Crossing the Line with M. William Phelps
Crossing the Line is a true crime podcast revealing cases of the missing and murdered, told start-to-finish each week. Using the campfire storytelling style that made Paper Ghosts a #1 hit on the charts, host M. William Phelps connects deeply with families touched by violent crime - he understands them, because he is one of them. Having gone through the murder of his own pregnant sister-in-law, Phelps brings not only his personal experience, but also 20-plus years of investigative journalism into the worlds of these stories. Follow and subscribe to Crossing the Line for a weekly dose of murder, mayhem and madness. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episodes
Season 5 of Paper Ghosts: The Texas Teen Murders takes you back to 1983, when two teenagers were found murdered, execution-style, on a quiet Texas hill. What followed was decades of rumors, false leads, and a case that law enforcement could never seem to close. Then a third teen is murdered and other questionable dea...
You all know him as the Golden State Killer, Joseph DeAngelo, one of the most prolific serial criminal killers we have ever encountered. This week, my very special guest, Thien Ho, the man who prosecuted Deangelo, gives us the inside story of what went on behind the scenes with this monster--sharing never-before-heard details about the East Area Rapist, Vasilia Ransacker, Original Nightstalker, and GSK.
Ge...
A father of four, Jared Bridegan, drops off two of his children at his ex-wife's house. Drives away. An hour later, a passerby finds the man dead in the middle of the road. As the investigation begins amid what seems to be a baffling homicide, an unlikely suspect is developed and the dominoes in a wild murder scheme begin to fall.
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A young teenager is dropped off at a Denver, Colorado, park one summer afternoon and fails to return home. Witnesses step forward and claim social media holds the answer–an online video of what happened. Investigators search for a suspect—who happens to be right under their noses the entire time.
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Blake Chappell is seventeen years old, enjoying life on life's terms. He has a beautiful girlfriend, loving siblings, and his sights are set on becoming a television news anchor or an attorney. But as Blake is walking to a friend's house one early morning, he vanishes. Family and friends don't believe the common law enforcement trope that another teen has run away from home. So the search begins.
*Carina Saunders is a gifted student, passionate about opera, and doing the best she can to carve out a life in Oklahoma City after getting herself into a jam. After she turns up missing one day, her family set out to uncover the truth—while law enforcement takes a call for a gruesome discovery not far from where Carina was last seen.
* I want to thank Michelle G for sending this one in.
...13-year-old Abigail "Abby" Williams and 14-year-old Liberty "Libby" German were brutally murdered by Richard Allen. My guests, Anie and Kevin, from the Murder Sheet podcast, discuss the threats they received, the social media vitriol proclaiming the man convicted is innocent and has been framed, and what it all means within the scope of true crime.
A famous sheriff fights crime and corruption by taking the battle right to the enemy—using a very large oak stick to bust up illegal casinos, brothels, moonshine stills, and heads. He becomes a hero of the people. Books are written. Hollywood films are made about his life. Then … a horrific murder and fiery accident lend a surprise twist, with everyone questioning their worship and idealization.
A love story seemingly torn from the pages of a Hollywood script begins a life for two people who, over eight years, never spend a moment apart. Then one day, 27-year-old Randy White drops his 23-year-old wife Janet Renee off at work after having lunch together. Seven minutes later, evil steps into their lives and changes it forever. Forty-plus years later, one of them makes good on a promise.
An aspiring actress, model and volunteer, 26-year-old Alexandra Ducsay, breaks up with her boyfriend, 42-year-old Matthew Pugh. He has a hard time accepting that she is moving on without him. So he starts stalking her. And then one day, the situation explodes into violence—and a cold case turns hot six years later when the answers finally come.
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In Part 2 of a special Crossing the Line, Phelps and his guests get into what actually happened to 13-year-old Abigail "Abby" Williams and 14-year-old Liberty "Libby" German on that February day down by the Monon High Bridge, in Delphi, Indiana–and who is, without any doubt, responsible for their brutal murders.
This, despite all of the social media vitriol proclaiming the man convicted, Richard Allen, is ...
The double murder of 13-year-old Abigail "Abby" Williams and 14-year-old Liberty "Libby" German, known more commonly as the Delphi Murders, is one the most high-profile true crime cases of the past ten years. The girls were last seen alive on the Monon High Bridge, part of the Delphi Historic Trails, in Delphi, Indiana. The case went cold for several years before Richard Allen was arrested and charged in 2022 with thei...
A small suburban town in Minnesota experiences an unspeakable tragedy, a horrific murder, changing the community forever–and the killer is caught, convicted, sent to prison, and then set free.
Welcome to a bonus feature here on the Crossing the Line feed. I come across all sorts of stories while researching books, TV series, and my iHeartMedia podcast, Paper Ghosts, in addition to the ideas you send ...
The Hatfield/McCoy deadly neighbor feud set the bar for how some neighbors respond to each other when they do not get along and tensions escalate. Fast-forward 100 years and that same revenge-driven temperament has not evolved or changed much. Here, in this week's case, two neighbors begin to feud--and what at first seems like an old dude fed up with a young dude, and nothing more than words being slung, soon turns dea...
A woman known as the Chameleon is crisscrossing the Atlantic Ocean, stealing identities and leading police on a wild goose chase, taunting them with letters and promises of "you'll never catch me." Then a dismembered body is discovered in the Florida Everglades one day and police believe they have a serial killer at large.
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A blended family, James and Kristen Brock, James' five-year-old daughter and Kristen's 17-year-old, Sarah Grace Patrick, seem to be living life on life's terms, with a few bumps in the road, as the New Year, 2025, comes to pass. Then, on the morning of February 20, 2025, the five-year-old wakes up and discovers a horrific scene inside the house, setting off one of the most unnerving double murder investigations within ...
Not much needs to be said about this iconic true crime case to introduce it. Phelps gives the Black Dahlia murder of Elizabeth "Beth" Short the Crossing the Line treatment—with one shocking twist! A man who says he's solved the case and has connected Short's murder to a second homicide some 1600 miles away, in Kansas City.
Check out Eli Frankel's book, SISTERS IN DEATH, for more information about Black Da...
Tara Breckenridge is working as a waitress at a popular men's club in downtown Houston when she goes missing one night after work. With a host of serial killers active in the region, and a litany of missing and murdered females, is Tara's case part of the bigger picture, or, a one-off committed by someone she knows?
If yo...
A man is shot dead inside his vehicle in the middle of the street. He is an up-and-coming professional wrestler with big dreams and big love for friends and family. The case is perplexing to law enforcement, who catch their man almost immediately, and yet his justification for the murder is most baffling.
Welcome to a bonus feature here on the Crossing the Line feed. I come across all sorts of storie...
A well-loved doctor, Margo Prade, is found murdered inside her van in the parking lot of her office one morning. Her ex-husband, an Akron, Ohio, Police Department Captain, is questioned and provides an alibi, pleading with his colleagues to find her killer. So who killed this mother of two just as she was close to getting her life back on track after a contentious divorce?
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