The Trunk Nobody Thought to Open - Episode 95

She Was Wrapped, Bound, and Nobody Looked - Episode 98

The Dog Bones Buried Six Feet Deep: The Disappearance of Reed Jepson A fifteen-year-old boy stepped into his backyard to feed his dogs on a Sunday afternoon in 1964 and was never seen again. Forty-five years later, a backhoe in the neighboring yard hit something five feet down — two dogs, surgically dismembered, sealed in plastic bags. The man who owned that property in 1964 was a bone surgeon. When police finally questioned him, he didn't say Reed had run away. He said he hoped they'd find out who killed him. In this episode, we explore why the $60 Reed supposedly took to run away was found untouched in a jar in his closet, how a bone surgeon with an open-secret history of abusing teenage boys lived forty years next door to the family he may have destroyed, and why voice stress tests administered to the primary person of interest produced results investigators called deliberately sabotaged. Was this a crime of opportunity against a boy with two minutes to spare before Sunday lunch, or something far more calculated? The forensic science and a single unguarded sentence point in the same direction. Case Details Victim: Reed Jepson, 15, Eagle Scout and high school student. Date: October 11, 1964. Location: Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. Case Status: Unsolved and active. Salt Lake City Police Department reopened the case on May 25, 2010. No charges have ever been filed. The primary person of interest died in 2016. Episode Key Points - The $60 Reed allegedly took to fund a runaway was found intact in a jar inside his closet — every belonging he owned remained at home. - Dog remains discovered in 2009 had been surgically dismembered and buried five to six feet underground in sealed plastic bags — on a property owned in 1964 by an orthopedic surgeon. - When detectives questioned the property's 1964 owner, he volunteered that he hoped police would find out who "killed" Reed — at a time when the public narrative described Reed as a runaway, not a homicide victim. - During a voice stress test, the same man deliberately gave false answers to basic control questions, rendering the results inconclusive — then requested and passed a second test. Reed Jepson, Salt Lake City Utah missing person, cold case homicide 1964, Mill Creek Canyon remains, orthopedic surgeon person of interest, true crime, murder, investigation, forensic science, homicide, criminal minds, unsolved mysteries, true crime English.

The Dog Bones Buried Six Feet Deep - Episode 97

He Cleaned the Room. The City Became the Grave.: The Disappearance of Bruce Blackwood Bruce Blackwood called his job minutes before his shift on March 6, 2006, to say he had slipped in the bathtub — but his phone pinged a cell tower nowhere near his home. Three days later, someone spotted his prized Cadillac being driven across the city with music blasting, and Bruce was nowhere to be found. The investigation stalled for five years. The answer, when it finally came, was recorded on a flip phone by the last person anyone expected. In this episode, we explore a forged check trail totaling nearly eight thousand dollars that linked directly to the man Bruce trusted with his properties, a receipt for a long sheet of plastic and industrial quantities of sulfuric acid purchased around the time Bruce vanished, and a prison phone call in which a father coached his own daughter on exactly how to cry on the witness stand. How do you prosecute a murder with no body, no blood, and no forensic evidence — and still win? Case Details Victim: Bruce Blackwood, adult male, manager at an Off-Track Betting facility in New York City. Date: March 6, 2006. Location: New York City, New York, USA. Case Status: Luis Perez was convicted of Murder in the Second Degree in September 2015 and sentenced to 20 years to life. He is currently serving that sentence. Episode Key Points - Bruce's call to his job on the morning he vanished pinged a cell tower near his tenant's apartment building, not near Bruce's own home, directly contradicting the bathtub story. - Twelve of thirteen forged checks reported stolen by Bruce were made out to Luis Perez, with surveillance footage confirming Luis cashed them — a paper trail that existed from day one. - Purchases of a long plastic sheet and large amounts of sulfuric acid, made around the time of the disappearance, were confirmed by the seller as outside Luis's usual buying patterns. - A prison phone call captured Luis Perez instructing his daughter in precise detail — including when to cry and what words to use — on how to discredit her own recorded confession on the stand. Bruce Blackwood, New York City homicide, no-body murder conviction, Off-Track Betting New York, cold case NYPD 2006, murder, investigation, forensic science, homicide, true detective, criminal minds, cold case, true crime English.

He Cleaned the Room. The City Became the Grave. - Episode 96

The Trunk Nobody Thought to Open: The Double Murder of J.B. Hilton Beasley and Tracy Hollett Two seventeen-year-old girls called home from a payphone just after eleven-thirty at night — perfectly fine, asking for directions. By the next morning, their car sat abandoned on a back road with purses, wallets, and cash still inside. Officers stood at that car for hours before anyone thought to pull the trunk lever. The question that still lands hard: what were those officers doing while the girls were already there? In this episode, we explore a DNA profile that sat unmatched in a federal database for nearly twenty years, a paternity court order issued the day before the murders to a man who twice refused to comply, and a genetic genealogy match that finally put a name to the semen found on J.B.'s clothing. How does a double murder in a small Alabama town stay unsolved for twenty-three years when the biological evidence was recovered in the first week? Case Details Victim: J.B. Hilton Beasley, 17, recent high school student; Tracy Hollett, 17, JCPenney retail employee. Date: Night of July 31 into August 1, 1999. Location: Ozark, Dale County, Alabama, USA. Case Status: Coley McCraney was convicted on four counts of capital murder on April 25, 2023, and sentenced to life without parole on June 15, 2023. No appeal has been publicly filed as of the latest available records. Episode Key Points - Officers stood at J.B.'s unlocked car for hours on the morning of August 1 without checking the trunk because the keys were missing — a family friend had to drive from Dothan to ask about the trunk lever. - Both girls were still wet from the waist down when examined at autopsy the following day, more than fourteen hours after the car was found. - The day before the murders, Coley McCraney was court-ordered to submit a DNA sample for a paternity test — he refused, and refused again when ordered a second time months later. - McCraney was never in the CODIS national database, meaning the DNA match only became possible in 2019 through genetic genealogy run on samples from his biological relatives. J.B. Hilton Beasley, Tracy Hollett, Ozark Alabama double homicide, Dale County murder 1999, genetic genealogy cold case, true crime, homicide, forensic science, investigation, cold case Alabama, criminal minds, unsolved mysteries, murder, true crime English.

The Trunk Nobody Thought to Open - Episode 95

She Called at 10 A.M. — Seven Hours After She Died: The Disappearance of Vivian Cameron A woman was officially declared dead by suicide on the morning of September 23, 1986 — yet a friend received a phone call from her at 10:00 a.m. that same day, corroborated by a second witness and a handwritten diary entry the friend never saw. The bridge she allegedly jumped from showed no disturbance on its salt-film-coated guardrails. If she never jumped, where did Vivian Cameron go? In this episode, we explore the 10 a.m. phone call that two witnesses say happened hours after Vivian was supposed to be dead, a maroon towel carrying her blood type found inside the victim's bathroom, and a black handbag that moved from the Cameron family home to an abandoned car without any explanation. Was this a murder staged to look like a suicide-homicide, or did the investigation simply stop asking the right questions? The forensic science and the witness timeline cannot both be telling the truth. Case Details Victim: Beth Barnard, 23, farmhand and Penguin Parade employee. Missing person: Vivian Cameron, 34, farmer and community center co-founder. Date: September 23, 1986. Location: Phillip Island, Victoria, Australia. Case Status: Officially closed. A 1987 coronial inquest ruled Beth Barnard was killed by Vivian Cameron, and a separate 1988 inquest ruled Vivian died by suicide. No criminal charges have ever been filed. The case has not been reopened. Episode Key Points - The salt-film coating on both sides of the bridge guardrail was completely undisturbed — investigators found zero physical evidence that anyone had climbed or jumped from that structure. - Vivian's blood type was found on a maroon towel inside Beth Barnard's bathroom and on the exterior path by Beth's back door, yet no one at the scene reported seeing Vivian injured that night. - Blood in the spare bedroom — where Fergus Cameron claimed he retreated after being stabbed — tested as Type A, Vivian's blood type, not Fergus's Type O. - A black handbag observed at the Cameron home at 3:00 a.m. by a neighbor was later recovered inside Vivian's abandoned Land Cruiser at a bus stop — with no account of how it moved between locations. Vivian Cameron, Beth Barnard, Phillip Island Victoria homicide, cold case Australia 1986, unsolved mysteries, true detective, forensic science, criminal minds, homicide, investigation, murder, morbid, true crime English.

She Called at 10 A.M. — Seven Hours After She Died - Episode 94

The Fifteen Minutes No One Can Explain: The Murder of Fiona Yu A college student walked through her back door at 5:10 PM with mail in her hand. Her roommate arrived ten minutes later. In that window — no forced entry, no sign of panic, no stranger visible on the street — someone who had been watching for days was already inside. The forensic science recovered one thing that does not belong to Fiona: blood from her killer, sitting in evidence for over twenty-five years without a name attached to it. In this episode, we explore a 2017 DNA phenotype snapshot that contradicts the only eyewitness account of a man leaving the apartment, a series of strangulation attacks in the same neighborhood six weeks later that led to convictions — but not a match to Fiona's killer — and a possible linked case ninety miles away whose DNA has never been officially compared. Was this a targeted attack by someone who knew her schedule, or the final escalation of a predator already circling the ASU campus? The evidence points in two directions that have never been reconciled. Case Details Victim: Fiona Yu, college student at Arizona State University, age not publicly confirmed. Date: August 4, 1997. Location: Tempe, Arizona, USA. Case Status: Unsolved. No arrest has ever been made. A DNA phenotype profile was released in 2017, but the case remains open and inactive with no public investigative updates since. Episode Key Points - A bloodstain recovered from Fiona's body belonged to the attacker, not to Fiona — confirmed DNA exists but has never matched any known individual in over twenty-five years. - The only eyewitness placed a six-foot-tall Black man leaving the apartment; the 2017 Parabon Nanolabs DNA phenotype identified the suspect as a Hispanic male — a direct contradiction that has never been publicly resolved. - The attacker's maximum window inside the apartment was fifteen minutes, between the last confirmed sighting of Fiona alive and her roommate's arrival — yet no forced entry was found. - A strangulation attack in Tucson ninety miles away occurred just days before Fiona's murder, producing a suspect sketch and a blood sample — but whether that DNA was ever compared to Fiona's case is unknown. Fiona Yu, Tempe Arizona homicide, ASU campus murder 1997, unsolved cold case Arizona, strangulation homicide, true crime, murder, forensic science, investigation, homicide, criminal minds, unsolved mysteries, crime junkie, true crime English.