Camping is Canceled.

Forty-six years later, and we still don't have an answer to that question. In this final installment of the Mainline Murders, we walk through the trials of both Bill Bradfield and Dr. Jay Smith — the theft conviction that cracked the case open, the jailhouse confessions that made stomachs drop, the physical evidence that pointed directly to Karen and Michael, and the appeal that let a convicted triple murderer walk free. All of it builds to the two loose threads that refuse to tie: where are those children, and who is truly responsible?This one stings. Because the ju...

What started as a Victorian-era literary euphemism for murder on a mountain has become a hashtag, a warning, and for too many women — a lived experience. The term "alpine divorce" traces back to 1893 and Scottish author Robert Barr's fiction, where a husband plots to push his unhappy wife off a cliff in the Swiss Alps. The wife outsmarts him. Not everyone gets that ending.In this episode, we dig into the deeply unsettling trend of partners — overwhelmingly men — abandoning, endangering, or outright attempting to kill their significant others in remote wilderness settings. From cases that made the headli...

In December 1995, a farmer driving along a desolate country road outside Mansfield, Texas, found the body of 16-year-old Adrienne Jones — shot twice, her skull caved in, left behind a barbed wire fence in the dark. She had been lured out of her house in the middle of the night by the boy she had a crush on. What investigators would eventually uncover was a murder plot born out of jealousy, obsession, and two teenagers who had convinced themselves that eliminating a girl was the only way to preserve what they had.⚠️ Content warning: This episode contains descriptions of mur...

Nine months of manipulation, a car trunk full of cash, a bottle of acid, and a Cape May alibi — Bill Bradfield really thought he had this one locked up. Part III of the Mainline Murders picks up on June 22nd, 1979, the most critical 72 hours of the entire case. We follow the final movements of Susan Reinert and her kids, walk through Bill's meticulously constructed alibi weekend, and watch the investigation slowly close in — not through a dramatic confession, but through a $25,000 paper trail Bill assumed nobody would ever find. New here? Don't start here. Go back...

In 2009, journalist Charles Bowden sat down in a motel room with a man who had personally buried 250 bodies in Juárez, Mexico. He was a former state police officer turned cartel sicario who spent nearly two decades kidnapping, torturing, and killing for an organization he could never fully see or name. Bowden had spent years trying to get to this story. What he walked away with was one of the most chilling first-person accounts of cartel life ever put on paper.Bowden's writing pulls no punches: the sicario speaks plainly about his craft, his conscience, and the s...

Part two of the Mainline Murders picks up right where we left off: with the deeply unsettling inventory found in Susan Reinert's car, including a blue comb engraved with the 79th Reserve Command, the very same unit served by her own principal. Who was Dr. Jay Smith, really?On paper, Principal Jay Smith was a decorated Army colonel, a man who'd carpooled with John Eisenhower and earned a doctorate. Behind that carefully curated image was a much darker story: a daughter lost to heroin addiction who vanished without a trace, a basement that read like a fever...

This week, we’re back with a blind read. We don’t do any research beforehand and refuse to peek at spoilers, so we have no idea how this ends! This is a CalMatters investigative piece called “The Man Who Unsolved a Murder” by Anat Rubin. It covers a six-year-old boy named Willie Cook who vanished from a small Northern California logging town in 1976.What starts as a cold case kidnapping quickly unravels into something messier: a witness whose story keeps shifting, a confession that a leading expert calls psychological torture, a defense investigator who starts pulling one thre...

We’re sharing Reddit's creepiest "Not a Ranger, But..." forest encounters. These search-and-rescue stories prove that humans—not monsters—are the woods' true terror. Anyone surprised? (Not us.) We cover bowhunters stumbling on meth labs disguised as campsites, kids vanishing mid-hunt only to reappear mud-soaked with zero memory, and rangers chasing "wolves" that lead to hidden bodies.​We laugh-cry through trail cam blunders, time-loss blackouts, and "fuzzy figures" haunting family hikes. This episode hammers home why we never stray off-trail without backup.​“That’s Genevieve. And that’s Kaitlyn.”Sisters-in-law, best friends, former CNAs, and the shar...

In 1979, a devoted mom, Susan Reinert, and her kids, Karen (12) and Michael (10), vanished after a routine Cub Scout pickup—only for Sue’s brutalized body to turn up crammed in her car’s wheel well days later. By all accounts, Sue seemed to be living the all-American life. In this episode, we dive into her relationship with her college-sweetheart-turned-ex-husband, Ken, and the events leading up to her disappearance and murder. We truly can’t get over how badly this investigation was fumbled. This Pennsylvania nightmare—inspired a book and TV movie—stays unsolved 46 years later. “That’s...

EP 118 wraps up our three-part Silk Road Blind Read. Silk Road was a secret, dark website that sold drugs like an online eBay, run by a mystery boss called DPR (Dread Pirate Roberts). In this finale, FBI agent Tarbell travels to Iceland to raid a data center and grab Silk Road's hidden server after spotting a leaked IP address.​We yell through DPR's growing fear from his diary, his sloppy security mistakes (like ignoring server alerts), and agent Force's dangerous undercover work as "Nob," whom DPR has grown to trust a bit too much: he starts chatting ab...

Silk Road's paranoia escalates as the feds close in. DPR casually prices out a hit on a flipped insider while his undercover handler Force stages a brutal (fake) bathtub torture for the sting. What was once a libertarian dream has morphed into a dark web nightmare.As far as blind reads go, this one truly had us on the edge of our seats. We couldn’t look away as Silk Road’s empire crumbled from the inside. “That’s Genevieve. And that’s Kaitlyn.”Sisters-in-law, best friends, former CNAs, and the sharp-witted duo behind Campi...

We're kicking off the Silk Road series—a massive dark web drug market run by a mysterious boss called DPR. We start with Curtis Green, a Utah grandpa and pain pill user who worked customer service for the site, getting raided by SWAT while covered in cocaine powder from a fake package (his tiny chihuahuas go wild).​Then we flashback to Ross Ulbricht: a smart former Eagle Scout and physics student who drops out, experiments with psychedelics, discovers Bitcoin, and secretly builds Silk Road from his laptop—a hidden online "eBay" for drugs using anonymous Tor tech. We rev...

We’re exploring parallel lives. Like, souls splitting across timelines, Horcrux-style oversouls living multiple earthly lives at once. We break down four wild theories from Reddit deep dives, from quantum jumping to realms where your higher self lives an entire life while your body lies stationary on Earth.​If you’ve ever felt déjà vu hit different or met a “soul family” stranger, these tales will have you side-eyeing your furniture. We debate carbon monoxide vs. cosmic weirdness, because sometimes the scariest parallel is the one staring back from your own life.“That’s Genevieve. And t...

This episode drops the hammer on David Grann’s “True Crime” Blind Read, picking up mid-book with Bala’s sadistic, philosophy-fueled torture porn that’s less “literature” and more “confession disguised as art.” We unpack Amok’s noose-tightened murders, “white gloves of silence,” and Bala’s smug insistence that it’s all just postmodern wordplay—while detective Wroblewski turns his squad into literary sleuths, assigning chapters like it’s homework from hell.​This finale is a masterclass in how a “perfect crime” meets its match in dogged facts over slippery philosophy. If you love seeing pretentious creeps get cornered by their own words, don’t...

David Grann’s 2008 New Yorker masterpiece “True Crime” is a Polish whodunit that starts with a strangled woman and ends in a courtroom where fiction and murder collide. We dive into the case of Jacek Wroblewski, a cop turned amateur detective who becomes obsessed with a violent novel by a smug philosophy bro named Krystian Bala, convinced its twisted details mirror an unsolved killing.​What unfolds is pure mind-melt: Bala’s pretentious Nietzsche obsession, his internet auction site bragging, and a story so meta it blurs the line between art and confession—leaving us gasping, theorizing, and questioning...

In this final part, we revisit the Lutz family’s own words through their 1979 Good Morning America interview, then pull back the curtain to examine the contradictions, missing details, and the carefully crafted public image that made Amityville a media monster.​From there, we dig into what investigators, psychics, and skeptics uncovered behind the scenes: parapsychic Ron Mangravite’s claim that the house was soaked in ritual magic, Lorraine Warren’s belief that someone inside the home was acting like a magnet for dark energy, and the way George Lutz’s “regular guy” persona starts to crumble under closer s...

This week’s episode is pure Merry Crisis energy in the best way: cozy chaos, seasonal depression, and holiday horror stories all rolled into one. We pull together Reddit confessions, off-the-rails family traditions, and a couple of bite-sized true crime tales that prove the holidays are less “Hallmark movie” and more “why is Santa staring at me like that?” If you need an excuse to put on noise-canceling headphones and hide from your kids, in-laws, or capitalism in general, this one’s your festive escape hatch.​“That’s Genevieve. And that’s Kaitlyn.”Sisters-in-law, best f...

This Blind Read had us absolutely feral (in the best way). We thought we were dealing with a classic “mysterious tormentor” case and instead got hit with psych letters, birdhouse cameras, BTK-adjacent clues, and some of the wildest investigative whiplash we’ve had in a while. Every time we thought we knew who “The Poet” was, the story yanked the floor out from under us again.We pick the case back up with Ruth Finley being harassed. It’s ramping up, and the threats feel way too close to home. The question stops being “Who’s doing this?” and turns...

We’re blind-reading Corey Mead’s article, "The Poet," set in late 1970s Wichita, Kansas. The city is already on edge due to the active BTK Strangler when Ruth Finley, a quiet telephone company employee, begins receiving menacing phone calls from a stranger who knows a traumatic secret from her past: she was branded by a "sex maniac" as a teenager in 1946. As the harassment escalates from letters to physical confrontations, the stalker—who eventually dubs himself "The Poet"—taunts Ruth and her husband Ed with crude, rhyming letters and public messages in the newspaper classifieds. Police, includin...

We’re trading historical gratitude for the absolute dumpster fire of modern family gatherings. In Episode 108, we serve up a chaotic platter of listener-submitted nightmares that prove blood isn't always thicker than gravy. We’re exploring everything from a violent brawl between aunts nicknamed "Jailbird" and "Moonpie" involving a carving fork to a sentimental wedding video that abruptly cuts to NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt’s funeral. It’s a crash course in how quickly a holiday feast can turn into a crime scene.So, before you stress about your bad turkey leftovers or political arguments at the d...