A Simpler Time True Crime
I’m Megan, your host, and each week I revisit unsolved cases from decades past—stories that have too often been forgotten or overlooked. Together, we examine the facts, question the myths of “the good old days,” and ask whether a simpler time was ever really a safer one. This podcast honors the people at the heart of each case—focusing not on sensationalism, but on the lives affected and the justice still waiting to be served. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/a-simpler-time-true-crime--6665681/support.
Episodes
December 21, 2025 • 51 mins
In January of 2002, a college student is home in Texas for winter break, just days away from returning to school. Like she does nearly every morning, the avid runner laces up her shoes, grabs her Walkman, and heads out on her familiar four-mile route through her family’s quiet subdivision. Neighbors see her along the way. Her movements are accounted for. One neighbor even places her less than a football field from her own driveway....
Mark as Played
December 15, 2025 • 37 mins
A treasured pediatrician from Tennessee spends the night out at an NBA basketball game. She calls her mom from the game and mentions to her that she isn’t feeling well. After she gets home, she hosts a couple of girlfriends at her place to finish out the evening as a quiet night in before heading to bed. What happens to her after they leave her home is a mystery, but her family began to worry when she wasn’t around early the next m...
Mark as Played
December 12, 2025 • 30 mins
UPDATED EPISODE: When I first covered this case in October 2025 the case was unsolved. As of November 24th, 2025 a suspect was confirmed in the case with advanced DNA evidence and NHSP Closed the case. Today I go through the evidence police have released after their big press announcement. This is the full original episode with an updated ending.
Rest Peacefully, Judy. The truth is known.
A young woman is living in a small Concord,...
Rest Peacefully, Judy. The truth is known.
A young woman is living in a small Concord,...
Mark as Played
December 8, 2025 • 37 mins
On a Tuesday morning in late November of 1981, a newlywed met up with a man she thought was purchasing her wedding dress from her. She was scraping together any cash she could for a down payment on a house. Little did she know, the man had no intention of buying her dress. Her murder has stuck with the Tulsa community for over four decades, but with DNA advancements there is still hope.
TIPS: https://www.tulsapolice.org/cold-cases
Ca...
TIPS: https://www.tulsapolice.org/cold-cases
Ca...
Mark as Played
December 1, 2025 • 39 mins
“I don’t know if it is a joke or not. The timer is not ticking or anything, but if it is a joke, it is a very poor one. I would like someone to come over and look at it please.” Those were some of the last words Andrew Puskas ever spoke to a Middlesex, New Jersey police officer. Moments later, his home exploded, killing both Andrew and his wife and stunning an entire community.
The Puskas family was quiet. Middle class. Ordinary in ...
The Puskas family was quiet. Middle class. Ordinary in ...
Mark as Played
November 24, 2025 • 27 mins
In November of 1996, two co-workers are closing up their retail store in large mall outside of Richmond, Virginia. Their closing routine is like clockwork so when they don’t return to their homes, alarm bells went off. The next morning would reveal a horrific scene inside the mall. How could two women be brutally murdered inside a popular mall with security nearby? Nearly thirty years later, this case still baffles authorities and ...
Mark as Played
In Part 2, we pick back up on what happens after John Rodney McRae is released from prison. In this episode, we leave off after discussing Kip Hess's disappearance and the early conviction of McRae in Joey Housey's murder. After his sentence is commuted, McRae relocates to Florida and other boys begin disappearing.
While these cases may appear solved on the surface, the boys have never been located and its believed that there are m...
While these cases may appear solved on the surface, the boys have never been located and its believed that there are m...
Mark as Played
When a young teen vanishes on his way to school, a single note left behind pushes police toward the idea that he was a runaway. But the people who knew him best never believed that. As the days stretched on, that theory began to crumble and a prime suspect emerged. On this podcast, I never center the perpetrator, and that remains true here. But to show just how unsafe the so-called simpler times could be, today I am walking you thr...
Mark as Played
November 9, 2025 • 32 mins
A family of three is brutally murdered in their rural New Jersey home in 1978. Police dismissed early rumors of connections to a violent motorcycle gang, but as the years went on they began to lean into that theory more, especially after a chillingly similar crime 3.5 years later. While many accept this theory, some say the killings feel more personal and fall outside of the way outlaw motorcycle gangs operate. Despite extensive th...
Mark as Played
November 3, 2025 • 31 mins
In 1987, the owner of a small lingerie shop was closing up for the night, looking forward to a busy evening of plans ahead. Plans she would never make it to.
When her brother came by later, he found her body inside the store. Investigators believe she was ambushed by someone pretending to be a customer, trapped in her own business. She fought hard for her life and injured her attacker in the process.
Now, thirty-eight years later, he...
When her brother came by later, he found her body inside the store. Investigators believe she was ambushed by someone pretending to be a customer, trapped in her own business. She fought hard for her life and injured her attacker in the process.
Now, thirty-eight years later, he...
Mark as Played
October 27, 2025 • 30 mins
It’s late August of 2001, and a bubbly teenager from a tiny town just outside Bowling Green, Kentucky, answers a phone call on her family’s landline. Everything that happens after that call becomes a mystery. No one knows who was on the other end, but it’s believed she slipped out of her house that night to meet the caller and never came back.
Weeks later, her body was found the day before a national tragedy, and her case faded from...
Weeks later, her body was found the day before a national tragedy, and her case faded from...
Mark as Played
October 20, 2025 • 43 mins
On a hot summer day in 1993, recent college graduate Katie was making sales calls in downtown Portland, Oregon. It was her first day working solo after weeks of training and shadowing. She finished her morning calls and was on her way to her afternoon appointments—appointments she never made it to. When her car was found abandoned in an industrial lot, investigators explored several theories, including that she may have left on her...
Mark as Played
October 13, 2025 • 28 mins
In 1975 Sacramento, a young girl named Harriet went out to play at the park and never returned home. Her concerned mother called police and tragically, the next day, her body was found in a dumpster just a mile away. Police quickly focused on two local boys who claimed it was all part of a child’s game that went terribly wrong. But as you’ll hear, there’s so much more to this story. Her father — a decorated veteran — was also murde...
Mark as Played
October 6, 2025 • 30 mins
Note: When I first covered this case in October 2025 the case was unsolved. As of November 24th, 2025 a suspect was confirmed in the case with advanced DNA evidence and NHSP Closed the case. Rest Peacefully, Judy. The truth is known.
A young woman is living in a small Concord, New Hampshire apartment with her husband and their little boy. Their marriage is rocky, and he comes and goes often, leaving Judy alone with their toddler. D...
A young woman is living in a small Concord, New Hampshire apartment with her husband and their little boy. Their marriage is rocky, and he comes and goes often, leaving Judy alone with their toddler. D...
Mark as Played
September 29, 2025 • 34 mins
In the early morning hours of August 19, 1984, a Virginia State Trooper answered his front door and was ambushed. In an attack lasting no more than three minutes, he was fatally stabbed more than 40 times in front of his wife, brother, and sister-in-law, as well as his toddler daughter – who had been asleep in bed with him prior to the attack. From the over-the-top disguises left behind at the crime scene to suspects no one would e...
Mark as Played
September 22, 2025 • 30 mins
In May 1983, a young couple parked near the Loch Raven Reservoir in Baltimore County, Maryland, was suddenly ambushed when gunfire shattered the quiet night. Just four weeks earlier, another couple had been shot in a similar lovers’ lane attack, but they managed to survive. This second tragedy claimed the life of a 22-year-old woman and left the community shaken with fears that a serial predator was on the loose. Then, as suddenly ...
Mark as Played
September 15, 2025 • 31 mins
High in the mountains of northern New Mexico, overlooking the village of Questa, a father and his young daughter lived in the dream home he built with his own hands. Friends and neighbors knew him as the kind of man who always offered help and kept his door open to anyone in need. But that open door would one day invite in evil. In early September 1999, both he and his 9-year-old daughter were found murdered inside their home. Now,...
Mark as Played
September 8, 2025 • 40 mins
It was the end of the semester at UCLA. Students were finishing exams, celebrating, and preparing to head home for the holidays. A freshman named Michael joined friends at a dorm party before winding down with a late-night computer game with another friend in the building. In the early morning hours, he stepped out to congratulate his friend on the win, then headed back toward his room. From that moment on, Michael was never seen a...
Mark as Played
September 1, 2025 • 32 mins
In the spring of 1991, a three-year-old girl was playing outside with her siblings and cousins while her mother and aunt were inside. She knew the rules her mom had set—especially not to cross the parking lot alone. That simple rule left her briefly apart from the older children, and in those few unguarded moments on the apartment playground, she disappeared. At first, her mother believed she had only wandered off, but panic set in...
Mark as Played
August 24, 2025 • 64 mins
If you look up this case online, you’ll see one version of events repeated over and over: A young girl leaves a hangout spot to walk home, takes a cut-through trail, and never makes it back. Her body is later found in a nearby ditch, and a witness claims they saw a man follow her into the woods. That’s the story I first read, and it’s the one most people believe. But in recent years, Donna’s cousins have worked to unravel the truth...
Mark as Played
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