calls, the prowler's meticulous home invasions, the stacked plates, and the more than fifty people who endured him. Victims first: their courage, their decades of fear, and the three days in court when they finally spoke to the man in the mask.
New episodes daily — one complete case every season.
Music by SINIUS (Free Music Archive, CC-BY 4.0).

Before the Golden State Killer haunted California, he was a masked prowler terrorizing the farm town of Visalia — stealing coins and personal keepsakes while a young police officer by day became the Ransacker by night. This episode traces the 120-burglary crime spree that escalated to the murder of professor Claude Snelling, who died defending his daughter Beth, and the final December 1975 confrontation with Detective William McGowen.
New episodes daily — one complete case every season.
Music by SINIUS (Free Music Archive, CC-BY 4.0).

The Yorkshire Ripper faces justice — the May nineteen eighty one Old Bailey trial, the rejected insanity plea, twenty life sentences, Broadmoor, the whole-life order, and the DNA unmasking of Wearside Jack twenty five years later. The season finale of the complete Peter Sutcliffe case — thirteen victims remembered by name. New episodes daily — one complete case every season. Music by SINIUS (Free Music Archive, CC-BY 4.0).

The Yorkshire Ripper is caught — not by a detective, but by two traffic cops checking number plates. On the second of January, nineteen eighty one, Peter Sutcliffe is stopped in Sheffield, weapons dumped in the dark beside him. Hear how a fifteen-hour confession on the fourth of January ended five and a half years of terror across the north of England. New episodes daily — one complete case every season. Music by SINIUS (Free Music Archive, CC-BY 4.0).

By 1979, the Yorkshire Ripper's victim profile had collapsed — no longer just the women the police expected, but a bank clerk crossing a park, a university student leaving a pub, a civil servant strangled on her way home from work. Host Marcus traces the final murders — Josephine Whitaker, Barbara Leach, Marguerite Walls, and Jacqueline Hill, the 13th and last — and the two survivors who lived to describe him, while the biggest manhunt in British history kept chasing the wrong voice.

Five years. Thirteen dead. And a country asking how he was still free. New episodes daily — one complete case every se...

In June 1979, the biggest manhunt in British police history pivoted on a single cassette tape. The voice on it — a slow, mocking Wearside accent calling himself 'Jack' — sent two hundred detectives chasing a ghost in Sunderland while the real Yorkshire Ripper kept killing. Host Marcus traces John Samuel Humble's three letters and the infamous tape, the expert warnings the police ignored, and the estimated eighteen months of freedom the hoax bought a serial killer.

The police believed a voice on a cassette. They dismissed the truth when it finally called. New episodes daily — one complete case every season.
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In 1978, the Yorkshire Ripper manhunt became the biggest in British police history — 200 officers, over 130,000 interviews — and still let the killer walk away. Host Marcus follows the 1978 victims Yvonne Pearson, Helen Rytka, and Vera Millward, the five-pound-note lead that put Peter Sutcliffe in a police interview room twice, and the tunnel vision that released him again and again.
He was questioned. He was let go. Nobody knows how many lives that cost. New episodes daily — one complete case every season.
Music by SINIUS (Free Music Archive, CC-BY 4.0).

The Yorkshire Ripper's deadliest year so far. In 1977, Peter Sutcliffe murdered three women in four months — Irene Richardson, 28, Patricia Atkinson, 32, and 16-year-old Jayne MacDonald, a schoolgirl walking home from a night out. Her death shattered the city's false sense of safety and turned Leeds into a city under siege. New episodes daily — one complete case every season. Music by SINIUS (Free Music Archive, CC-BY 4.0).

On the night of January 20, 1976, 42-year-old Emily Jackson gets into a stranger's car outside a Leeds pub — and becomes the Yorkshire Ripper's second murder victim. Host Marcus traces her story, the surviving witnesses of the 1975 hammer attacks that were never linked, and the broken 1970s policing that let Peter Sutcliffe kill again and again.
The pattern was sitting in plain sight. Nobody had enough of it to see it. New episodes daily — one complete case every season.
Music by SINIUS (Free Music Archive, CC-BY 4.0).

Leeds, 1975. A young mother of four is found murdered on a playing field in Chapeltown — and the press gives the killer a name that will haunt Britain for five years: the Yorkshire Ripper.

In this first episode of Case Files Season 1, host Marcus traces Peter Sutcliffe's early life, the hammer attacks of the summer of 1975 that police never connected, and the murder of Wilma McCann that started it all — plus the chilling admission Sutcliffe made years later about why he really killed.

New episodes daily — one complete case every season. Subscribe for your daily dose of true c...