True Murder: The Most Shocking Killers

True Murder: The Most Shocking Killers

Every week host Dan Zupansky will interview the true crime authors that have written about the most shocking killers of all time.

Episodes

31 MURDERS-—Alvin A.J. Esau

September 8, 2025 • 60 mins
Many decades before Ted Bundy roamed the country there was serial killer Earle Nelson. During the 1920s, this geographically mobile killer went from city to city. His modus operandi involved getting into a house by pretending to be a person looking for a room to rent or inspecting a house that was for sale, and then strangling the landlady, often followed by having sex with the dead body. Robbery was frequently a secondary motive.
A...
Mark as Played
Transcript

EXPERT WITNESS—Ann Burgess

September 1, 2025 • 57 mins
From the author of the critically-acclaimed true crime account, A Killer By Design (the inspiration behind Hulu's original docuseries, Mastermind), a groundbreaking look into the crucial role played by expert witnesses in the most high-profile criminal cases, based on Dr. Ann Burgess’ personal experiences within the criminal justice system.
Written through Burgess’ singular lens of compassion and lived experience, Expert Witness pul...
Mark as Played
Transcript

THE SERIAL KILLER TRAVEL GUIDE ACROSS AMERICA—Johnny Trevisani

August 25, 2025 • 51 mins
The Serial Killer Travel Guide Across America isn’t your typical road trip companion. This darkly fascinating guide is quirky and unconventional and takes readers on a dark journey through the United States, exploring notorious locations linked to infamous and not-so infamous serial killers. From the shadowy forests of the Pacific Northwest to the sun-bleached basements of suburbia, each stop offers true crime devotees an unsettlin...
Mark as Played
Transcript

MADMAN—M.F. Gross

August 18, 2025 • 92 mins
A Crime That Shattered Paradise... A Chase That Became Legend.
Crystal Beach, Florida—1949. A peaceful seaside haven where crime was unheard of. Until one early morning, a brutal act of violence changed everything.
John Calvin "Rastus" Russell, a drifter, thug, and small-time car thief, committed an unthinkable crime—the torture and murder of Norman Y. Browne and the near-fatal assault on his wife, Anne. The savage attack sent shockw...
Mark as Played
Transcript

A MONSTER IN MOUNT PLEASANT—CJ Williams

August 11, 2025 • 59 mins
In the quiet town of Mount Pleasant, Iowa, the idyllic calm of 1978 was shattered by a series of brutal murders. Karol Beavers, a vivacious high school junior, and her mother, Clementine, became the unsuspecting victims of a heinous act of violence that left the community reeling. For six months, the case went cold, fear gripping a town unaccustomed to locking its doors. Then, another shocking murder occurred, tying the threads of ...
Mark as Played
Transcript

A FATHER'S FIGHT—Robbie Parker

August 4, 2025 • 67 mins
How one father, determined to reclaim his daughter's memory, brought down Alex Jones.On December 14, 2012, Robbie Parker's daughter Emilie was killed at Sandy Hook Elementary, a tragedy that changed Robbie's life and the country forever. By the next day, Alex Jones was on air claiming the shooting was a hoax.
So begins Parker's David and Goliath story, a tale of hope and resilience amid hatred and division. While Robbie and his fami...
Mark as Played
Transcript

THE RENT COLLECTORS-—Jesse Katz

July 28, 2025 • 68 mins
Baby-faced teen Giovanni Macedo is desperate to find belonging in one of LA’s most predatory gangs, the Columbia Lil Cycos—so desperate that he agrees to kill an undocumented Mexican street vendor. The vendor, Francisco Clemente, had been refusing to give in to the gang’s shakedown demands. But Giovanni botches the hit, accidentally killing a newborn instead. The overlords who rule the Lil Cycos from a Supermax prison 1,000 miles a...
Mark as Played
Transcript

HITMAN-Julian Sher and Lisa Fitterman

July 21, 2025 • 56 mins
For Yves Trudeau, the blood was all business. An assassin for the Hells Angels in the ’70s and ’80s, Trudeau was known as Apache, the Mad Bumper, and the Mad Bomber. As a contract killer, he did his job so well that the bikers sometimes lent him out to other organized-crime empires in Montreal, including the east-end French gangs led by the deadly Dubois brothers and the upstart Irish Mafia in the west end.Yves Trudeau remains one ...
Mark as Played
Transcript

SOMETHING BIG- Patrick Wohl

July 14, 2025 • 58 mins
Something Big tells the story of the infamous Brown’s Chicken massacre, a brutal case that captivated Chicagoland after remaining unsolved for nearly a decade.
Customers know Brown's Chicken for its crispy buttermilk fried chicken and flaky biscuits. The Illinois-based franchise has a reputation for delicious but simple comfort food. But through no fault of its own, the words "Brown's Chicken" are also synonymous with one fateful ni...
Mark as Played
Transcript

SHALLOW GRAVES-Michael Benson

July 7, 2025 • 57 mins
The latest collection from true crime master Michael Benson looks at some of the ghastliest murders in Rochester, N.Y., history. One of them takes place in Genesee County, but it's a good one. Stories include: The Davis Street Fiend: The Murder of Tessie Keating; Shallow Grave at Holy Sepulchre: The Murder of Anna Schumacher; The Linden Lunatic: The Murders of "Ruth", Frances Kimball, George and Hattie Whaley, and Benjamin Phillips...
Mark as Played
Transcript

MURDERLAND-Caroline Fraser

June 30, 2025 • 58 mins
Caroline Fraser grew up in the shadow of Ted Bundy, the most notorious serial murderer of women in American history, surrounded by his hunting grounds and mountain body dumps, in the brooding landscape of the Pacific Northwest. But in the 1970s and ’80s, Bundy was just one perpetrator amid an uncanny explosion of serial rape and murder across the region. Why so many? Why so weirdly and nightmarishly gruesome? Why the senseless rise...
Mark as Played
Transcript

DOWN TO THE BONE—Caitlin Rother

June 23, 2025 • 57 mins
A twisting, deeply engrossing investigation into the many lingering questions surrounding the sudden disappearance of the McStays, a family of four who vanished from their suburban San Diego home without a trace—until their skeletal remains were found in the Mojave Desert nearly four years later—from New York Times bestselling author Caitlin Rother.
On February 15, 2010, Joseph McStay, his wife Summer, and their two young sons were ...
Mark as Played
Transcript

ANATOMY OF A COVERUP-Paul Palango

June 16, 2025 • 86 mins
FOLLOW-UP TO THE #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER 22 MURDERS
The truth about the deadliest criminal incident in Canadian history has remained untold—until now.
Investigative journalist Paul Palango’s 22 Murders examined the April 2020 shooting spree committed by Gabriel Wortman that began in Portapique, Nova Scotia, and ended thirteen and a half hours later when Wortman was shot dead by RCMP officers. The episode left numerous serious question...
Mark as Played
Transcript

PROJECT MIND CONTROL-John Lisle

June 9, 2025 • 77 mins
The inside story of the CIA’s secret mind control project, MKULTRA, using never-before-seen testimony from the perpetrators themselves.
Sidney Gottlieb was the CIA’s most cunning chemist. As head of the infamous MKULTRA project, he oversaw an assortment of dangerous―even deadly―experiments. Among them: dosing unwitting strangers with mind-bending drugs, torturing mental patients through sensory deprivation, and steering the movement...
Mark as Played
Transcript

CHASSON'S RUN-Daniel Zimmerman

June 2, 2025 • 77 mins
On September 6, 1982, convicted murderer Leroy James Chasson made a daring break for freedom from the Massachusetts Correctional Institute-Walpole—one of the most infamous, escape-proof prisons in the country. But this wasn't just any prison break. It was a meticulously planned, five-year effort, made possible by an unlikely accomplice—Kathleen MacDonald, Chasson's former pen-pal turned wife.
True crime author Daniel Zimmerman (SHOT...
Mark as Played
Transcript

A SECOND SHOT-Michael F. Weisberg

May 26, 2025 • 80 mins
In 1971, Montgomery County Deputy Sheriff James Tappen Hall was gunned down outside a Maryland country club. The case went cold—no suspect, no answers, no closure. But his daughter never gave up trying to find her father's killer.Fifty years later, cold case detectives finally reopened the investigation and identified a suspect whose shocking confession revealed a detail never released to the public: Hall was shot twice. A Second S...
Mark as Played
Transcript

MURDER IN A SMALL TOWN-Larry Scheckel

May 19, 2025 • 53 mins
"It was the most horrific crime ever to come before this Court,” said the Judge. A renowned forensic pathologist shouted from the witness stand, “Torture!” when describing the beating three-year-old Kyson Rice took at the hands of a 6-foot 3-inch, 240-pound monster. Read the account of an ambulance team desperately trying to keep a badly beaten boy alive and a high-risk arrest by a well-equipped professionally trained police force ...
Mark as Played
Transcript

THE RULE OF CRIME AND ME-Anne Jaeger

May 12, 2025 • 85 mins
Anne JaegerFrom her small-town Michigan roots to becoming a New York Times bestselling author, Ann Rule’s life journey is as fascinating as the cases she covered. Discover how she revolutionized crime writing, influenced FBI profiling, and Rule's fateful encounter with a murderer at just nine years old.Go behind the scenes of Rule’s most infamous cases—including Ted Bundy (The Stranger Beside Me), Randy Woodfield (The I-5 Killer), ...
Mark as Played
Transcript

THE PEEPSHOW—Kate Summerscale

May 5, 2025 • 72 mins
London, 1953. Police discover the bodies of three young women hidden in a wall at 10 Rillington Place, a dingy terrace house in Notting Hill. On searching the building, they find another body beneath the floorboards, then an array of human bones in the garden. But they have already investigated a double murder at 10 Rillington Place, three years ago, and the killer was hanged. Did they get the wrong man?
A nationwide manhunt is laun...
Mark as Played
Transcript

DEPRAVED OBSESSION-Rod Sadler

April 28, 2025 • 77 mins
 What drove the inconspicuous sociopath to become a ruthless killer? During his nearly fifteen-year reign of terror, Ronald Lloyd Bailey’s depraved obsession with sexual sadism held communities across southeast Michigan in a shroud of fear. From the early 1970’s to the mid-1980’s, the former patient at one of Michigan’s foremost psychiatric hospitals, abducted as many as fifteen teens and over time became a sadistic serial killer.I...
Mark as Played
Transcript

Popular Podcasts

    NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal

    NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal

    Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.

    On Purpose with Jay Shetty

    On Purpose with Jay Shetty

    I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!

    Dateline NBC

    Dateline NBC

    Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com

    New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce

    New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce

    Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!

    The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show

    The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show

    The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.

Advertise With Us
Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

Explore

iHeart

Live Radio

Podcasts

Artist Radio

Exclusives

News

Features

Events

Contests

Photos

Information

About

Advertise

Blog

Brand Guidelines

Contest Guidelines

Subscription Offers

Jobs

Get the App

Automotive

Home

Mobile

Wearables

© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.