RedHanded

Welcome to part two of our annual Halloween story-swap, where we take turns to try and freak each other out... with the very worst stories we can unearth.

This week, Hannah has the horrific true story of Tsutomu Miyazaki, Japan’s infamous ‘Little Girl Killer’ whose incel-adjacent muder spree took the lives of four young girls. Then, Suruthi tells us the terrible true tale of Vilma Trujillo, a 25-year-old mother of two, who was burned at the stake after telling her church she was about to birth a serpent.

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At first, stories of European witch-panics were nothing more than idle gossip to the settlers of New England. But soon – faced with inexplicable blights, punishing winters, and stories of people carried off into the night by indigenous tribes – suspicions of black magic became very real indeed...

Picking up where we left off in Europe, H&S explore how the madness of the witch-hunting craze made its way to the New World. So strap in for sinister rituals, lots of piss-based magic, and how it all came to a head in the little village of Salem, Massachusetts.

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In Part 2 of our special spooky series on all things witchy, we take a look at how the hag-hunting insanity spread to the British Isles: thanks to a paranoid new king and a 19-year-old, self-styled Witchfinder General.

Plus: what really goes down at a witches’ sabbath, and why did women make up 90% of the thousands killed?

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With Halloween fast approaching, it’s time for our annual tradition at RedHanded: a classic spooky story swap. 

In this first spine-tingling episode, Suruthi takes us into the forest of Ibadan, Nigeria, to a real-life house of horrors where black magic rituals and sinister government secrets collide. Meanwhile, Hannah tells the terrifying story of Ruthie Mae McCoy and the real life Candyman – proving that dark forces really can lurk just beyond the bathroom mirror…

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Believed for over a thousand years to be local soothsayers who used their powers for everyday charms and spells, European witches' PR machine finally turned against them in the 16th and 17th centuries: when the continent suddenly became gripped by the idea that they weren't so wholesome after all...

In fact, they might just be part of a demonic army on a mission to cloud the whole world in evil.

For spooky season, we're treating our listeners to a redux of our epic two-parter ShortHand exploring the witch-hunting mania that gripped Europe for a huge...

Since it's October, we're revisiting one of the most sickening, spine-chilling cases we've ever covered on RedHanded...

The horrifying case of David Fuller: the so-called Monster in the Morgue.

At first, police thought they were only looking for a double murderer.

Nicknamed the ‘Bedsit Killer’ in the press, the suspect’s reputation for savage violence already loomed large in the town of Tunbridge Wells in the late 80s. But it was only when they caught David Fuller – more than 30 years later – that they learnt the blood-curdling truth: that for years, the mortuary worker had been a...

Boiled in blood, hacked at by knives, torn apart by iron dogs… the world’s religions differ on what exactly might await sinners in the afterlife. But one thing they can all agree on is that if you were naughty on Earth, you are in for one hell of a horrible time.

We take a quick tour of history’s grimmest netherzones: from freezing poison rain in the Norse Helheim, to a river of excrement, where monstrous aquatic beings eat your flesh, down in the Hindu Narakas. Welcome to Hell.

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Cursing the courtroom and then slashing his own throat with a contraband shiv, Aubrey Trail had lived up to his promise, turning the trial of Bailey Boswell and himself into a complete circus. Although the pair’s bizarre relationship, full of kinks, vampires and witches, had already seen to that.

Boswell and Trail had murdered 24-year-old Sydney Loofe six months previously before dismembering her and draining her body entirely of its blood. Why? According to Boswell, her partner in crime, Trail, was an ageless vampire who controlled a coven of witches. Killing Loofe and “breathing in her last...

Today we're sharing an episode from the true crime podcast Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, hosted by Vanessa Richardson and forensic psychologist Dr. Tristin Engels. Each episode, Vanessa and Dr. Engels take you deep into the psychology of history’s most chilling murderers. They blend gripping true crime storytelling, with expert analysis to uncover what drives people to kill.

In this episode, Vanessa and Dr. Engels untangle a murder case that began in 2012, when Dave Kroupa met a woman named Liz Golyar on a dating app. Months later, Dave started seeing someone else, a woman named Cari Farver. Ca...

In 2013, horror blockbuster The Conjuring packed out cinemas worldwide, terrifying moviegoers with its alleged ‘true story’ of a house haunted by malevolent demons.
 
But the real truth behind the tale is far sketchier than we might think – with marital discord, pissed-off neighbours, and a ghost-busting power couple spearheading a very unfair smear campaign against a 19th century farmer’s wife. 

This is the ShortHand.

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With the release of the Amazon Prime documentary about the murder of Caroline Crouch, we're reaching into the vault to bring you H&S' coverage of this tragic case.

When the body of 19-year-old Caroline Crouch was found in her attic room after an apparent home invasion – with her 11-month-old daughter crying next to her, and her puppy hanging from the bannister – the nation of Greece mourned with her widower, Babis Anagnostopoulos.

A handsome helicopter pilot, Anagnostopoulos had led the tributes since her death. But one month on, at a clifftop memorial service, Athenian police reve...

Vanquishing demons lingering in a tainted soul might sound like a very Christian idea – but exorcisms are prevalent in almost every culture across the globe. From ancient China to modern Islam, there are hundreds of ways to free someone from the grips of an evil spirit. This week Hannah and Suruthi run down a few of the most interesting – and discuss why, before modern medicine, possession seemed like such a likely explanation.

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When videos of a gruesome beheading and dismemberment surfaced on gore-fetish websites across Vietnam in 2025, the internet was shaken to its core. 

Not because it was the first time anyone had seen disturbing videos online. But because this time, the victim seemed to have been actively involved in planning his own murder.

But is it less of a crime if you have the victim’s consent? And could this be the world’s first ever real snuff film?

Enter one of the most insane open-source murder investigations in history, as a community of crime...

Black magic, or ‘Sanguma’, is often used to explain everything from minor illnesses to sudden deaths in Papua New Guinea. 

Horrifyingly, it’s also behind the recent rise of brutal witch hunts sweeping the nation. An epidemic of violence in which, predominantly, women and girls are being publicly tortured and murdered.

Why? Find out on this week’s ShortHand.

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To round launch our month of spooky eps, our Halloween ShortHand covers the life and afterlife of one of the most sinister, blood-thirstiest bastards in all of human history: Vlad the Impaler, otherwise known as Vlad Dracula.

We dig into the legends surrounding the savage ruler – including an al fresco lunch among hundreds of thousands of twitching, impaled enemies – and see how they tie into the modern, blood-sucking vampire legend. Happy Halloween…

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In the early 1990s, the beach town of Guaratuba, Brazil had its very own witch hunt.

It started with the mutilated body of a seven-year-old boy: Evandro Ramos Caetano... 

And it would end with a coven of accused ‘black magic’ practitioners – including the mayor’s own wife and daughter – sentenced to decades behind bars for alleged child sacrifice rituals.

But as shocking claims emerged of political scheming and torture-fuelled confessions, was that really the whole story? Or did the trouble brewing in Guaratuba run far deeper?

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From the BBC and Westminster Cathedral to Penguin paperbacks, typeface creator Eric Gill was once lauded as the eccentric genius behind some of Britain’s most iconic visual landmarks. But behind the scenes, he was also a sex-mad monster who shamelessly abused his own daughters within the rural Catholic artisanal communes where he lived and worked…

And the art world covered it all up for decades. 

TL;DR – Did you know one of the UK’s most celebrated sculptors and graphic designers was actually a notorious nonce? Neither did we.

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To some paedophile catchers like Chris Hansen are online superheroes, protecting children and putting predators behind bars. To others they're vigilantes who enforce their own form of justice while putting people in danger. But do they have a place in the system? 

This week Hannah and Suruthi are jumping into the murky waters of self styled sting operations, hidden cameras, and entrapment to find out.

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Fetal abduction is incredibly rare, so it’s no surprise that it wasn’t top of the list of possible motives when a heavily pregnant 22-year-old Rebecca Park first went missing. Yet when looking back over the countless livestreams and interviews given by Rebecca’s biological mother, Cortney Bartholomew, along with Bartholomew’s husband, Bradley, the pieces quickly fall into place — a mother jealous of her own child and willing to kill her for her baby.

Join us in the concluding episode of our deep dive into the murder of Rebecca Park and her unborn child, as we comb th...

From Belladonna eye drops to literally eating arsenic, human vanity has taken us to some pretty dark places in our quest to look drop dead gorgeous…

But would you risk your life for the perfect makeover?

In this week’s ShortHand, we’re looking at the toxic history of beauty hacks – and trust us, you do not wanna try these at home.

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This week, we’re taking you back to 1974 for a rollocking royal story that The Crown won’t tell you - the time a young Princess Anne was almost kidnapped by a gun-toting loner outside Buckingham Palace, in a shower of bullets and stiff upper lips.

The Anne-cident changed royal security protocols forever. But would The Firm be changing their ways? Not bloody likely.

Featuring an ex-boxer vigilante, a somersaulting princess and an outrageous extortion plot, you don’t wanna miss this one.

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Families are complicated, but when Rebecca Park went missing while heavily pregnant with the child of her mother’s ex-boyfriend, it raised eyebrows. Rebecca disappeared on the 3rd November 2025 after going to visit her biological mother Cortney Batholomew. In the weeks and months that followed a web of lies, inheritance and manipulation bubbled to the surface through Facebook livestreams and cryptic interviews with police. 

Join us in part one of a two part series on the murder of Rebecca Park and her unborn child, as we try to untangle a generationally complex web of deceit.

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In just seven years, the bubonic plague killed half of all Europeans – more than 50 million people. We look at its surprising origins on the Mongolian battlefield (where diseased bodies were literally catapulted at the enemy); its unstoppable spread through a terrified Europe; and how it turned cultural, religious and social life in the 14th century completely upside down.

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When Julian Assange created WikiLeaks in 2006, it was the aim of rooting out corruption and improving transparency. And its successes were unprecedented, exposing hard-kept, dirty secrets from the very highest levels of power.

But somewhere along the way, something happened. And whether it was Assange’s ego that brought him down – or the institutions he had so royally pissed off – isn’t totally clear. H&S try to find the truth about the world’s most famous truth-teller.

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Did Lindsay Clancy kill her children? Despite what was portrayed online, this was not the question at the heart of a trial which has gripped a nation. Both the defence and the prosecution agreed, that tragically, the 36-year-old was indeed the the person who took the lives of the Clancy Children. The question was why? Was Lindsay Clancy insane and did that lead to a momentary lapse of control in which her actions felt justified? Or were the murders the result of a cold and calculated decision?

This was what the jury was tasked with deciding...

Jeanne D’Arc – the teenage girl guided by saintly voices to command actual French armies into actual military victories – is one of history’s best-known names. Not bad for a 13-year-old.

But that's not all. This week, we take a speedy look through the bloody, Game-of-Thrones-topping madness that is the Hundred Years’ War, meet a mad king that’s convinced he’s made of glass, and find out how one girl changed the entire course of world history.

Societal recluses exist in every culture. But in Japan, the number of permanent shut-ins has risen to incredible levels. There are estimated to be around one million Hikikomori, or ‘modern-day hermits’, in Japan today, and the term has even been proposed to be included in the DSM-5.

So what is it about Japanese culture that causes so many young men to never leave the house? Press play to join us in investigating why so many Japanese citizens choose to live their lives in almost complete social isolation.

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According to her husband Patrick, Lindsay Clancy was found laying on the ground, semi-conscious, having cut her neck and wrists, and thrown herself from a second story window in an apparent attempt to take her own life. Just minutes later, Patrick found all three of their young children barely clinging to life in the basement. They had been strangled at the hands of their own mother. None of the children would survive.

In part one of this two-part dive into the horrific deaths of Cora, Dawson and Callan, we discuss Lindsay Clancy’s multiple attempts to get he...

Ever thought about exploring the places on this mysterious planet where your passport won’t take you?

Join for a whistlestop tour of the world’s most off-limits destinations – from radioactive wastelands to snake-infested islands, and the odd plague pit in between.

Just don’t blame us if anything goes wrong…

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Reddit is an endless archive of humanity’s most disturbing, bizarre, and deeply human stories. If you love going down internet rabbit holes, you are going to love CRIMES OF REDDIT with Alexis Linkletter and Sabrina Deana-Roga.

Every Tuesday, one host brings a set of true-crime stories while the other reacts in real time with no prep, no spoilers asking the questions on everyone’s mind. They pull at every thread until the whole twisted picture comes into view. It’s dark, it’s messy, and the scariest part is simple: THESE ARE STORIES POSTED BY REAL PEOPLE.<...

More people know about the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten today than knew about him just 100 years after his death. But Akhentaten was no average ruler. 

He fundamentally changed religious worship forever, and may even have started Judaism itself. So why did he disappear from history? Was he simply forgotten to the sands of time – or did he fly too close to the ‘Aten’?

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This week, RedHanded is joined by Cassie and Danielle from National Park After Dark for an exploration of the myths, outlaws and bloody history of Louisiana.

First up: legendary “land pirate” John Murrell, the mysterious Leather Britches Smith, and the stories lurking along Louisiana’s Myths and Legends Byway.

Then: between 1910 and 1912, several entire families were slaughtered with axes across Louisiana and Texas. Police blamed Clementine Barnabet, a Black teenager who they claimed was the high priestess of a murderous voodoo cult. If guilty, she would easily rank as the worst female serial killer in histor...

At first, OnlyFans seemed like a shiny new frontier for safer sex work – a platform that promised unprecedented financial autonomy for its creators. But wherever there’s sex work, there will inevitably be men who try to profit off it…

And through the manosphere’s lingo of online hustle culture and misogyny, a new breed of so-called “OnlyFans managers” emerged to claim their piece of the digital-sex-work pie, using the oldest tricks in the exploitation handbook: coercive control, financial bondage and physical violence. Welcome to the dark world of E-Pimping. 

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In 2007, child protection officers in Pinella County, Florida, spoke with a 14-year-old girl who’d been sexually assaulted by a musician she’d met on MySpace. But thanks to their failed investigation, more than 20 preteen fans would suffer the same fate.

Dahvie Vanity, frontman of scene kid band Blood On The Dance Floor, spent over a decade using social media to prey on his band’s enormous preteen fan base – seemingly, with absolute impunity.

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In 2018, married couple Jen and Sarah Hart accelerated their SUV over the edge of a 100ft cliff in Mendocino County, California… with their six Black adopted children in the back. 

The world was left in total shock. Jen and Sarah had seemed like model parents: social justice-loving lesbians who’d bravely taken in six Black children from disadvantaged backgrounds, and – according to Jen’s gushing Facebook posts – giving those kids the dream life they’d never had. 

But behind the glossy image the Harts presented, a far more sinister reality lurked… 

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Remember the time London was overcome by a stench so foul that it shut down Parliament, and convinced terrified city-dwellers that the end was surely near?

No? Well let us remind you of the grim summer of 1858: otherwise known as The Great Stink.

The crisis brought about a long overdue transformation of the city’s sanitation system that formed the basis for the sewers we still use today – so thanks, Victorian engineers!

This is the stinky ShortHand.

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Today, catch the first episode of The Poet, a new six-part true crime series from The Binge. 

Hosted by journalist Rachel Browne, The Poet is an investigation that drops you into Wichita, Kansas in 1977, where a woman named Ruth Finley is receiving threatening, obsessive poems from an unknown stalker – at the exact same time police are trying to track down the notorious serial killer known as BTK. 

Is Ruth’s stalker the same person? You’ll have to listen to find out. 

To keep listening, here’s Episode 2: Where’s Ruth?

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Watching slaves being ritually hacked to pieces may not seem like many people’s idea of a great day out. But 2,000 years ago, Romans turned up in their thousands to watch exactly that. So, with Gladiator back on our screens, we set out to find the truth behind the spectacle – and it’s even bloodier than the movies could ever allow.

So what exactly happened in the gladiatorial games? Were there really lions, elephants, bears – and even full-scale naval battles in water-filled arenas? And did Maximus Decimus Meridius really have his vengeance? Find out in this week’s ShortHan...

Joseph James DeAngelo is a burglar, a killer, and a rapist. A vile man with a proclivity for terrorising and sexually violating women. But that wasn’t everyone’s perception of the elderly man who was arrested in the yard of his suburban Sacramento home. To his daughters he was a loving father, to his employers he’d been a reliable worker, and to the wider community he was just another sleepy old man living out his retirement. 

So who is Joseph James DeAngelo and how did he co-exist as a “regular Jo” and the Golden Stake Killer?

What could drive a person to eat another human being? Well, as it turns out, humankind has actually been surprisingly open to a little cannibalistic carpaccio.

From funeral traditions where families gather to gobble up their loved one as a mark of respect; to a European craze for drinking liquefied, mummified human brains (plus a surprising number of societies who just really liked the taste) – here is ShortHand’s history of inter-personal dining.

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