Tell Me The Crime

Episode 20: The Girl She Wanted to Become - The Rachel Barber Case

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2599742/fan_mail/new] In this episode of TMTC, John tells Febriana about Rachel Barber who was 15 years old and training full-time at a performing arts school in Melbourne when she told her boyfriend she had a job after class. An old female friend was going to pay her a lot of money. Rachel didn’t say the woman’s name. Then she never came home. In this episode, we cover the murder of Rachel Barber and the case against Caroline Robertson, a former family friend and babysitter whose obsession with Rachel became much darker than ordinary jealousy. Police would later uncover clothing that did not belong to Caroline, handwritten planning material, a fake identity, and a murder that had been thought through step by step. This case raises disturbing questions about envy, self-hatred, identity, and what happens when someone stops seeing another person as real. Listener discretion is advised. This episode discusses the murder of a minor, strangulation, body disposal, and psychological obsession. Support the show [https://buy.stripe.com/fZuaEQ5F0cx5cqefeVfMA00]

Episode 19: The Grief Book and the Poisoned Cocktail - The case of Kouri Richins

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2599742/fan_mail/new] Today's episode is one of the strangest and most unsettling cases we've covered so far: a woman who wrote a children's grief book after her husband's death, then was later convicted of murdering him. Febriana tells John the case of Kouri Richins, a Utah mother and real estate investor whose husband, Eric Richins, died from a lethal dose of fentanyl in 2022. At first, Kouri publicly presented herself as a grieving widow trying to help her children process the loss of their father. But investigators uncovered a very different story involving financial pressure, life insurance, forged documents, a prior poisoning attempt, and a marriage where Eric had reportedly feared his wife was trying to kill him. In this episode, John hears the case for the first time as we talk through public grief, image management, financial desperation, and the disturbing question at the center of the case: what kind of person turns a death they caused into part of their public identity? Content warning: murder, poisoning, fentanyl, family trauma, grief, and children affected by parental death. Support the show [https://buy.stripe.com/fZuaEQ5F0cx5cqefeVfMA00]

Episode 18: Diane Downs - The Mother Who Blamed a Stranger

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2599742/fan_mail/new] In 1983, Diane Downs drove to an Oregon hospital with her three children shot in the car. She said a stranger had attacked them on a rural road. But her story quickly started to fall apart. This week, we cover the Diane Downs case: the strange hospital arrival, her relationship with Robert “Nick” Knickerbocker, the children she may have seen as obstacles, and the daughter who survived long enough to tell the truth. Content warning: This episode discusses violence against children, child death, and parental violence. Support the show [https://buy.stripe.com/fZuaEQ5F0cx5cqefeVfMA00]

Episode 17: The Lie That Led to a Family Murder - The Jennifer Pan Case

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2599742/fan_mail/new] A mother is killed inside her own home. A father is shot and left for dead. Their daughter is upstairs, tied up, calling 911. At first, it looks like a home invasion. But then the father wakes up, and the story starts falling apart. In this episode of Tell Me The Crime, we cover the Jennifer Pan case: the fake grades, fake university, fake work, hidden relationship, staged home invasion, and years of lies that led to one of Canada’s most disturbing family murder cases. Was this about freedom, money, Daniel, shame, control, or the fear of finally being caught? Listener discretion is advised. This episode discusses murder, family violence, and coercion. Support the show [https://buy.stripe.com/fZuaEQ5F0cx5cqefeVfMA00]

Episode 16: The Man Who Pretended To Be a Doctor - The Jean-Claude Romand Case

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2599742/fan_mail/new] In this episode of Tell Me The Crime, we examine the disturbing case of Jean-Claude Romand, the French man who spent nearly eighteen years pretending to be a doctor and researcher connected to the World Health Organization. His wife believed him. His children believed him. His parents, friends, and even people who trusted him with money believed him. But there was no real medical career, no WHO job, and no normal workday. When Romand left home “for work,” he often spent his days in cafes, libraries, parking lots, service stations, and airport hotels, waiting until it was time to come home and continue the lie. When that false life finally started to collapse, Romand did not confess. He killed his wife, his two children, his parents, and tried to kill another woman who had trusted him. This episode looks at identity, shame, family annihilation, deception, status, and the psychology of a person who seemed to find exposure more unbearable than destruction. The central question: did Jean-Claude Romand kill because he could not live without the lie, or because he could not live with the people closest to him seeing the truth? Support the show [https://buy.stripe.com/fZuaEQ5F0cx5cqefeVfMA00]