The Last Shot | Lyle and Erik Menendez

The Many Lives of Taylor Parker

In October 2020, 21-year-old Reagan Simmons-Hancock was found murdered in her home in New Boston, Texas. She was 35 weeks pregnant. Her daughter Braxlynn Sage was removed from her body and died hours later. Reagan's three-year-old daughter Kynlee was found hiding in another room of the house, physically unharmed. The person responsible was Taylor Parker — a woman Reagan knew well enough to let photograph her wedding. This episode covers the full story of the Taylor Parker case: the ten-month fake pregnancy, the elaborate fraud schemes running parallel to it, the meticulous planning that went into October 9th, 2020, and the 49-day capital murder trial that followed. Taylor Parker was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in November 2022. In November 2025, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed her conviction and death sentence in full, overruling all 25 points of error. In this episode: * Who Taylor Parker was before the murder — two marriages, two children she didn't have custody of, and a decade-long pattern of elaborate deception documented across employment records, medical files, and court testimony * The 2015 hysterectomy that left her permanently infertile — and how she weaponized the grief of it rather than processing it * The fake pregnant belly, recycled sonogram images, staged maternity photoshoot, and gender reveal party that formed the architecture of a ten-month lie * The parallel schemes running alongside the fake pregnancy: a staged $20 million real estate fraud, a manufactured murder-for-hire plot, fake personas including a fictional father, a fictional police contact, and a fictional detective she invented from inside a jail cell * What her former friends Kenzie Bright and Abby Bell testified to at trial — including Abby reaching out two days before the murder and never getting a response * How Taylor got Wade Griffin 200 miles away on the morning of October 9th — and why she'd been planning that specific detail for weeks * The events of October 9th, 2020, as established by the physical evidence and crime scene testimony * What Taylor's own mother Shonna Prior knew, when she knew it, and what she testified to at the penalty phase — including the exchange on the stand that stopped the courtroom * The 49-day trial, 142 witnesses, the verdict, and the sentencing * Where things stand now: Reagan's family, Kynlee, Homer Hancock, and Taylor Parker on death row at the Patrick L. O'Daniel Unit in Gatesville, Texas Reagan Michelle Simmons-Hancock was born November 14, 1998, in Hope, Arkansas. She was 21 years old when she died. She loved sunflowers. She let her three-year-old announce the pregnancy. She is buried alongside her daughter. Braxlynn Sage Hancock was born and died on October 9, 2020. She had a heartbeat. She was a few hours old. Kynlee Grace Hancock is approximately eight years old. She goes to the gravesite when she wants to see her mom. Sources & further reading: * KTAL/KMSS Texarkana trial coverage (day-by-day) * Texarkana Gazette trial reporting * Texas Court of Criminal Appeals opinion, November 6, 2025 * Bowie County District Court records

The House of Murdaugh | Part 2

The Murdaugh Murders, Part 2: The Trial, the Verdict, and the Reversal On June 7, 2021, Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were found shot to death at the family's Moselle property in Colleton County, South Carolina. Alex Murdaugh called 911 seventeen seconds after his GPS placed him at the scene. He had told investigators he was never there. This is Part 2 of our Murdaugh family coverage. We walk through the investigation, the six-week trial, and the unanimous South Carolina Supreme Court ruling that overturned Alex's double murder convictions in May 2026. The crime scene. Two victims. Two weapons. No sign of robbery. Paul was found in the feed room doorway, shot twice at close range with a shotgun. Maggie was found yards away in the open, shot four to five times with a rifle. A wound to her wrist was consistent with a defensive injury. Neither gun was ever recovered. The kennel video. Paul's phone was locked for nine and a half weeks before SLED cracked it using his birthday as the passcode. At 8:44 p.m. on the night of the murders, a video recorded at the kennels captured three voices: Paul's, Maggie's, and a third voice saying "Come here, Bubba." Every person who heard it identified that third voice as Alex. He had told investigators repeatedly he was not at the kennels that night. The motive. A civil lawsuit stemming from the 2019 boat crash that killed Mallory Beach had been pressing for full financial disclosure from Alex. That hearing was scheduled for June 10th. The murders happened June 7th. Alex had been stealing approximately $12 million from clients for at least 16 years. The trial. Six weeks. 28 days of testimony. Alex took the stand and confirmed the voice in the video was his. He said he had lied to investigators because of paranoid thinking caused by his opioid addiction. On cross-examination, prosecutor Creighton Waters asked why an innocent man discovering his murdered family would establish in his very first statement that he had not been at the kennels. Alex did not have a satisfying answer. The jury deliberated for less than three hours. Guilty on all four counts. Two consecutive life sentences without parole. The reversal. Becky Hill was the Colleton County Clerk of Court. She had a book deal. Multiple jurors reported she told them not to be fooled or thrown off by the defense, and to watch Alex's body language closely when he testified. In May 2025 she was arrested. In December 2025 she pleaded guilty to lying about her conduct during post-trial proceedings. On May 13, 2026, the South Carolina Supreme Court unanimously overturned Alex's murder convictions. The court called Hill's conduct "breathtaking," "disgraceful," and "unprecedented in South Carolina." A new trial was ordered. Alex remains in prison on federal and state financial crimes charges. The attorney general has said he plans to retry the murder case before the end of 2026. Maggie Murdaugh was 52. Paul Murdaugh was 22.

The House of Murdaugh | Part 1

Before Alex Murdaugh shot his wife and son at the family's South Carolina hunting estate, he spent decades building a lie so elaborate that almost no one saw it coming. In Part 1 of this two-part series, we go back to the beginning — not just to June 7, 2021, but to 1920, when the Murdaugh family first seized control of the criminal justice system in the South Carolina Lowcountry and didn't let go for 86 years. This episode covers the full family dynasty, the mechanics of Alex's $12 million fraud operation, his opioid addiction, the death of housekeeper Gloria Satterfield, Paul Murdaugh's abuse of his girlfriend Morgan Doughty, the 2019 boat crash that killed 19-year-old Mallory Beach, and the civil lawsuit that put a ticking clock on everything. We end on the night of June 7, 2021 — when Maggie texted a friend that Alex sounded "fishy," drove to meet him anyway, and never came home. Part 2 drops next week and covers the investigation, the trial, the verdict, and the bombshell Supreme Court ruling from May 2026 that overturned everything. IN THIS EPISODE * The Murdaugh family's 86-year grip on the 14th Judicial Circuit of South Carolina — three generations of circuit solicitors, from 1920 to 2006 * The law firm PMPED and how it made its money ("the house that CSX built") * Who Alex Murdaugh was — his background, his family, his charisma, and what was running underneath all of it * Alex's opioid addiction: 30-60 pills a day, sourced from a drug-dealing distant cousin, costing an estimated $40,000-$60,000 per week at black market prices * The fraud in detail: the fake "Forge" account, the Laffitte bank scheme, 16+ years of stolen client settlements totaling at least $12 million across an estimated 30-50 victims * Gloria Satterfield — the Murdaugh family housekeeper who died after a fall at the Moselle estate in 2018, whose $4.3 million wrongful death settlement Alex stole entirely from her grieving sons * Morgan Doughty's account of Paul's abuse — the hotel incident, the 2017 Christmas truck crash, and how the Murdaugh family cleaned up after their son every single time * The February 2019 boat crash that killed Mallory Beach, 19 — the night Paul drove drunk with a BAC of 0.24, refused to let anyone else take the wheel, and walked away from the scene while Mallory's body was somewhere in the dark water * The civil lawsuit, Mark Tinsley's push for full financial disclosure, and the hearing that was scheduled for June 10, 2021 — three days after the murders * June 7, 2021: what Maggie's last text said, what Paul was doing at the kennels at 8:44 p.m., and what the phone data shows about the last minutes of their lives

The Last Shot | Lyle and Erik Menendez

Beverly Hills. August 20, 1989. José and Kitty Menendez are watching a James Bond movie in the den of their $13.5 million mansion. By the end of the night, they'll be shot a combined sixteen times by their own sons. This week on Murders & Minivans, we're going deep on one of the most complicated — and most misunderstood — cases in American true crime history. Lyle and Erik Menendez. The killings. The spending. The trial. The abuse claims. And the letter that sat undiscovered for over thirty years. We talk about who José and Kitty Menendez actually were — not the shorthand versions, but the full picture. A Cuban immigrant who built a genuine American success story and ran his household like a company. A woman who gave up her ambitions, survived her husband's affairs, and may have known something terrible was happening under her own roof. We walk through the night of the murders, the six months of spending that followed, the therapy session confession that unraveled everything, and two trials that reached completely different conclusions about the same set of facts. We get into the abuse claims — what exists, what doesn't, and why a letter written by a teenager to his cousin in 1988 changes the conversation. We talk about Roy Rossello, the Netflix series, and what thirty-five years in prison actually looks like. And we sit with the question this case has always demanded: can both things be true at the same time? Follow us on Instagram: @murdersandminivans

The Poisoner's Poison

Thallium is element 81. A heavy metal banned in the United States since 1972. Colorless, odorless, and tasteless in its soluble form. It mimics potassium so convincingly that your cells invite it in. It starts with nausea, fatigue, stomach pain — things that look like a hundred other conditions. Weeks later, the hair falls out in fistfuls. By then, the nervous system has already taken serious damage. The antidote is called Prussian blue. Doctors almost never think to use it, because they almost never think to test for thallium. That gap between exposure and diagnosis is exactly what makes it a weapon. In the fall of 2017, a woman named Brigida started feeling sick in her home in Dulzura, California. She went to doctor after doctor. She was told it was fibroids. Cancer. Lupus. An autoimmune disorder. One doctor told her she probably just had bad menstrual cramps and needed to relax. Her husband made her food. He went to appointments with her. He watched her lose her hair and told her she just didn't know how to cook. He had purchased thallium online, from an overseas supplier. Three times. This episode covers the full story of what thallium is and what it does to a human body, Brigida's case and the one doctor whose specific expertise saved her life, the 1994 poisoning of Chinese student Zhu Ling and the Usenet SOS that reached 1,500 researchers worldwide, and what happened when a state used the same logic as a kitchen. In this episode: * What thallium actually is, how it works inside a human body, and why it is almost never caught in time * Prussian blue: the antidote that sounds like a paint color, because it is one * Brigida's story: months of wrong diagnoses, progressive nerve damage, and the moment her mother drove her to the hospital because she couldn't breathe * Dr. Jeff Lapoint: the one ER physician in the right place with the right board certification * The search history that ended Race Uto's marriage and his freedom * Three separate poisonings. Three consecutive life sentences. * The detail about the breakfast that Brigida remembered at sentencing * Zhu Ling: the 1994 Beijing case, the Usenet SOS, the 1,500 responses, and the hospital that didn't act * The suspect with political connections whose case was closed in 1998 * Zhu Ling's death in December 2023, at age 50, with no one ever charged * Alexander Litvinenko and what it looks like when a state does this with polonium instead People mentioned: Brigida — survivor, special education teacher, Dulzura, California Race Uto — convicted of three counts of premeditated attempted murder, sentenced to three consecutive life terms Dr. Jeff Lapoint — board-certified toxicologist, emergency physician, Kaiser Permanente San Diego Zhu Ling — thallium poisoning victim, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 1994. Died December 22, 2023 Sun Wei — identified as the only person with documented access to thallium in Zhu Ling's case. Never charged Alexander Litvinenko — former FSB officer, poisoned with polonium-210 in London, November 2006 Marina Litvinenko — Alexander's wife, still seeking justice Sources: * Dateline NBC, "The Prussian Blue Mystery" (July 2019) * NavyTimes, Times of San Diego, East County Californian, San Diego ABC 10News * National Center for Biotechnology Information * American Chemical Society * Wikipedia: thallium poisoning, Zhu Ling poisoning case, poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko * European Court of Human Rights ruling on Litvinenko, 2021 Follow Murders & Minivans: Instagram: @murdersandminivans Leave a rating wherever you listen.