Imagine being ordered to strangle your own mother while your 10-year-old daughter holds her down… then being forced to kill the children next.

Between 1996 and 1998 in Kitakyūshū, Japan, Futoshi Matsunaga didn’t just murder seven people — including two children. He psychologically broke entire families and made them destroy each other. Bodies were boiled. Evidence disappeared. And he barely lifted a finger himself.

This is the full story of Japan’s most disturbing true crime case — the one so extreme that media refused to report the details for years.

Hosted by Alexander Lawson.

In 1989, police opened a quiet suburban house outside Tokyo and found nearly 6,000 videotapes stacked floor to ceiling. Hidden among the anime and horror films were recordings of four little girls who had vanished from their neighborhoods.

The man who lived there had already killed them. He kept pieces of them. And he sent some of those pieces back to their parents in the mail.

This is the true story of Tsutomu Miyazaki — the Japanese serial killer who abducted, murdered, and desecrated four girls between the ages of 4 and 7… then taunted their families with bones, teeth, and chilling notes.

Host Alexander Lawson takes you inside one of Japan’s most disturbing cases: the crimes, the arrest, the “Rat Man” defense, and the moral panic that followed.

Listener discretion is strongly advised.

He ordered murders from maximum-security cells. He shut down Rio de Janeiro. He traded weapons with Colombian guerrillas for cocaine. And for years, the bars couldn’t stop him.

This is the true story of Luiz Fernando da Costa — better known as Fernandinho Beira-Mar, the ruthless leader of Brazil’s Comando Vermelho. From the favelas of Duque de Caxias to international drug trafficking, prison rebellions, and a criminal empire that operated even after his capture.

Host Alexander Lawson uncovers how one man became one of Latin America’s most feared drug lords… and why his influence still echoes today.

Title:
The Vampire of Niterói: He Drank the Blood of 14 Boys and Called It Salvation

Description:
In 1991, a soft-spoken churchgoer prowled the streets of greater Rio de Janeiro, luring poor boys with promises of money and religious rituals. What followed was eight months of unimaginable horror—rape, strangulation, rock beatings, and the drinking of children’s blood—all justified by a twisted belief that he was sending them straight to heaven.

This is the true story of Marcelo Costa de Andrade, the Vampire of Niterói, one of Brazil’s most disturbing serial killers. From his traumatic childhood to the night a surviving boy led police to him while he calmly ate his lunch, host Alexander Lawson uncovers the full, chilling case that still haunts investigators decades later.

Between 2011 and 2014, a quiet security guard on a motorcycle turned ordinary streets in Goiânia, Brazil into a killing ground. He never stole a thing. He just shouted one word… and pulled the trigger.

Tiago Henrique Gomes da Rocha confessed to murdering 39 people — mostly young women and girls, the youngest just 14. Then he went home to the house he shared with his mother.

How did one of Brazil’s most prolific serial killers stay hidden for years? What finally stopped him? And what did he say when the police finally caught him?

Host Alexander Lawson takes you inside the chilling case of the Maniac of Goiânia.

Listen now.

For more than a decade, boys vanished from the streets of Maranhão and Pará. When their bodies were found, they had been sexually assaulted, murdered, and systematically mutilated. The man responsible was a quiet bicycle mechanic named Francisco das Chagas Rodrigues de Brito—one of the most prolific serial killers in Brazilian history.

In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, Alexander Lawson traces the full case of the “Emasculated Boys”: how Chagas operated undetected for years, the breakthrough that led police to the remains under his shack, his confessions and retractions, and the staggering sentence that followed.

A dark, meticulously reported look at a crime that shocked Brazil and exposed how easily the most vulnerable can disappear.

A São Paulo Military Police corporal. A death squad. Over 50 bodies left riddled with bullets in the favelas.

Florisvaldo de Oliveira, known as Cabo Bruno, claimed he was cleaning the streets of criminals. Business owners allegedly paid him. Residents said the neighborhood felt safer. Others lived in terror that a tattoo, a rumor, or the wrong look could get them killed.

In just over a year he became one of Brazil’s most feared justiceiros. After 27 years behind bars he walked free… and 35 days later someone settled the score with 20 bullets.

This is the true story of the police officer who became a serial killer — and the night the streets finally answered back.

At 14 he walked into a town hall with a shotgun and murdered the deputy mayor. By 19 he was already a legend in Brazil’s underworld. Pedro Rodrigues Filho — Pedrinho Matador — claimed he only killed rapists, drug dealers, and murderers. Official records say at least 71 people died by his hand. He said the real number was over 100.

He stabbed his own father 22 times in a prison cell… and allegedly chewed a piece of his heart. He murdered dozens more behind bars. Then he got out, became a YouTuber warning kids to stay out of crime, and was executed in the street in 2023.

This is the true story of Brazil’s most controversial serial killer — the man some call a vigilante and others call pure evil. Hosted by Alexander Lawson.

December 16, 1985. Four bullets cut down the most powerful Mafia boss in America outside a crowded Manhattan steakhouse. Across the street, John Gotti watched it happen—then took his place as the new king of the Gambino family.

For years he beat every charge, smiled for the cameras, and earned the name “Teflon Don.” Nothing stuck… until the tapes, the betrayal, and the bodies finally caught up with him.

In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, host Alexander Lawson reveals the rise, the blood, and the spectacular fall of the flashiest mob boss New York has ever seen.

On a packed Long Island Rail Road train in 1993, a man stood up, pulled out a 9mm, and methodically shot 25 people. Six never made it home.

What followed was one of the most disturbing trials in American history — as the gunman insisted on representing himself and claimed two mysterious men named “Mr. Black” and “Mr. Scar” committed the massacre while he slept.

This is the story of Colin Ferguson, the LIRR shooting, and the night a routine commute turned into pure horror.