A lonely trail. A smiling young woman. A warm meal waiting inside a small Kansas cabin.

In the early 1870s, the Bender family ran a roadside inn that offered food, a bed, and safety to weary travelers. Most who stopped never left. Bodies later turned up buried naked in the apple orchard — skulls crushed, throats cut, dropped through a hidden trapdoor beneath the dinner table.

At least eleven people were murdered. Possibly more. One was a little girl who may have been buried alive.

Then the family vanished.

No arrests. No trial. No justice.

This is the true story of America’s first documented family of serial killers — the Bloody Benders — and the mystery that still haunts Kansas 150 years later.

A delusional office-seeker shot the President of the United States in a crowded train station. James A. Garfield should have survived. Instead, America’s top doctors spent 80 days probing the wound with unwashed fingers, creating new infections, and slowly killing him.

This is the true story of the assassination that medicine finished.

In the gas-lit streets of Victorian England, one man moved like a shadow. By day he played the violin. By night he climbed through windows, revolver in hand.

Charles Peace was a crippled steelworker’s son who became one of the most notorious criminals of the 19th century — a prolific cat burglar, master of disguise, and double murderer. He shot a policeman dead and watched an innocent man nearly hang for it. Then he stalked a neighbour’s wife and killed her husband in their own backyard… before vanishing into London society for two more years of daring burglaries.

Host Alexander Lawson unravels the chilling true story of the man who carried his tools in a violin case, outwitted the police, and left a trail of blood across Sheffield, Manchester, and Blackheath.

A tale of obsession, deception, and a final walk to the gallows.

Listen now on A True Crime Podcast.

A trusted doctor. A bottle of pills. And a trail of agonizing deaths that stretched from Canada to Chicago to the fog-choked streets of Victorian London.

In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, Alexander Lawson tells the chilling story of Thomas Neill Cream—the medical man who used strychnine to murder vulnerable women, then brazenly blackmailed the police and prominent doctors while the bodies were still warm.

From suspicious “abortions” and a poisoned husband in Illinois to the calculated killings of sex workers in Lambeth, Cream’s arrogance ultimately led to his downfall… and a hangman’s noose at Newgate Prison.

Was he driven by sadism, greed, or the belief that his medical knowledge made him untouchable? And why do some still claim his final words linked him to Jack the Ripper?

Step into the dark world of the Lambeth Poisoner.

In Victorian England, a respected country doctor walked the streets of Rugeley by day. By night, he kept a darker ledger — life insurance policies, mounting debts, and bottles of poison that never quite emptied.

One by one, the people closest to him began dying in convulsions: his infants, his wife, his brother, and a friend who had just won a fortune at the races. When the law finally closed in, more than 30,000 people gathered outside Stafford Gaol to watch him hang. Charles Dickens called him the greatest villain who ever stood in the Old Bailey.

This is the story of William Palmer — the Prince of Poisoners — and the question that still lingers more than a century and a half later: how many did he really kill?

Host Alexander Lawson unravels one of Britain’s most notorious true crime cases, a tale of greed, strychnine, and a medical man who turned those who trusted him into sources of cash.

A respectable Victorian nurse. A trail of dead husbands, dead children, and “gastric fever.” Then one careless remark about a little boy sealed her fate. Discover the chilling true story of Mary Ann Cotton — the woman believed to be Britain’s most prolific female serial killer.

In 1896, a baby’s body was pulled from the River Thames with white tape wrapped around its neck. That single discovery exposed Amelia Dyer — a Victorian “baby farmer” who took in unwanted infants for cash… and killed them.

Over nearly 30 years she is believed to have murdered between 200 and 400 children. She strangled them, dumped their bodies in the river, and kept moving before the law could catch up.

This is the story of Britain’s most prolific serial killer — the woman they called the Ogress of Reading.

Hosted by Alexander Lawson.

On a sunny June afternoon in 1946, 12-year-old Muriel Drinkwater stepped off the school bus and began walking the last mile home through the woods—singing the whole way. Her mother watched her disappear among the trees. She never came out.

The next day her body was found just yards from the family farm: raped, beaten, and shot twice with a World War I pistol.

Nearly 80 years later, her killer has never been named. DNA recovered from her clothing is among the oldest ever used in a murder case… yet the man who left it remains free.

This is one of Britain’s longest-running unsolved child murders. And the truth is still out there.

Hosted by Alexander Lawson.

On a sunny Saturday in 1867, eight-year-old Fanny Adams accepted a halfpenny from a friendly stranger… and never came home.

Hours later, her severed head was found impaled on hop poles. Her body had been torn apart. Her eyes thrown into the river. And in the killer’s diary, police discovered one chilling line: “Killed a young girl. It was fine and hot.”

This is the true story of the most shocking child murder of Victorian England — the crime so horrific it still echoes in the phrase “Sweet Fanny Adams.”

Hosted by Alexander Lawson.

On a quiet August night in 1849, a man sat down to dinner in a Bermondsey kitchen. Moments later he was shot in the head, beaten with a crowbar, and buried under the flagstones—while his killers calmly ate their meal above him.

Weeks later a husband and wife stood side by side on the gallows at Horsemonger Lane Gaol, the first married couple hanged together in England for nearly 150 years. Charles Dickens watched from the crowd of 30,000.

Host Alexander Lawson unravels the deadly love triangle, the quicklime, the stolen railway shares, and the murder that shocked Victorian London.

Listen now to the full story of the Bermondsey Horror.