True Crime Recaps

On December 6, 1991, four teenage girls—Jennifer and Sarah Harbison, Eliza Thomas, and Amy Ayers—were closing up a North Austin yogurt shop when a horrific crime unfolded.

Just before midnight, firefighters arrived to find smoke pouring from the store. Inside, they discovered a nightmare: three of the girls were bound, gagged, stripped, and shot execution-style.

The case quickly became one of Texas’s most infamous investigations. Pol...

In 2014, Russell and Shirley Dermond seemed to have the perfect retirement life in a quiet Georgia lake community. But when neighbors stopped by one morning, they found Russell decapitated in his garage. Shirley was gone.

Ten days later, her body surfaced in Lake Oconee, weighed down with concrete blocks. There was no forced entry, no robbery, and no clear motive. Russell’s wallet and Shirley’s jewelry were still in the house. But i...

It was supposed to be his masterpiece. A sanctuary where art and love could thrive. But on a summer afternoon in 1914, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Wisconsin estate, Taliesin, became the scene of one of the most shocking massacres in American history.

The cook, Julian Carlton, turned on everyone in the house. Armed with an axe and a can of gasoline, he killed seven people, including Wright’s lover, Mamah Borthwick, and her two children. Wha...

Sherri Dally was a wife, a mother, and a devoted friend. On a Monday morning, she stopped at a Target in Ventura, California, to run errands. But in the parking lot, someone was waiting with handcuffs and a plan.

She thought she was being arrested. In reality, it was an abduction. Behind the plot was her husband’s mistress, Diana Haun, and together with Sherri’s husband, Michael Dally, they conspired to make Sherri disappear.

The mos...

Rebecca Schaeffer was just 21 years old and on the brink of Hollywood stardom when a deadly obsession found its way to her doorstep.

Her killer, 19-year-old Robert John Bardo, had stalked her for years. He wrote letters, showed up at studios, and finally hired a private investigator to track her down. That investigator obtained Rebecca’s unlisted address from the California DMV for just $250.

On July 18, 1989, Bardo rang her doorbell...

In Argentina, 19-year-old model Johana Casas was shot dead just days before her 20th birthday. Witnesses said her ex-boyfriend, Victor Cingolani, was the shooter. He was convicted and sentenced to 13 years in prison.

But behind bars, Victor planned a wedding. His bride? Johana’s identical twin sister, Edith. Their mother begged her to stop, even took her to court, but Edith passed a psych evaluation and married Victor on Valentine’s...

In July 1995, 15-year-old Elyse Pahler left home in Arroyo Grande, California, thinking she was meeting friends for a late-night hangout. Instead, she walked into a planned murder.

Three teenage boys obsessed with heavy metal and satanic sacrifice believed that killing a virgin would make their band famous. Joseph Fiorella, Jacob Delashmutt, and Royce Casey lured Elyse to a secluded clearing, where they held her down and stabbed her...

Molly Watson thought she was marrying the love of her life. Days before her wedding, she was found shot in the head on a rural Missouri road.

Her fiancé, James Addie, had been living a double life. Molly thought he was a widower. In reality, his fourth wife was still alive, and he had been hiding the truth from everyone.

What began as a love story turned into a web of lies, betrayal, and murder. Addie was convicted and sentenced to l...

On February 6, 2021, Yale grad student Kevin Jiang was driving home when he was rear-ended. But this was no accident. Within seconds, the driver pulled out a gun and shot him eight times.

Investigators soon uncovered a disturbing motive. The killer, MIT researcher Qinxuan Pan, was secretly obsessed with Kevin’s fiancée, Zion Perry. After the shooting, Pan vanished, sparking a months-long manhunt across multiple states.

He was eventua...

Two nights before Thanksgiving, Molly Elliott left her New Orleans office expecting a romantic evening with her husband. Instead, she was kidnapped at gunpoint by 18-year-old valet Jessie Hoffman.

He forced her to withdraw money, drove her around for at least an hour, and then made her walk barefoot down a dirt path to her own execution. Molly’s body was found on Thanksgiving morning.

It took nearly 30 years for justice. In 2025, Jes...

Elizabeth Thomas was just 15 years old when she disappeared with her 50-year-old high school teacher, Tad Cummins, in March 2017. Their disappearance sparked a nationwide manhunt.

Investigators later revealed Cummins had spent nearly a year grooming her—flirting, giving her gifts, and convincing her they shared a secret bond. When school officials began investigating, he panicked and abducted her.

For 38 days, they hid in a remote ca...

Angela Sanford told police she stabbed Joel Leyva in self-defense. But when investigators looked at her phone, they found his number saved under a single chilling word: Sacrifice.

Joel’s body was discovered in the desert, stabbed 13 times with a ceremonial dagger. What started as a meetup turned into what prosecutors described as a twisted ritual.

Angela was convicted and sentenced to 20 years for Joel’s murder. But the case leaves a...

In 1975, 18-year-old Karen Grammer was abducted outside a Red Lobster in Colorado Springs. She was assaulted and stabbed 42 times, becoming the victim of a violent spree carried out by a group of soldiers.

Karen’s brother, actor Kelsey Grammer, has carried the weight of her murder for decades. Now, in a new memoir, he shares how her death nearly broke him and how he has fought to live with the grief.

One of Karen’s killers could be e...

In July 1995, 15-year-old Elyse Pahler thought she was meeting friends for a late-night hangout. Instead, she was lured into a brutal murder. Three teenage boys obsessed with heavy metal and satanic sacrifice believed killing a virgin would give their band fame and the devil’s blessing.

Elyse was stabbed repeatedly as she begged for her life. For eight months, her body went undiscovered while her killers bragged to friends about the...

In the early morning of June 23, 1993, Lorena Bobbitt committed an act so shocking it made her a household name. Hours later, she was driving through Virginia holding the evidence of her crime in her hand, while her husband was rushed to the emergency room.

Lorena claimed years of abuse—emotional, physical, and financial—drove her to the breaking point. Her trial sparked a cultural firestorm, igniting debates about domestic violence...

Robert Rhoades, known as the Truck Stop Killer, transformed his long-haul sleeper cab into a rolling torture chamber. For more than 15 years, he prowled America’s highways, abducting women after murdering their boyfriends, then subjecting them to hours of brutality before dumping their bodies along desolate roads.

Though Rhoades admitted to only a handful of murders, the FBI believes he may have killed as many as 50 people. His case...

Blake Chappell was just 17 when he vanished after a school dance in Newnan, Georgia. Two months later, his body was discovered in a creek, face down, shot in the head, and partially undressed. For nearly 14 years, no one was charged.

The night he disappeared in 2011, Blake texted his girlfriend that a police officer had stopped him, but no officer ever reported the encounter. Minutes later, he sent a final message about the cold. Th...

Robin Kaye, a music executive on American Idol, and her husband Thomas Deluca, a songwriter, were living the dream in their $5 million Encino mansion. That dream ended in tragedy when police found both of them murdered in separate rooms after a welfare check.

Surveillance footage revealed a chilling scene. The killer jumped the fence, slipped through an unlocked door, and waited inside. Just 30 minutes later, Robin and Thomas walked...