Forensic Transmissions

This episode contains the testimony of Father Bill Swengros of St. Paul’s Catholic Church, Tampa, Florida, in the trial of John Jonchuck Jr. for the murder of his 5-year-old daughter, Phoebe. Jonchuck and his wife were engaged in a custody battle over Phoebe when Jonchuck went to see his attorney and began to make bizarre […]

Dr. Kendra Hatcher, 35, a Dallas pediatric dentist, was fatally shot in the head by an unknown assailant in the parking garage of her Dallas apartment building Sept. 2, 2015. Dr. Hatcher was about to leave for Mexico for a vacation with her new boyfrie...

On April 15, 2014, Father Jerome Kern, a priest in the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, was deposed as part of a sexual abuse lawsuit filed in Minnesota  While Kern does not admit to sexually abusing children in the deposition,

  In May 2013, Bessman Okafor and Nolan Bernard broke into a home in a quiet suburb of Ococee, Florida, after misidentifying it as a “drug house.” When it was clear they had the wrong place, the men tied up the house’s four young roommates: included Al...

On January 25, 2012, in the wealthy suburb of Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan, successful marketing executive Jane Bashara, 56, was found strangled to death in a Mercedes-Benz SUV in a Detroit alleyway.  In March 2012, a mentally impaired handyman named Joe Gentz was arrested and charged with first degree murder after telling police that Jane’s […]

In March 2007, the body of Air Force Reserve Major Karl Hoerig was found in his home in Ohio, with two gunshot wounds in his back, and another in his head.  His wife of two years, Claudia Hoerig, had fled to Brazil. For various reasons, she wasn’t extradited until January 2018, at which point she […]

When telling lies, people are apparently either overly vague, or too specific. In his responses during this interrogation, Robert Mondrian-Powell, 59, is both extremely indirect and annoyingly particular. This polite and well-spoken gentleman explains ...

 Tara Grinstead was a south Georgia beauty queen and high school history teacher who disappeared from her home in Ocilla in Irwin County, Georgia, in 2005. This episode includes testimony from the second day of the trial of Bo Dukes,

(1) The Northern Belle was a 75-foot fishing vessel that went down in the Gulf of Alaska on April 20 2010. Three of her four crew were rescued alive; her captain, Robert Royer, who placed the Mayday call, tried to jump overboard but wasn’t able to get clear of the tangle of gear, hit his […]

  In 2000, the Honorable James “Skip” Scandirito, a Michigan county court judge, had his judge’s license revoked in 2002 after sexual misconduct allegations. Women had accused him of offering leniency for their charges in return for sexual favors.

On August 9, 2013, four Vanderbilt University football players–Brandon Vandenburg, Cory Batey, Brandon Banks and Jaborian McKenzie–were caught on video carrying an unconscious girl to Vandenberg’s dorm room. Here, they took it in turns to rape and abuse her, as testified by images captured on cellphone cameras. The prosecution pointed out that the girl, 21, […]

  On August 15, 2016, Mina Harrouff of Stuart, Florida, noticed her son Austin drinking cooking oil mixed with Parmesan cheese. Austin had been acting strangely for a while. He told his parents he needed to guard them, as he felt an evil presence in the house. He also said he’d “hypnotized himself” and was […]

Listen to the episode here (warning: poor sound quality).

On February 18, 2019, Chris Watts, 33, was visited in Dodge Correctional Institution, Waupun, Wisconsin, by FBI Special Agent Graham Coder, Frederick Police Department Detective Dave Baumhover, and CBI Agent Tammy Lee,

   After eight years together, blonde housewife Sabrina Limon and her railroad worker husband Robert decided to make suburban life in San Bernadino County more exciting. They “opened up” their marriage, joining the local swingers’ scene, hosting raucous parties taking “adult” vacations. Then, while working at Costco offering free samples to shoppers, Sabrina, 38, met […]

Last month, in response to demands from the press, the psychiatric interviews and evaluations of mass murderer James Holmes were released. In 2012, Holmes walked into a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado and opened fire during a midnight screening of Batman Returns. A dozen people were killed and 58 others wounded. In this excerpt from […]

In 2008, former NFL running back O.J. Simpson was convicted on 10 counts of robbery for his role in an armed heist to retrieve some items of his memorabilia that had been put up for sale. In July 2017, after serving nine years of his 33 year sentence, Simpson appeared before the Nevada Parole Board […]

Nichol Kessinger, 30, was hired as a contract employee at Andarko Petroleum in Platteville, Colorado, where she worked in Health and Safety. In either May or June 2017, she met and got to know Chris Watts (see episode 85), who also worked at Andarko.

This confession was recorded on Nov. 29, 2016 by Ottawa police homicide investigator Detective Theresa Kelm, the Mary Poppins of police interrogators. Her remarkably gentle, sympathetic and understanding manner is appropriate, since her subject,

This episode contains audio from the 2009 trial of Stacey Castor, 41, for the murder of her husband David, 48, in Onondaga County, New York State. In the face of cross examination by prosecutor Bill Fitzpatrick, Mrs. Castor remains calm and collected on the stand, and her testimony is meticulous in its detail–both of which […]