Heroes Behind Headlines

Former Head of Detectives of the Compton Police Department turned award-winning writer, Frederick Reynolds tells the story behind his gripping new non-fiction book Saint Bloodbath, about a series of …

Self-described working class writer and factory worker Frank Bill speaks candidly about the personal stories that inform his searing new novel Back to the Dirt, and the psychological and physical dev…

On December 5, 2005, Air Force Senior Master Sergeant Israel “DT” Del Toro’s life changed in a flash of light when the Humvee he was riding in ran over an IED in southeastern Afghanistan. The resulti…

Shot down over Formosa and facing a firing squad, Sgt. John Shott – radio operator and rear gunner of a B-25 Mitchell bomber – spent the remainder of World War II starving in a Japanese POW camp. Tod…

Our guests today are Bronze Star-recipient Maj. Fred Galvin and author Sal Manna, authors of A Few Bad Men – the incredible true story of an elite team of US Marines set up to take the fall for alleg…

Today’s guest, former Hollywood Homicide detective Steve Hodel, has solved over 300 cases in his career. He had retired with many honors when his father died and he was confronted with his most diffi…

Charlene Hummert had been strangled to death using a dog collar when her body was found in her SUV in the parking lot of a grocery store on March 21st 2004. The murderer planted a series of handwritt…

On the 26th of December 1944, Lt. John Fox commanded a mere 70 Americans - all of whom were black - against a massive German assault. The mountaintop village of Sommocolonia, along Italy’s northern m…

A retired Green Beret simply could not lose another soldier in the Global War on Terror. He called together a group of Special Forces veterans from the Army, Navy and CIA to join him in one last miss…

Some of the most ferocious fighting in recorded human history took place on a tiny Pacific Ocean island between February 19th and March 26th 1945. The United States Navy and Marine Corps invaded Iwo …

A ten year old Belgian girl found herself sold into a murderous pedophile network by her own mentally ill mother. Despite living in hell, the little girl still loved her mother and believed that some…

As one of 128 siblings, and part of a much larger Mormon Cult known as ‘The Order’, Jacob Kingston hardly stood out. However, that changed when he realized he could use his small biofuel company to s…

Master Sergeant Changiz Lahidji has served on more Special Forces A-teams than anyone in history. If that wasn’t impressive enough, he is also the very first Muslim to wear the US Army Special Forces…

In the early 1990s, gang warfare and the crack cocaine epidemic took hold of South Los Angeles. The violence spiraled out of control, to a scale which grabbed national attention. During this, the mos…

Being accepted to work at the CIA is highly difficult. The interview process is long and secretive - and applicants and their references are often vetted without ever knowing it. Once accepted, very …

Raymond Salvie enlisted in the US Marine Corps in 1944 at the height of World War II. By the end of February 1945 he found himself part of the US military’s massive Pacific Campaign, landing on the b…

In the late 1970s Iran fell into violent revolution, as Ayatollah Khomeini installed an Islamic fundamentalist government. This forced millions of citizens opposed to his system of rule to flee their…

As the Cold War was taking shape in 1953, the United States accepted Lockheed Corporation’s proposal to build the U-2 spy plane, out of absolute necessity. The program has been such a massive success…

Introducing ‘Rapid Fire’, new short-form episodes of Heroes Behind Headlines featuring our host Ralph Pezzullo himself, telling an amazing story about an incredible hero. There is no better person wi…