Highway to Hell

48. Rehabilitation Imitation- Jack Unterweger

Thank you so much for all of the kind comments, likes and shares. It truly means so much to us! If you'd like ad free episodes, travel itineraries and first dibs on merch please join us as a HELLION at patreon.com/highwaytohellpodcast He was born in 1950 in a small Austrian town called Judenburg, the son of a waitress turned occasional prostitute and an American GI he would never meet. Raised by a violent, alcoholic grandfather, Jack Unterweger learned early that the world was cruel. By twenty-three he had a record running through theft, pimping, and rape. In December of 1974 he lured an eighteen-year-old named Margret Schäfer into a Bavarian forest, beat her, and strangled her with her own bra knotted in an elaborate ligature beneath her chin. Austria sentenced him to life. Inside prison, he taught himself to write. Poems came first, then a memoir, Purgatory, that became a literary sensation. Elfriede Jelinek and Günter Grass championed his release as proof that art could save a soul. In 1990, after fifteen years, he walked free. He became a celebrity. He wore white suits, drove a Mustang, and hosted a TV show on Austrian state television. He was even commissioned to write about a string of unsolved murders of sex workers across Austria — murders he himself was committing. In June 1991 he flew to Los Angeles to study American policing of prostitution. Three women died there in a single week, strangled with their own bras in the same unmistakable knot. A retired detective from his 1974 case recognized the signature. Fibers, receipts, hotel records, and a ligature found nowhere else in any criminal database closed around him. He fled to Miami, where the FBI arrested him in February 1992. At his 1994 trial in Graz he was convicted of nine murders across Austria, the Czech Republic, and California. That night, alone in his cell, he braided his shoelaces and tracksuit drawstrings into the same ligature he had used on his victims, and hanged himself from the bars. He was forty-three. Because Austrian law treats a conviction as final only after appeal, he died, in legal terms, a man presumed innocent. Sources Leake, John. Entering Hades: The Double Life of a Serial Killer. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. The definitive English-language account. Leake had unprecedented access to the Austrian investigation files and interviewed key figures including Ernst Geiger. Newton, Michael. The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers. Checkmark Books, 2000. Well-sourced entry on Unterweger with citation of primary Austrian records. Documentary: Devil and the Angel [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2802898/]  Documentary: Lustmord (ORF/BBC) [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0452620/] Austrian public broadcaster documentary. Der Standard / Die Presse Archives (Austria) — Austrian national newspapers digital archives covered the investigation and trial exhaustively.. derstandard.at [https://www.derstandard.at] / diepresse.com [https://www.diepresse.com] FBI: Serial Murder — Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives [https://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/serial-murder] — Serial offender behavioral analysis relevant to the Unterweger case study. Haller, Reinhard. Forensic psychiatric testimony, Graz trial, 1994. Published accounts of Haller's analysis appear in Entering Hades and Austrian legal literature. Geberth, Vernon J. Practical Homicide Investigation, 4th ed. CRC Press. Reference for the signature analysis and ligature-knot methodology used in the cross-continental identification. YouTube Archive Search: "Jack Unterweger" [https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Jack+Unterweger] used for documentary clips and news segments Unterweger, Jack. Fegefeuer (Purgatory). Jugend und Volk, 1983. His autobiographical novel.

46. Above All Obey- Warren Jeffs Part 2.

Apologies for the delay! Monte recently moved and had no internet due to delayed set up. I’m back! In Part 2, we pick up right where the FBI did. Warren Jeffs made the Ten Most Wanted List in 2006 and was arrested that August. A Utah conviction followed in 2007, but was overturned on a technicality. Texas proved far less forgiving. In 2011, prosecutors presented DNA evidence proving Jeffs had fathered a child with a 15 year old, and played audio recordings of him assaulting a 12 year old in open court. Jeffs dismissed his legal team, represented himself, and argued the proceedings were a violation of his religious freedom. The jury was not persuaded. They deliberated for just 30 minutes before returning a sentence of life in prison plus an additional 20 years. He has remained at a Texas prison ever since, with no release date and parole eligibility not until 2038. His incarceration has included a suicide attempt, force feeding, and a medically induced coma following a prolonged fast. And yet his influence never fully disappeared. At various points he was receiving over 1,000 letters a day from devoted followers. He reportedly issued a directive banning the entire community from marrying or having children while he remained imprisoned, and they complied. His son Roy left the church in 2014 and went public with allegations of childhood sexual abuse at his father’s hands. Roy passed away in 2019. His daughter Rachel later alleged that Jeffs was still directing the FLDS from his cell, with followers viewing him as a martyr absorbing suffering on their behalf. The void he left behind did not remain empty for long. By 2019, a man named Samuel Bateman had declared himself the new prophet and taken at least 20 wives, 10 of them minors, with some victims as young as nine years old. He was ultimately brought down by a researcher who went undercover, gathered evidence, and turned it over to the FBI. In December 2024, Bateman was sentenced to 50 years in federal prison. Jeffs is now 70 years old and still regarded as a prophet by those who remain loyal to the FLDS.

45. Above All Obey- Warren Jeffs Part 1

Warren Jeffs was the self-declared prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the FLDS) a polygamist offshoot of mainstream Mormonism. He inherited leadership from his father Rulon Jeffs in 2002, even marrying some of his father's wives after his passing. At its peak, Jeffs controlled an estimated ten thousand followers, primarily concentrated in the twin border towns of Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, Arizona. Local law enforcement, local government, local businesses answered to Jeffs, not the federal authorities. People who left, or were expelled, often lost everything: their homes, their families, their entire social world, overnight. The crimes Jeffs committed and enabled were extensive, systemic, and in many cases, as so many cults do, perpetrated against children. Jeffs arranged and performed marriages between adult men and underage girls, some as young as twelve and thirteen years old. He taught his followers that these arrangements were divine commandments, that questioning them was questioning God. Women and girls within the sect had no autonomy. They were assigned husbands by Jeffs himself, reassigned when he saw fit, and had children taken from them as punishment. He also wielded excommunication as a weapon. Men who challenged him or fell out of favor were cast out, stripped of their families, their property, and their standing, in a practice followers called "reassignment," in which their wives and children were simply handed to other men in the community. When the kingdom began to crumble Warren Jeffs was put on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List in 2006 but was able to elude capture until a fateful traffic stop in Nevada Sources State of Utah v. Warren Steed Jeffs (2007) — rape as accomplice conviction Utah Supreme Court appeal — reversal on jury instruction grounds (2010) Texas v. Warren Jeffs (2011) — sexual assault of a child; aggravated sexual assault of a child Texas v. Merril Jessop et al. (2009–2011) — related FLDS prosecutions Texas Supreme Court, In re: Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (2008) — ruling on mass child removal U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division v. Town of Colorado City, Arizona et al. (2012–2016) — law enforcement capture case; 2016 consent decree Utah court receivership of the United Effort Plan (UEP) trust (2005 onward) Warren Jeffs Ten Most Wanted Fugitives file (May 6, 2006) Nevada state trooper arrest report, Clark County, August 28, 2006 Utah Attorney General's Office, Safety Net Committee Reports (2004–2012) Arizona Attorney General's FLDS investigation records Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, YFZ Ranch operational reports (2008) Elissa Wall with Lisa Pulitzer — Stolen Innocence (2008, William Morrow) Carolyn Jessop with Laura Palmer — Escape (2007, Broadway Books) Flora Jessop with Paul T. Brown — Church of Lies (2009, Jossey-Bass) Rebecca Musser with M. Bridget Cook — The Witness Wore Red (2013, Grand Central Publishing) Jon Krakauer — Under the Banner of Heaven (2003, Doubleday) Benjamin Bistline — The Polygamists: A History of Colorado City, Arizona (2004) Andrea Moore-Emmett — God's Brothel (2004) Rachel Dretzin (director) — Keep Sweet, Pray and Obey, Netflix (2022) Salt Lake Tribune — sustained FLDS coverage 2000–2024; reporters Ben Winslow, Brooke Adams, Lindsay Whitehurst (fasting directive reporting, Lost Boys documentation, UEP trust coverage) Arizona Republic — FLDS investigation series (2005–2011) San Angelo Standard-Times — Deb McCullough's YFZ Ranch reporting (2004–2011), earliest press coverage of the compound The New Yorker — Lawrence Wright, "Lives of the Saints" (2005) Associated Press wire reporting on arrest, trial, and sentencing Laurie Allen — "Lost Boys" field research, St. George, Utah (2004) Eric Nichols (lead Texas prosecutor) — post-verdict remarks, reported in San Angelo Standard-Times (August 2011)

44. Don't Whistle After Dark: Appalachia Hauntings

Thank you to our Hellions for your voted in topic! Subscribe for ad free episodes, voting topics and upcoming bonus episodes at patreon.com/highwaytohellpodcast. The Appalachian Mountains are the oldest range on Earth, and something has been living in them since before this country had a name. In this episode, we trace the full history of one of America's most distinct and haunted regions. Walking with the Cherokee nation and their complex spiritual world, to the Scots-Irish settlers who arrived with their own ghosts, to the coal wars, the Trail of Tears, and the grinding isolation that forged a culture unlike anything else on the continent.  Before we get to the monsters, we get to the rules. And if you’ve ever met someone from Appalachia you know some of the rules. Don't whistle after sundown. Don't answer your name if something calls it from the trees. Don't let a stranger through the door after dark. We walk through the full system of folk protections that generations of Appalachian families.   Then the legends. A haunting that killed a man and sent a future president running. A ghost who testified at her own murder trial and won. A creature that sounds like a woman screaming and has been documented in these mountains for three centuries. And a 1952 mass encounter with something no one has ever been able to explain, backed by physical evidence, medical records, and witnesses who never changed their story once. This one stays with you. First-hand encounter accounts that are not diary entries are illustrative narratives written in the tradition of submitted testimony; they reflect the type, language, and content of genuine regional accounts but are original compositions for this project. Sources: * Ingram, M.V. — An Authenticated History of the Bell Witch of Tennessee (1894). * Mooney, James — Myths of the Cherokee (1900, Bureau of American Ethnology). * Gainer, Patrick — Witches, Ghosts and Signs: Folklore of the Southern Appalachians (1975). * Eller, Ronald D. — Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian South (1982). * Williams, John Alexander — Appalachia: A History (2002, UNC Press). * Dunaway, Wilma — The First American Frontier: Transition to Capitalism in Southern Appalachia (1996). * Perdue, Theda & Green, Michael D. — The Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears (2007). * Mankiller, Wilma — Mankiller: A Chief and Her People (1993). * Finger, John R. — The Eastern Band of Cherokees: 1819–1900 (1984, UT Press). * The Greenbrier Ghost — documented in West Virginia state historical records; the historical marker text is publicly archived by the West Virginia Division of Culture and History. * Feschino, Frank C. Jr. — Shoot Them Down: The Flying Saucer Air Wars of 1952 (2007). The most thorough investigation of the Flatwoods Monster incident * Wigginton, Eliot (ed.) — The Foxfire Book series (1972–present, Anchor Books). * Randolph, Vance — Ozark Superstitions (1947, Columbia UP). * Milnes, Gerald C. — Signs, Cures & Witchery: German Appalachian Folklore (2007, UT Press). * Appalachian Journal (Appalachian State University) * Appalachian Studies Association research archives * Western Carolina University's Hunter Library Special Collections — Appalachian Collection * East Tennessee State University Archives of Appalachia

43. La Llorona - Haunted Costa Rica

Few legends cut as deep as La Llorona, the Weeping Woman. This week we're trading the highway for the rainforest as we trace one of Latin America's most enduring and chilling folk stories into the heart of Costa Rica. We break down the origins of La Llorona, the grieving mother condemned to wander waterways for eternity searching for the children she lost, and how her story evolved differently across Costa Rica than in Mexico or the American Southwest. Local variations are darker, more specific, and tied to real rivers and real grief — and we talk to locals who swear they've heard her cry on the banks of the Río Tárcoles at dusk. From there, we take you on a tour of Costa Rica's most haunted locations — places where the legend bleeds into something that feels less like folklore and more like a warning. We visit the ruins of Ujarrás, a 17th-century church where restless spirits are said to keep residents awake, and the old colonial cemeteries of Cartago, where La Llorona sightings cluster around All Souls' Day. We also dig into the Orosi Valley, where locals describe a particular kind of dread that settles over the water after dark — and where more than one traveler has reported a woman in white standing just beyond the treeline. We close the episode the way we always do — with a reason to go. If this episode has you ready to book a flight to San José, we've put together a seven-day travel itinerary that balances the eerie with the extraordinary. You'll move through Cartago's haunted churches, down into the Orosi Valley, along the Pacific coast near Tárcoles, and end in the Osa Peninsula — one of the most biodiverse and genuinely remote places on earth, where the jungle has legends of its own. Every stop is real, bookable, and worth it — even in the daylight. Sources La Nación. (n.d.). News archives and crime reporting. Costa Rica. Tico Times. (n.d.). News reporting and cultural coverage in Costa Rica. Organismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ). (n.d.). Official crime reports and investigative data. Costa Rica. InSight Crime. (n.d.). Organized crime analysis in Latin America. Lyra, C. (n.d.). Costa Rican Folk Tales. Leyendas Costarricenses. (n.d.). Traditional folklore compilation. Atlas Obscura. (n.d.). Unusual and haunted locations in Costa Rica. Costa Rica Tourism Board (ICT). (n.d.). Official tourism information. Lonely Planet. (n.d.). Lonely Planet Costa Rica. Baker, C. P. (n.d.). Moon Costa Rica. Fodor’s Travel. (n.d.). Costa Rica Travel Guide. Sistema Nacional de Áreas de Conservación (SINAC). (n.d.). Protected areas and national parks of Costa Rica. National Geographic. (n.d.). Costa Rica travel and ecology features. UNESCO World Heritage Centre. (n.d.). World Heritage Sites in Costa Rica. Rainforest Alliance. (n.d.). Sustainability and biodiversity in Costa Rica. Instituto del Café de Costa Rica (ICAFE). (n.d.). Coffee production and research. World Coffee Research. (n.d.). Costa Rica coffee reports. Eater. (n.d.). Dining and restaurant guides in Costa Rica. Food & Wine. (n.d.). Culinary travel coverage of Costa Rica. U.S. Department of State. (n.d.). Costa Rica Travel Advisory. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (n.d.). Costa Rica health guidance. World Health Organization (WHO). (n.d.). Regional health data: Costa Rica. U.S. Embassy in Costa Rica. (n.d.). Traveler information and safety resources. Biesanz, R. (n.d.). The Ticos: Culture and Social Change in Costa Rica. Ras, B. (Ed.). (n.d.). Costa Rica: A Traveler’s Literary Companion. Central Intelligence Agency. (n.d.). The World Factbook: Costa Rica. BBC News. (n.d.). Costa Rica country profile.