Hot Dateline Month continues with this breakneck chase down the long dark highway of mental illness. Episode 16 of season 31, entitled "On A Dark, Deserted Highway", begins decades before the terrifying police pursuit that gives this episode its name. It’s the dark saga of a tormented man whose twisted actions towards his wives and loved ones should have resulted in his confinement and treatment years before he went on a deadly shooting spree and high speed chase on a peaceful Montana night. How does one man end up turning against the very system that allowed his crimes to go unchecked for years?  That's the question Christopher and Eric wrestle with in this truly disturbing installment of one of their favorite true crime shows.

Welcome to Hot Dateline Month in which your hosts Christopher and Eric celebrate the iconic, storied and always reliable true crime phenomenon that started their obsession with the genre. And what better way to kick off this tribute than with the GAYEST DATELINE EVER. (That's not what NBC called it, of course.) Impeccably dressed fine arts dealers and terribly twinky con men collide under the scorching Palm Springs sun in the 3,675th episode of the 329th season of DATELINE. (Just kidding. It's actually episode 3 of season 34, so we're not that far off.) "The Prince, The Whiz Kid and the Millionaire" has all the ingredients of a novel written by your hosts poolside after one box of bon bons too many.

Christopher and Eric are throwing a massive wrap party for one of the most exhausting and exhilarating years they've ever lived. No kidding. With ANNE RICE, AN ALL SAINTS' DAY CELEBRATION having been a glowing success in New Orleans on November 1st, and the sparkling film version now available for your free home viewing at AnneRice.com, they're taking time to celebrate some of the films, TV shows and books they didn't write in the previous year, but loved none the less. Care for a handsome British detective anyone? No doubt, several made the list.

You failed us, Party People. We begged and we pleaded and we cried for you to bring us a potential true crime Christmastime story that wasn't another family massacre, and here we are again — and in a tranquil town named for a pretty flower, no less. Ho ho help, it's time for Christopher and Eric to serve up the second episode ever of HOMICIDE FOR THE HOLIDAYS, entitled "Christmas Carnage In Carnation". "No one loves Christmas more than sixty-year old Wayne Anderson and his sixty-one-year old wife Judy"… Well, as we all know on HOMICIDE FOR THE HOLIDAYS, that's their first mistake. What other diabolical events turn this woodsy spread of sheds and trailers into a scene out of a horror movie? On this fateful Christmas Eve night, holy hell is more like it. Get ready for another Crueltide Carol!

Welcome to Crueltide Carols! Tick, tock. Tick, tock. No, it's not the sound of time running out as you rush to get your holiday shopping done. An altogether different race against the clock drives this episode of one of Christopher and Eric's favorite True Crime TV Club offerings, A CRIME TO REMEMBER. In season 5, episode 4, entitled "Coffin For Christmas", we travel to the humid deep South in the 1960's for a tale of twisted love and devious kidnappings at holiday time. Every now and then, your hosts run across a case that seems to have inspired countless movies and episodes of scripted television, and this one fits the bill. On the Twelfth Day of Christmas, we hope this victim gets the freedom (and the oxygen) she desperately needs.

Thanksgiving Beasts lives up to its name with this stomach-churning conclusion. Meet Omaima Nelson. Now that you've met her, run like hell. And don't go in her kitchen for any reason — especially on Thanksgiving. Was she a long suffering abuse victim who finally snapped — as the title of this true crime TV series suggests? Or was she a cool and calculating predator with a taste for human flesh – and cold cash? Perhaps the biggest question is how Christopher and Eric have gone this many years without ever serving up an episode of true crime TV staple SNAPPED. Here's episode season 14, episode 2, entitled "Omaima Nelson".  Now, can someone please recommend a Thanksgiving jewel heist for next year because oh my god.

Time to meet some more Thanksgiving Beasts. Welcome to East Hartford, Connecticut, home to some of the worst “recincrapments” we've ever seen in a true crime TV special and also some armless lizards and inexplicably decapitated fish. We're not kidding. It's all on offer in episode 7 of season 6 of BLOOD RELATIVES, entitled "Thanksgiving Day Charade". We're not sure what the charade is here except for bad wigs and questionable set dressing and some of the worst reenactments we've ever seen. But like so many of our Thanksgiving themed true crime specials, this one does for Turkey Day what JAWS did for the beach. Also, did we mention the lizard?

They did it. After years of cross-country filmmaking, archival preservation, set decorating, musical selections and countless Zoom meetings (so, so many Zoom meetings), Christopher and Eric presented ANNE RICE, AN ALL SAINTS' DAY CELEBRATION to a live audience in New Orleans. To celebrate the release of the event's film version on AnneRice.com, they're bringing you a special episode they recorded in New Orleans the day after the event when the memories and the emotions were fresh and the celebratory beignets were on their way up to their hotel room.

Welcome to Thanksgiving Beasts, when the world of true crime TV sets out to ruin one of America's most popular holidays. When a handsome, well-liked young bartender is shot execution style on a desolate Maryland road the night before Thanksgiving, his community reels, the cops go searching for suspects…and then everything goes as cold as Thanksgiving leftovers. But when the leads finally start pouring in years later, they're delivered by a markedly different cast of characters than the one presented by episode 11 of season 8 of the show NIGHTMARE NEXT DOOR, entitled "Thanksgiving Tragedy". It's not the first time we've caught a "non-fiction" show in the act of departing from the facts of the "true crime" it claims to cover. But fictional characters? This is True Crime TV Club! Join us as we ask if the facts were changed to  protect the innocent? The guilty? The victim?

In which we mark the 35th anniversary of the brutal murder of young gay man named Billy Newton, which was finally solved two years ago thanks to the persistence of a group of determined amateur detectives, Christopher and Eric included. But the case would never have been fully closed if it not for the tireless, diligent work of this episode's special returning guest, Clark Williams. And guess what? He's done it again. With a completely different case in a completely different part of the country. "The Clark Williams Method" has brought healing and justice to another long suffering family, and Clark is back to tell us how. Also, we announce a special change in how we plan to celebrate Billy's memory in the years ahead.