WILDCIDE

A trusted pastor. A small Pennsylvania church. And a string of tragedies. 

When a man named Joseph Mesante walked into a church office in Reeders, Pennsylvania and ended his life, the story seemed heartbreakingly simple: a husband devastated by the discovery of his wife’s affair with their pastor, Arthur “A.B.” Schirmer.

But Joseph's suicide was the unfortunate catalyst to a horror story.

As investigators began looking more closely...

History doesn’t always change because of grand decisions. Sometimes it changes because of a wrong turn… or a forgotten petri dish.

In today's Shortcide, Bailey tells the unbelievable story of how a driver’s accidental turn down the wrong street placed Archduke Franz Ferdinand directly in front of Gavrilo Princip—triggering a chain reaction that would lead to World War I, the rise of Hitler, and the deadliest century in human histor...

Domestic violence is rarely as simple — or as obvious — as people expect it to be.

In this special Wildcide interview episode, Bailey and Chelsea sit down with domestic violence expert and therapist Jennifer Salmons for an honest, deeply practical conversation about how abusive relationships actually develop, why victims stay, and what outsiders often misunderstand about abuse dynamics.

Moving beyond headlines and true crime narrat...

Tracey Thurman did everything a victim is told to do. She left her abusive husband. She reported threats. She obtained a restraining order. She called the police again and again — documenting a danger everyone could see coming.

On June 10, 1983, after months of ignored warnings, Tracey was brutally attacked outside her home while help arrived too late to stop the violence. What followed wasn’t just a criminal case, but a constituti...

Boston, January 17, 1950. Just after 7 p.m., a group of masked men walked calmly into the Brink’s Armored Car Company building and carried out what would soon be called the “Crime of the Century.”

There was no chaos. No gunfire. No panic. The robbers moved with precision — wearing disguises, speaking little, and tying up employees before disappearing into the night with nearly $2.8 million in cash, checks, and securities, the large...

In 1992, a respected small-town physician was accused of sexually assaulting one of his patients during a routine appointment. The allegation shocked the tight-knit Canadian community — but what happened next was even more unbelievable. Despite a DNA test meant to settle the case once and for all, the results seemed to clear the doctor. The charges were dropped. Life moved on.

But the victim never stopped fighting.

Years later, new...

Glitter, gasoline, and a whole lot of bad luck.

In this eerie Shortcide episode, Bailey and Chelsea unravel two of the most famously cursed objects in modern lore: a diamond drenched in tragedy, and a Porsche with a fatal appetite for chaos.

Chelsea races into the doom-laced legacy of James Dean’s Porsche 550 Spyder, lovingly nicknamed Little Bastard. After Dean’s fatal crash, the wrecked car became a harbinger of death and destruc...

After 9/11, America was desperate for heroes. Jonathan Keith Idema was more than willing to step into the role.

What followed was a decades-long con built on stolen valor, inflated credentials, intimidation, and a relentless trail of lawsuits, fraud charges, and outright lies. He claimed to be Special Forces. He claimed to hunt terrorists. He claimed to work alongside the U.S. government.

None of it was true.

Idema’s story is a c...

It starts in the most familiar place imaginable: a doctor’s office. A patient in pain. A prescription that feels like relief. But behind that quiet moment was a pharmaceutical company running a million-dollar playbook.

Today's case dives into the rise and collapse of Insys Therapeutics, a drug company that built its empire around Subsys—a fentanyl spray approved for a narrow purpose: breakthrough cancer pain in opioid-tolerant pati...

In the mid-2000s, Albuquerque, New Mexico was gripped by a fear it couldn’t quite name. People were being found dead inside their homes — with no connections and without clear motives. At first, the cases appeared unrelated. Different neighborhoods. Different victims. Different MO. No obvious pattern. Just a growing sense that something was wrong.

It begins with Carlos Esquibel, a 37-year-old designer whose welcoming nature would p...

HAPPY NEW YEAR WILDCIDERS! We begin 2026 with a WILD Shortcide.

In today's Shortcide, we’re diving into two of the most impossibly timed brushes with fate you’ve probably never heard of.

Bailey tells the story of a stranger who makes a split-second decision on a train platform… and ends up saving the life of someone tied to one of the most infamous chapters in American history. No one knew the full weight of it in the moment—not ev...

In this exclusive Wildcide interview, Bailey gets the opportunity to sit down with hijacker Martin J. McNally and the directors of the new Netflix documentary Skyjacker, Eli Kooris and Joshua Shaffer. Together, they unpack the unbelievable real story behind the hijacking of Flight 119, the 320-mph parachute jump that stunned the nation, and the decades inside federal prison that followed. Martin reflects openly on the choices that ...

In Part 2, we pick up where we left off: Martin McNally has made it out of the sky alive — bruised, concussed, and unaware that the FBI is already tracing the fingerprints that will lead straight to him. Within days, Martin is captured, sentenced to life in federal prison, and shipped to USP Marion — the most secure prison in America.

And inside those walls, he meets someone who will change everything: fellow skyjacker Garrett Broc...

Long before TSA lines and shoe removal, American skies lived through the *Golden Age of Hijacking*. Between 1968 and 1972, more than 130 airliners were commandeered — and one bored ex–Navy airplane electrician from Detroit decided he could turn that chaos into his big score.

Part 1 traces how Martin J. McNally became obsessed with D.B. Cooper, studied parachutes in the library, and convinced himself he could hijack a jet, get rich,...

A key witness disappears. A body is found. A grand jury convenes. And suddenly the man who ruled Bridger Valley through fear is no longer hunting—he’s being hunted. This episode takes you inside Hickey’s bombshell confession, the federal takedown of Hopkinson’s criminal network, the high-security trial that shook Wyoming, and the appeals battle that dragged on for years. This is the downfall of a rural crime boss, the story the val...

In Part 1 of our two-part deep dive into the Hopkinson case, we trace the origins of one of Wyoming’s most shocking criminal sagas. Beginning in the quiet, rural Bridger Valley—where authority flows through family networks and reputation—we follow the early life of Mark Hopkinson, a charismatic local favorite whose charm masked a growing pattern of manipulation, violence, and unchecked entitlement.

What starts as a simple water-and...

This Thanksgiving, we’re serving up something sweeter than Aunt Carol’s mystery casserole. When a beloved Texas fruitcake company started bleeding money, nobody expected the sticky fingers behind the mess to belong to the accountant who made the dough.

Join us as we unwrap the embezzlement scandal that turned corporate holiday cheer into a true crime feast- complete with shady spreadsheets, fancy cars and one heck of a fruitcake ...

Last week in Part 1, we sat down with musician, author, and racial bridge-builder Dr. Daryl Davis—a man who has spent decades sitting across from members of the Ku Klux Klan and asking the world’s most disarming question: “How can you hate me when you don’t even know me?” Daryl shared how simple human curiosity opened doors that fear had sealed shut, and how that first conversation led to dozens of Klansmen walking away from hate.

...

In Part 2, we pick up inside Durham’s 1971 school charrette — the collision point where a civil rights legend and a Klan leader are forced to sit face-to-face for ten days and decide the fate of the city’s schools. What begins as shouting, sabotage, and years of rage finally cracks open into something neither of them saw coming: recognition.

Across long days and brutal night sessions, Ann Atwater and C.P. Ellis stop fighting at eac...