True Murder: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History

True Murder: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History

TRUE MURDER—The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History. Every week host Dan Zupansky will interview the true crime authors that have written about the most shocking killers of all time. From true crime history, comes the preeminent true crime authorities in America and the world today. From infamous serial killers, mass murderers, cult leaders and mafia hitmen to family murderers, nazis and homicidal maniacs—True Murder is a veritable true crime archive featuring historic murder cases written about by American legendary prosecutors, judges, journalists, detectives, forensic pathologists and bestselling authors. Featuring books about infamous serial killers such as Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, BTK, Jeffrey Dahmer, Golden State Killer, Aileen Wournos, Charles Manson, Zodiac and Son Of Sam—the episode list includes 100's more with over 850 episodes. Famous true criime authors interviewed include Marcia Clark, John Douglas, Katherine Ramsland, Joseph Scott Morgan, Harold Schecter, and hundreds more. Unsolved cold cases, wrongful convictions, death row confessions, serial killer couples, psychopathic killers, DNA breakthroughs and convictions, infamous executions, cult killings—every important true crime case ever written about—is here-in this true crime archive—TRUE MURDER—The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History

Episodes

February 2, 2026 72 mins
September 1990. In Shaker Heights, Ohio, teenage honors student Lisa Lee Pruett vanishes into the night. A boy calls 911 when she does not arrive for a secret late-night meet-up. Police soon find her nearby, stabbed to death and left exposed.
Lisa had just passed an important test and earned her driver’s license. She was a Girl Scout, athlete, musician, and lover of poetry. Then her life was cut short.
Investigators quickly focused o...
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The latter part of the Victorian era bore witness to a series of unexplained female dismemberment cases that plagued London for a period of thirty years. All the cases remain unsolved and only two women were ever identified. Today, the circumstances surrounding these deaths have largely become a footnote in history, dwarfed in attention by their much larger cousin, Jack the Ripper.
In this, Suzanne Huntington’s groundbreaking explor...
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The murder of a retired Los Angeles schoolteacher in 2004 never made the evening news, yet within hours arrests were made, charges filed, and a speedy conviction sent to prison Jimmy Kitlas, an incredibly shy, special needs teenager with no criminal history whatsoever.
20 years after the murder, a woman named Kelley Leigh asked Burl Barer and Frank C. Girardot to investigate. She believed that the case’s rapid resolution concealed a...
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January 12, 2026 42 mins
As shots rang out on March 30, 1981 outside the Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C., President Ronald Reagan and three others lie seriously wounded. Just two months after Reagan was sworn in as the 40th president, John Hinckley Jr. shocked the world because of his movie star obsession.
What followed was chaos. America learned of the deep psychosis that led to Hinckley’s obsession with actress Jodie Foster, and how, in his mind, he did ...
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THE 911 CALL THAT OPENED HELL'S DOOR. ONE CONFESSION. A LIFETIME OF TERROR.
The 911 call was harrowing.
"I accidentally killed someone. Please!" the man said, his voice rising.
"Who?"
"My stepmom. My name is Ian Anselmo. Sue-Ellen Anselmo, she's in the car with me. My dad is going to kill me. I guess I strangled her. I don't remember doing it. I remember the argument."
The call disintegrated quickly, with the 20-year-old howling and sob...
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John Wayne Gacy raped, tortured, and murdered 33 boys and young men, burying most of them in the crawlspace under his Chicago home. Karen Conti was in high school at the time watching the bodies being removed on the television news.
Fourteen years pass. Through a twist of fate, Conti, now a young and inexperienced attorney, is called upon to handle Gacy’s final death row appeals. The serial killer soon becomes her most famous, diffi...
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December 22, 2025 90 mins
Edna's world turned upside down when her close cousin, Ted Bundy, was linked to the gruesome murders that had plagued her hometown of Seattle. Both devastating and dangerous, she reveals her journey of discovering the truth about her cousin who was more like a sibling, a man she loved, admired, and thought she knew so well. Edna delves into the unbelievable and chilling episodes she experienced, from confronting Ted and discovering...
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December 15, 2025 58 mins
The definitive true “Southern Gothic” account of the life, crimes, conviction, and execution of Donald “Pee Wee” Gaskins, the charismatic, brutal, well-liked, remorseless South Carolina serial killer who was dubbed the Charles Manson of the South—written by the prosecutor who brought him to justice.
Of the hundreds of murder cases that noted South Carolina attorney Dick Harpootlian has prosecuted, one in particular haunts him. Donal...
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December 8, 2025 59 mins
Empire City Under Siege shares true stories of an FBI Special Agent spanning three tumultuous decades in New York City, beginning in the gritty 1970s when law enforcement refused to let their city be consumed by corruption and violence. Starting as an undercover operative investigating Mafia hijackers in Red Hook, Anthony John Nelson offers a gripping insider’s look at the bureau’s largest field office during one of its most transf...
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Who killed the Black Dahlia? In this eye-opening shocker,  award-winning producer, true-crime researcher, and Hollywood insider Eli Frankel finally solves the greatest-and most gruesome-murder mystery of the twentieth century just before its 80th anniversary.
In January 1947, the bisected body of Elizabeth Short, completely drained of blood, was discovered in an undeveloped lot in Los Angeles. Its gruesome mutilations led to a fires...
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November 24, 2025 77 mins
Good-hearted country boy Petie Miller vanishes without a trace two days before his wedding in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley in 1983. Some speculate it’s a case of cold feet, but investigators suspect cold-blooded murder. The bride’s stepfather, a violent career criminal named Charlie Almond, is the prime suspect. Circumstantial evidence suggests that Almond killed Miller and successfully disposed of the body. But with no witnesses, ...
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November 17, 2025 69 mins
From two-time best-selling author and three-time Emmy-winning investigative reporter Mark Pettit comes the haunting true story of Nebraska serial killer John Joubert—a case that shocked a nation and still echoes across the true-crime world.
It was one of the most terrifying times in Nebraska's history. The year a young Air Force Airman went on a killing spree, leaving two young boys dead and a community gripped by fear. 
TV news anch...
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In The People vs. the Golden State Killer, Thien Ho, the current District Attorney of Sacramento, recounts his harrowing and exhilarating experience as the lead prosecutor responsible for capturing and prosecuting Joseph DeAngelo. Referred to at various times by law enforcement and the media as the Visalia Ransacker, the East Bay Rapist, the Original Nightstalker, and finally the Golden State Killer, DeAngelo, a former policeman, i...
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The film NUREMBERG, to be released November 7th, 2025 is an American drama written, co-produced and edited by James Vanderbilt. It is based on the 2013 book, THE NAZI AND THE PSYCHIATRIST by Jack El Hai..
In 1945, after his capture at the end of the Second World War, Hermann Göring arrived at an American-run detention center in war-torn Luxembourg, accompanied by sixteen suitcases and a red hatbox. The suitcases contained all manner...
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October 27, 2025 83 mins
In the 1980s, the tiny town of Arcadia, Florida, was “fifty miles and fifty years from Sarasota.” With its cowboy roots, low-wage agricultural industries, and violent frontier history, Arcadia was a curious mix of the desolate ranchlands of West Texas and the stately homes and bitter race relations of the South. In A Town without Pity, award-winning author Jason Vuic recounts two heartbreaking stories from Arcadia that rose to nati...
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October 20, 2025 50 mins
Mike Gatto was an up-and-coming young lawmaker when his father was brutally murdered.
The act sucked him into the world of noir: wild theories, intransigent detectives, and unimaginable violence.
This true crime story reads like a thriller, offering insight into the world of politics and the seedy underbelly of crime investigation in modern Los Angeles.
Gatto shares his experiences with incredible candor and raw emotion, detailing eve...
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On October 1, 2017, Mary Jo von Tillow’s world changed forever.
Her husband, Kurt, was killed in the Route 91 Harvest Festival mass shooting in Las Vegas, the deadliest in U.S. history. In just eleven minutes, her life—and the lives of thousands of others—were shattered.
But what followed was more than grief. Out of devastation came unexpected bonds with other survivors, advocates, and families who knew the same kind of loss. From a ...
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They blended in. They raised families, held steady jobs, and hid in plain sight. But behind the mask of normalcy, they were monsters—responsible for decades of terror, pain, and death.
Every Killer Leaves A Trace is a chilling narrative nonfiction thriller that exposes moments that led to the shocking unmasking and ultimate capture of twenty-six of America’s most elusive killers. From accidental slips to cutting-edge forensic breakt...
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September 29, 2025 67 mins
25 Frozen, 1 Thawed: Murder and Mayhem in the Midwest takes readers deep into the heart of unsolved mysteries and chilling crimes that have haunted communities across the Midwest.
From small towns shattered by sudden disappearances to cities rocked by violent acts, each chapter brings a different story—twenty-five cases left frozen in time, still waiting for justice. The book explores murders that stunned neighborhoods, kidnappings ...
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September 22, 2025 73 mins
Goodfellow, capo, killer, thief. A man so diabolically evil that he ordered his eldest son to murder his closest associate, and his youngest son to murder his best friend.
When Greg Scarpa was in his early twenties he became a goodfellow in the Profaci family by swearing a blood oath to the Mafia, at the time the country’s largest organized-crime syndicate. And for 25 years he betrayed that oath and the men closest to him by acting ...
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