Crime Writers On...True Crime Review

In 2018, Micah Holsonbake’s family said the 34-year-old banker went missing from Bakersfield, California. Two weeks later, a friend of Micah’s reported his 20-year-old girlfriend Baylee Despot also v…

There was something for everyone on the TV in 2023. We saw documentaries that dug deep into issues of crime and punishment. There were several true stories told in real time by the people in the midd…

This year brought us podcasts that examined interesting characters - from the super famous to the terribly infamous. There were the meticulously investigated stories of people caught in a system stac…

International photojournalist Amanda Mustard returns home to pursue an open family secret. As her grandfather Bill Flickinger nears the end of his life, Amanda investigates the decades of sexual abus…

The Troubled Teen Industry comprises the wilderness programs, therapeutic boarding schools, and group programs desperate parents turn to when their kids are struggling with mental health, substance m…

Amina Arraf grew a following for her blog recounting her life as an openly gay woman in Syria, a nation where homosexuality is illegal. She was revered by the queer community internationally, started…

In 2021, police in Oregon discovered the mummified corpse of Amy Carlson. Her body had been transported and adorned by the members of her small cult “Love Has Won.” The woman they called Mother God h…

Journalist Tristan Redman had no idea his wife's great-grandmother Naomi Dancy had been shot in the eyes by her brother in a 1937 murder-suicide that happened in the house next door. He wondered if i…

Mommy-influencer Katie Sorensen went viral with a story of a couple who attempted to kidnap her kids in a craft store. When Sadie and Eddie Martinez saw their photos in the news, they knew they’d bee…

Screenwriter Gary DeVore vanished in 1997 driving through the Mojave Desert. He’d been writing an action film with input from CIA agent Chase Brandon. His wife Wendy wondered whether Gary's disappear…

A fight among children caught on video led to the arrest of eleven Black students, charged for not stopping the fight. Kids as young as 8 were cuffed and booked into jail, even though Tennessee law s…

In 2014, Catherine Hoggle returned home without her three- and two-year old children. Though their bodies have never been recovered, Hoggle was placed in a psychiatric facility to treat her mental il…

In 1995, Deputy Sheriff William Hardy was shot while moonlighting at a Birmingham hotel. An informant told police the shooter was Toforest Johnson. Even though ten people saw him in a nightclub at th…

In 2005, Kevin Jones discovered his girlfriend bludgeoned to death in her Russellville, Arkansas apartment. Police zeroed in on Jones, thinking the murder of former beauty queen Nona Dirksmeyer was a…

The Navajo Nation is the only tribe that runs its own police academy, training officers for an understaffed force patrolling the largest reservation in the US. The latest class of about two dozen Nav…

A serial killer father! Truckers! Bunk beds! Prison letters! BEARS! This podcast seemed to have everything, except maybe a point. In this CWO Classic, we'll revisit our October 22, 2018 review of "Ha…

Grad students James Monsees and Adam Bowen envisioned a new technology, one that would give smokers like them the hit of nicotine they craved without the carcinogens of a combustible cigarette. After…

The 1970 shooting of a Wisconsin man should have been an open-and-shut case - but it led the victim’s niece on a decade’s long search for the truth. On this CWO Classic we’ll revisit our epic April 1…

When Maya Lin Sugarman was cleaning out her grandmother’s home, she discovered some screenplays written by her late uncle. Galen Yuen was in a Chinese street gang before becoming a small-time actor. …

While his wife and eight of his children lay sleeping, James Peterson awoke to a stranger at his farmhouse door. Within a matter of minutes, all but one family member would be shot to death in Canada…