Murderous Roots with Denise & Zelda

Nynyiramachabelli, the woman that lives alone on the Mountain, is a Rwandan word used to describe gorilla conservationist Dian Fossey on her grave in Rwanda. It was the name given to her by Rwandan’s who lived near her in the Virugan Mountains of Rwanda. In 1963, Fossey first arrived on the continent of Africa. It would soon after become her permanent home until her murdered body was found in the early morning hours of December 27,...

On June 12, 1963, a scream permeated the air as Myrlie Evers opened her door to discover her husband, Medgar Evers, a civil rights leader in Jackson, Mississippi, collapsed on the ground. Moments before he had been shot in the back by an assassin’s bullet. Less than an hour later, he would die in an all-white hospital.

Evers’s death would shock a nation! His wife would spend decades to get justice for her husband, a struggle later w...

In June 1985, the body of a young woman was found naked, wrapped in a sheet, in the trunk of a car. Upon looking at her body, a police officer told the press that it appeared as if she died of a drug overdose. When the autopsy came back, she had no drugs in her system.

For reasons unknown to her family, the police spent little to no time investigating what happened to 24-year-old Catherine “Catrina” Mowrey. Her family never got answ...

Betsy Faria thought she made a good friend at work; one who showed support and love during one of the most trying times in her life. She didn’t realize, until it was too late, that her friendship with Pamela Hupp would be more deadly than her terminal cancer diagnosis.

In this episode, Zelda and Denise discuss the murder Pam Hupp was convicted for as well as the other two murders she has been accused of committing. Then we dive into...

One summer day in 1979, a family in Idaho decided to explore Buffalo Cave in a search for arrowheads. Instead, they found something no one wants to find—a headless torso inside an old burlap sack. Twelve years later, a girl would find a hand. Who was this person? That question would be answered in 2019 with the help of the DNA Doe Project. The body was that of Joseph Henry Loveless, a prison escapee from 1916 who had been accused o...

Robert Lee Yates, Jr. grew up an idyllic life on Whidbey Island in Washington. But then one day, he decided it was time to start killing. And he didn’t stop until the police caught him. Why did Yates kill? We may never know for certain, but Denise and Zelda explore his family tree to see if there are any clues. What they found left them stunned. He wasn’t the only murderer in his family.

Listen to our latest episode, Spokane Serial ...

We planned to share a holiday special we recorded with a few others, but technical difficulties prevented that from happening. Instead, we are sharing one of our favorite episodes, from August 20, 2020, Episode 5: Black Dahlia. In this episode we discussed the unsolved murder and family tree of Elizabeth Short. And boy, was her tree amazing!

We hope you enjoy the episode. We will be back with new episodes at the end of January 2021.

At 12:30 p.m. on November 22, 1963, as people lined the streets of Elm Street in Dallas, Texas to watch the presidential motorcade drive by, shots rang out. Shots that would kill the 35th President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Who could possibly do this to a beloved president and a new Camelot? Before the day was up, the world would know the answer, the lone shooter was Lee Harvey Oswald. 48 hours after the death ...

In the early evening hours of November 13, 1974, a young bearded man burst into a local bar in Amityville, New York in a panic. He believed his parents might have been shot, and he didn’t know what to do. Several patrons at the bar followed him home in order to help. What they found would horrify the community. In the home on 112 Ocean Avenue, six bodies lay dead, all shot to death. The police were called and the investigation bega...