True Murder: The Most Shocking Killers

For the first time in forty years, former New York Times editor Michael Cannell has unearthed the full story behind two ruthless New York cops who acted as double agents for the Mafia.No episode in NYPD history surpasses the depravities of Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, two decorated detectives who covertly acted as mafia informants and paid assassins in the Scorsese world of 1980s Brooklyn.For more than ten years, Eppolito and Caracappa moonlighted as the mob’s early warning alert system, leaking names of mobsters secretly cooperating with the government and crippling investigations by sharing details of surveillance, phone taps and impending arrests. The Lucchese boss called the two detectives his crystal ball: Whatever detectives knew, the mafia soon learned. Most grievously, Eppolito and Caracappa earned bonuses by staging eight mob hits, pulling the trigger themselves at least once.Incredibly, when evidence of their wrongdoing arose in 1994, FBI officials failed to muster an indictment. The allegations lay dormant for a decade and were only revisited due to relentless follow up by Tommy Dades, a cop determined to break the cold case before his retirement. Eppolito and Caracappa were finally tried and then sentenced to life in prison in 2009, nearly thirty years after their crimes took place.Cannell’s Blood and the Badge is based on entirely new research and never-before-released interviews with mobsters themselves, including Sammy “the Bull” Gravano. Joining me to discuss his new book, BLOOD AND THE BADGE: The Mafia, Two Killer Cops, and a Scandal that shocked the Nation—N.Y. Times editor and author Michael Cannell Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

On April 15, 1973, two high school students discovered Virginia Marie Olson’s body near the campus of the University of North Carolina at Asheville. Olson’s murder was horrifically violent—she had been bound, raped, and stabbed to death, leaving the Asheville community in shock. The cold case that followed would span over 50 years, involving three generations of detectives and the Asheville Police Department and the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation as they worked tirelessly to uncover the truth. Authors Brian and Cameron Santana and I discuss law enforcement’s dramatic efforts to find Olson’s killer, facing numerous obstacles along the way, from the abduction of another UNCA student in 1974 to a rape and murder victim's body discovered near Olson’s crime scene in 1978. Whispers about the killer's identity have circulated for decades, with theories ranging from an escaped mental health patient to one of North Carolina’s most notorious serial killers—until now.Their book, A MURDER ON CAMPUS is the first to tell the gripping story of this unsolved crime and the surprising twists that led to the authors' startling revelation of the killer’s identity. This is the fascinating story of how two brothers—Brian, an English professor, the other a cop—tag team as authors to solve North Carolina’s most notorious cold case ....A MURDER ON CAMPUS: The Professor, The Cop, and North Carolina's Most Notorious Cold Case-Brian and Cameron Santana  Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

An eight part miniseries, The John Wayne Gacy Murders: Life and Death in Chicago (2024) is the first ever historical, comprehensive and chronological miniseries to study the life and crimes of the infamous serial killer. From his birth to the ongoing investigation of identifying unknown victims, this is the groundbreaking documentary project that filmmaker John Borowski has dedicatedly worked on for five years—uncovering extraordinary new facts and dispelling certain myths about the case. Borowski features important and exclusive interviews he conducted with leading psychologists, childhood friends, arresting officers, prosecutors, Gacy's death row attorney, employees, and victim's family members—in order to create the definitive documentary regarding John Wayne Gacy. THE JOHN WAYNE GACY MURDERS: Life and Death in Chicago-John Borowski Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

In the tranquil towns of New England during the 1970s, a sinister mystery unfolded when several boys vanished without a trace and the community’s peace was shattered. With law enforcement stymied in its search for answers, whispers of a possible serial killer surfaced, especially after one boy’s body was found years after his disappearance. But what happened to the others remained a heart-wrenching puzzle.In 2013, author David McGrath, a former host on the Law Enforcement Today Network and an investigator with a relentless drive for justice, watched a documentary about the cold case investigation regarding the missing boys. Himself a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and active in his local community with a sex abuse therapy group, McGrath was struck by the number of unanswered questions in the documentary.What followed, beginning in January 2014, was a five-year quest to find the answers to this child abduction and murder mystery. Traveling all over the United States, he uncovered a labyrinth of dark secrets just beneath the surface and unknown to most residents of the bucolic communities from which the boys disappeared. Haunted by his own past, he had to navigate these dark waters if he wanted to bring truth and justice to the victims and their families. OBSESSED: A Survivor's Quest To Find The Lost Boys of New England-David McGrath Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

Acclaimed journalist, podcaster, and true-crime historian Kate Winkler Dawson tells the true story of the scandalous murder investigation that became the inspiration for both Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and the first true-crime book published in America.On a cold winter day in 1832, Sarah Maria Cornell was found dead in a quiet farmyard in a small New England town. When her troubled past and a secret correspondence with charismatic Methodist minister Reverend Ephraim Avery was uncovered, more questions emerged. Was Sarah’s death a suicide...or something much darker? Determined to uncover the real story, Victorian writer Catharine Read Arnold Williams threw herself into the investigation as the trial was unfolding and wrote what many claim to be the first American true-crime narrative, Fall River. The murder divided the country and inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter—but the reverend was not convicted, and questions linger to this day about what really led to Sarah Cornell’s death. Until now.In The Sinners All Bow, acclaimed true-crime historian Kate Winkler Dawson travels back in time to nineteenth-century small-town America, emboldened to finish the work Williams started nearly two centuries before. Using modern investigative advancements—including “forensic knot analysis” and criminal profiling (which was invented fifty-five years later with Jack the Ripper)—Dawson fills in the gaps of Williams’s research to find the truth and bring justice to an unsettling mystery that speaks to our past as well as our present, anchored by three women who subverted the script they were given. THE SINNERS ALL BOW: Two Authors, One Murder and the Real Hester Prynne-Kate Winkler Dawson Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

M'Linda Kula is very familiar with this SECRET SANTA and the many links that tie him to JonBenet Ramsey. Each link is carefully explained within this book, to lead from one connection to the next between JonBenet and the SECRET SANTA. Find out who this SECRET SANTA is and how this chameleon was able to evade the authorities. This same individual also used a term of endearment common to the Ramsey family for JonBenet, in front of his peers and classmates at a karate school. When asked if he was "related to that girl found in a basement" he responded with "I don't know no Johnny B!" No one knew this term of endearment until it was used in the book The Death of Innocence by John Ramsey. The planned murder indicates that the killer knew the victim's schedule. Overkill is usually a message intended for someone else, other than the victim. Who was the overkill message intended for and why? The true name of this SECRET SANTA is listed on Detective Lou Smit's suspect list. JONBENET RAMSEY'S SECRET SANTA- M'Linda Kula Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

On Christmas Night 1996, six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey was murdered in her family’s home in Boulder, Colorado. A ransom note was found in the home, but it was hours before her father, John, found her body in the basement. She had been strangled with a garrote and her skull was fractured. The media sensationalized the tragic death of the “child beauty queen” and public speculation and rumors ran rampant. What followed was one of the most notorious unsolved murder investigations in American history. Boulder police fixated on JonBenet’s parents as suspects. Needing investigative help, the Boulder DA brought in legendary homicide detective Lou Smit. However, he was soon disenchanted with law enforcement’s obsession with the Ramsey family as the primary suspects, excluding other possibilities. Smit resigned but continued to work on his own time, and at his own expense, determined to find justice for JonBenet. He determined the Ramsey family was not involved in her death but died in 2010 before he could identify the killer. Thousands of people attended his funeral service, including John Ramsey, and the detective’s lifelong friend and colleague, John Anderson. Along with a handful of retired detectives, Anderson and Smit’s family continue to pursue justice based on Smit’s work. Now, for the first time in LOU AND JONBENET, Anderson tells the story of Smit’s investigation and why the Smit family team now believes that the killer can be identified. JONBENET RAMSEY AND LOU SMIT: A Legendary Lawman's Quest To Solve A Beauty Queen's Murder-John Wesley Anderson Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

On a December night in 1978, Courtney Lund O’Neil’s mother, teenaged Kim Byers, saw her friend Rob Piest alive for the last time. At the end of his shift at the pharmacy where they both worked, fifteen-year-old Rob went outside to speak to a contractor named John Wayne Gacy about a possible job.That night Rob became Gacy’s final victim; his body was later found in the Des Plaines River. Kim’s testimony, along with a receipt belonging to her found in Gacy’s house, proving that Rob had been there, would be pivotal in convicting the serial killer who assaulted and killed over thirty young men and boys.Though she grew up far from Des Plaines, Courtney has lived in the shadow of that nightmare, keenly aware of its impact on her mother. In search of deeper understanding and closure, Courtney and Kim travel back to Illinois. Postmortem transforms their personal journey into a powerful exploration of the ever-widening ripples generated by Gacy’s crimes. From the 1970s to the present day, his shadow extends beyond the victims’ families and friends—it encompasses the Des Plaines neighborhood forever marked by his horrific murders, generations of the victims’ families and friends, those who helped arrest and convict him, fandom communities, and many others.Layered and thought-provoking, Postmortem is a complex story of loss and violence, grief and guilt, and the legacy that remains long after a killer is caught. POSTMORTEM: What Survives the John Wayne Gacy Murders-Courtney Lund O'Neil Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

The untold story behind the hit true crime podcast The Clearing, this unforgettable memoir traces one daughter’s moving quest to understand her larger-than-life childhood as she searches for the truth about her father, the serial killer Edward Wayne Edwards.One evening in 2009, April Balascio was searching online, as she had been every night, for unsolved murders in the towns her family had lived growing up, when she stumbled across the latest investigations into the “Sweetheart Murders” cold case. All at once, the buried memories of her father’s dark history were awakened, and she knew she had to take action. She picked up the phone to call a detective and the rest is infamous true crime history.Balascio bravely reveals an astonishing tale of a lifetime of manipulation, unexplained upheavals, and silent fear. Some part of her had always known what her father was capable of, but the full truth of how she came to these revelations is as riveting as it is quietly terrifying. RAISED BY A SERIAL KILLER : Discovering the Truth About My Father-April Balascio   Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com

In this dramatic true account about the power of sensationalized crime, one woman’s case is exposed for its sexism, flagrant disregard for the truth, and, ultimately, the dangers posed by an unbridled prosecution. Unwanted and neglected from birth, Barbara Graham had to overcome the odds just to survive. Her beauty was both a blessing and a curse―offering her too many options of all the wrong kind. Her innate sensitivity left her vulnerable to the harsh realities of the street, where she was left to fend for herself before she reached double digits. Her record of petty crimes spoke to a life that constantly teetered on the brink of disaster.But in 1953, a catastrophic twist of fate would catapult her out of obscurity and into the headlines.When a robbery spiraled out of control and escalated into a brutal murder, Barbara became the centerpiece of a media circus. Her beauty enraptured the press, and they were quick to portray her as a villainous femme fatale despite abundant evidence to the contrary―a fiction the prosecution eagerly promoted.The frenzy of public interest and willful distortion paved a treacherous path for Barbara Graham. In Trial by Ambush, author and criminal lawyer Marcia Clark investigates the case exposing the fallacies in the demonizing picture they painted and the critical evidence that was never revealed. TRIAL BY AMBUSH: Murder, Injustice, and the Truth about the Case of Barbara Graham-Marcia Clark Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com