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
Gavin MacFarlane, a 19-year-old man, plans to run off with Ellen 'Ellie' Friar, a 15-year-old minor. Ellie’s father has an issue with an adult man dating his minor child. When Ellie and her father turn up missing one morning, Medford, Oregon, police send 70 officers out onto the streets to search … and yet the answer is hiding right there ... in plain sight.
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Julie Sulpizio, her husband and two children are certain God has given them a sign that the end of the world is near … and so they hatch a racist, murderous plan to take out as many ‘lost souls’ as they can before the Rapture begins.
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...
*A Crossing the Line with M. William Phelps listener hears an episode of the show describing how submitting your DNA to the online forensic genealogy databases can help solve cold cases. So, she decides to do it. And lo and behold, a near 40-year-old cold case murder victim, known all this time as "Julie Doe," now has her real name back.
*Suggested by Laura
A fire inside a Waterbury, Connecticut, home leads to one of the most shocking, alleged domestic abuse and confinement cases of the past 20 years. The victim’s own firsthand account is so horrible and unbelievable, defying the limits of humanity, questions arise over the possible complicity of the Connecticut Department of Children and Families (DCF).
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*Emily Pike is 14 years old, and living in a Mesa, Arizona group home. In early 2025, it is believed Emily kicked out the screen inside her bedroom and took off. But did she have help? Was she going to meet someone? Was she heading back to the San Carlos Reservation where her family lives? Weeks go by … before police make a startling, gruesome discovery.
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A local schoolteacher is found murdered by her bed, inside the Burlington, Vermont, apartment she shares with three others. Investigators are stumped—for over five decades. Then a cigarette butts leads to a break and an infamous serial killer, Ted Bundy—as a resolution seems possible.
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A Baltimore woman fails to show up for work. Her family is concerned and reports her missing. Meanwhile, a slew of other women in the same county are found dead, one after the other. A police officer’s son living in Reno, Nevada, is brought in and asked questions about a stolen credit card. Fifty years later, the answers everyone has been waiting for finally come.
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Sandra Pagniano has decided enough is enough. She is divorcing her husband, David. But when Sandra turns up missing, leaving two notes behind, indicating she won’t be returning, Prescott, Arizona, investigators wonder if they are looking at a cliched "the-husband-did-it" episode of “Dateline,” or something far more evil?
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Concluding my interview with Dr. Peter Vronsky, noted expert on the life of the Times Square Ripper/Torso Killer, serial murderer Richard Cottingham, we discuss how many women Cottingham murdered, and if he is responsible for the unsolved Nanuet (New York) Mall murder of Lisa Thomas.
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An elevator opens and out walks one of the most notorious serial killers of our time, Richard “Torso Killer” Cottingham. You cross paths with him and get up to your floor, only to realize there’s a fire. In the first of a two-part special, I speak to Dr. Peter Vronsky, who tries to convince me that Cottingham murdered a young girl, Lisa Thomas, I profiled on a previous episode of the show, and claimed there’s not a cha...
Robert Haggart meets Garnetta Post in 1981—and her life is never the same again. Soon after marrying Haggart, Garnetta realizes the guy is lazy, vulgar, and abusive. And within six months of the marriage, the true nature of just how violent this guy is presents itself—and the outcome is one of Michigan’s most violent and deadly crimes ever.
Two cases out of Gary, Indiana—young women missing from the same general neighborhood a few months apart, one of whom we know for certain was 9 months pregnant. With help, these cases can be solved.
Anyone with information on Ja’Niyah’s or Emma's disappearances, please contact the Gary Police Department at (219) 881-1209.
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A high schooler in Honolulu, Dawn Momohara, gets a phone call, leaves her house en route for the shopping mall and never returns. After nearly five decades, the family gets answers.
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A local real estate broker is found dead in 1961 Houston. Two local “women” seem to be the last to have seen him. As a nationwide manhunt begins, law enforcement is not so sure they are searching for two females, but perhaps a woman and a man dressed as a woman. In what is one of the more remarkable true crime cases of the century, you won’t believe how two people go from death row to freedom … all set against the shoc...
*Two young girls, best friends Ashley Pond and Miranda Gaddis, go missing two months apart from each other. Law enforcement is stumped. Had the girls planned some sort of elaborate disappearing act and run away? Or is something more sinister going on?
*Listener, Synthia, suggested case!
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Emily and Joe Ferlazzo take off on a trip into the Green Mountains of Vermont to celebrate their one-year wedding anniversary. But only one of them, Joe, returns home … with Emily now missing, and the Vermont State Police searching for answers. With eerie similarities to the Gaby Petito case, law enforcement takes note and tailors its investigation in a direction nobody wants to believe could be true.
It’s the middle of the night. Crystal Lake, Illinois. A house is on fire. A neighbor breaks in and saves a baby from the flames … but as firefighters head in to put out the inferno, they discover the body of a popular teenager inside the bathroom–and a murder inquiry begins.
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A van with eight people shows up one day at an autistic man’s house. An argument ensues. By the end of the day, Hayden Garreffa’s family reports him missing … desperate to find him before something horrible happens. Pennsylvania State Police get involved and soon have a lead, as one of the most shocking crimes in the county’s history is exposed.
It’s 1981. A young woman, Debra Miller, living alone in a Mansfield, Ohio, apartment is found brutally murdered. With two other murders reported in the months before, it’s possible a serial killer is at large. Yet, several Mansfield cops are so deeply immersed in committing crimes themselves, 40 years goes by before the answers one family has been waiting for all their lives finally comes.
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