Come Closer

By Rae ReviewSociety & Culture True Crime

Come Closer episodes

October 14 A Cold Season: A Christmas Horror Story (with Christian Jude Grillo & Andrew Hunsicker)
🎬Join my movie club → https://www.patreon.com/c/raereview/membership

Come closer. It's darker than you think.
Most Christmas movies want you warm. This one wants you honest.
Director Christian Jude Grillo and producer and star Andrew Hunsicker of Intruder Films join me to talk about A Cold Season. It’s a snowbound Christmas horror film about Jacob, a man so lonely and so sure he can freeze out his pain that the season starts freezing everyone around him.
Christian wrote most of the script for everyone who finds Christmas hard. Andrew plays a man who barely speaks, and he still made me laugh before breaking my heart in a therapy circle.

The Verdict: Which ring of hell does Jacob belong?

🎄 A Cold Season premieres November 10 on Roku, Tubi, Xumo, Amazon, Google Play and more.

Content note: depression, substance use, grief, an injured animal (AI-generated; no animals were harmed).
Follow Intruder Films:
Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/intruder_films/
TikTok → https://www.tiktok.com/@intruderfilms
Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61565104185164

Andrew Hunsicker:
Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/andrew.hunsicker/ ·
Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/andrew.hunsicker/
Christian Jude Grillo: on Facebook, along with Potent Media

Come closer.

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1 hr 34 min
October 01 Come Closer
The closer you look, the darker it gets.

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1 min
September 30 The Green River Killer Hated Women. He Told Maria DiLorenzo Why.
The Green River Killer was also an unassuming-looking man named Gary Ridgway. He made a bet that if he killed women society had already written off, nobody would come looking. For nearly 20 years, he won and got away with it.
After he was caught, Gary Ridgway refused to talk to reporters. Then crime journalist Maria DiLorenzo mailed him a letter, and three weeks later her phone rang. For two years he called her, hundreds of times. He lied constantly. He invented rivals for his own story. He tested what she would tolerate, and he started to see her as a potential victim. She stayed on the line for the women he never named.
Tonight Maria tells me what it's like to truly know a killer, what it cost her to replay every call while writing "Confessions of the Green River Killer", and the two women whose cases she's still fighting to get reopened.
Viewer discretion is advised. This episode includes discussion of murder, sexual violence, and manipulation.
LINKS:
📖 Get Maria DiLorenzo's book, "Confessions of the Green River Killer": ⁠⁠https://link.amazon/B0j5A0aHt⁠⁠
🖤 Join the Closer Circle on Patreon: my Movie Club, gated episodes, Goddess Mode album, and uncensored + gated episodes: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/cw/raereview⁠
🕯️ The Witness Library | 50 true crime documentaries that got it right. (free): ⁠https://raereview.com/products/the-witness-library-by-rae-review⁠

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2 hr 13 min
September 17 Betty Broderick: The Betrayal Trauma Behind Her Infamous Crime
Get my list of 50 essential true crime docs ⁠⁠⁠HERE⁠
Betty Broderick is often remembered as the ultimate woman scorned, but that story leaves out the psychological damage, manipulation, and betrayal that pushed her to the edge. If you think you know this infamous case, this episode will change the way you see it.
Rae Review unpacks the rise and collapse of Betty and Dan Broderick’s marriage: from the years Betty supported Dan through medical school, law school, and four children, to the affair with 21-year-old legal secretary Linda Kolkina and the brutal unraveling that followed. The case is famous, but the deeper question is the one most retellings skip:
What happens when betrayal trauma, gaslighting, and a no-fault divorce system combine to strip someone of their reality, their children, and their future?

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10 min
September 09 The Vampire's Cult - with investigative journalist Chet Hardin
Inside the ‘Vampire Cult’ Murder Case: Chet Hardin on Sydney Loofe, Aubrey Trail & Bailey Boswell.
🩸 GET CHET'S BOOK - "The Vampire's Cult"
→ https://chethardin.com/order-book
📱 FOLLOW CHET — Instagram & Threads
→ @chethardin, @chet-hardin.bsky.social
🖤 MY PATREON - The Closer Circle
Early access to gated + uncensored episodes, Goddess Mode (my private podcast album), and my God-Tier Comeback Vault
→ https://www.patreon.com/cw/raereview

Rae interviews investigative journalist and author Chet Hardin about his book "The Vampire’s Cult: The Untold Story of Obsession, Control, and a Shocking Small Town Murder," exploring why the case reads like “horror crime.”
They recount how 24-year-old Sydney Loofe went on a Tinder date with Bailey Boswell. Hardin details Bailey’s troubled background, her meeting with lifelong felon Aubrey Trail, and how he used money, manipulation, and a vampire/witch “coven” con to recruit and control multiple young women with degrading rules and threats.
Credits:
Video editor / Sound Design: [email protected]

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1 hr 40 min
September 03 MEDUSA: I Knew Her Before She Was a Monster
What are your thoughts?
Get my list of essential true crime docs ⁠HERE
I'm Rae Review, Aries Goddess and Keeper of Dark Stories. Today, I'm telling my version of the story of Medusa. The myth, the misogyny, and how the "monster” narrative was edited over time.
I'm 40,000 years old. I was there, and it's crazy how things get misinterpreted through time.
Athena, Poseidon, the male poets, the hair snakes. How did it all start?

Want to Come Closer? Join my Closer Circle on Patreon: HERE

00:00 Come Closer Intro
01:16 How This Podcast Works
02:49 Medusa Before The Curse
03:18 Poseidon And Athena's Punishment06:06 Exiled As A Monster
07:53 Perseus Gets The Quest
09:29 The Unfair Assassination
10:01 Medusa's Head As Trophy
11:07 Older Myths And Ovid's Edit
15:07 Was Athena Protecting Her
17:18 Modern Meaning And Moral
20:46 Final Thoughts And Outro

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24 min
August 19 Amy Fisher: The Long Island Lolita was a Groomed Child
Get my list of essential true crime docs HERE
In 1992, a 17-year-old girl named Amy Fisher shot Mary Jo Buttafuoco in the face on her own front step. Within weeks, America had a nickname for her: the Long Island Lolita. Within a year, all three major networks aired competing made-for-TV movies about her, and roughly half the country watched at least one.
Almost nobody asked about the 35-year-old married man who had been sleeping with her since she was 16.
This is the story of Amy Fisher, Joey Buttafuoco, and Mary Jo Buttafuoco — a case that became the blueprint for how tabloid media turns a groomed child into a villain and a predator into a lovable rogue. We cover how Joey Buttafuoco met a 16-year-old at his Long Island auto body shop, the mechanics of grooming and how predators select and isolate a target, the DARVO playbook he ran when the story broke, and the sentencing gap that gave Amy Fisher seven years while the man convicted of statutory rape served four months.

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44 min
August 12 The 9 Rings of Eugenics
You've seen the iceberg videos. Surface level at the top, the unspeakable at the bottom. I like the format. I just think it's shallow.
So this is mine. Nine rings, not one iceberg, because when I sort a subject by how bad it gets, I use the system I know best. I've been to all nine and I know the bartenders.
The rules are simple. Ring one is the tip: the part you've heard of, the part that sounds almost reasonable. Ring nine is the bottom, and nobody goes down there voluntarily. Each ring is worse than the last. Three rings per episode, three episodes, all the way down.
We're starting with eugenics.
Not because it's the darkest subject I know, but because it's the one that most people think is finished. It isn't. And it didn't begin with a monster; it began with a statistician, a respectable institution, and a very reasonable idea about improving the human race.
It gets worse from here. It always does.
Come closer.
xx Rae Review

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17 min
August 05 Nikki Addimando: The Gun Was His. She Got 19 Years to Life. (with Edward Cohn)
Rae is joined by defense attorney Edward Cohn as they discuss the story of Nikki Addimando.
A woman told police, very calmly, that she'd just shot the father of her children. She was telling the truth and had been for years. Nobody listened. This was a complicated case about self-defense, violence, and toxic relationship dynamics.
Listen as Edward Cohn provides his insights about his experience in the legal system, his opinion on this story and how you can protect yourself.
⚠️ Discretion advised: domestic violence and s**ual abuse.

Find Edward Cohn Defense Attorney at cohnjustice.com.

Witness Library here:

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50 min
July 29 Dr. Death: When Confidence Becomes a Weapon
Get my list of essential true crime documentaries HERE
Christopher Duntsch, "Dr. Death", maimed 33 patients and killed two, and every one of them walked into his Dallas operating room voluntarily and said thank you.
This isn't a story about a bad surgeon. It's about how much benefit of the doubt a confident man gets for free, and who pays for it.
A true crime and dark history episode on medical malpractice, institutional cover-up, and the Texas Medical Board's two-year shrug — with a verdict, and a ring of hell for everyone who earned one.
Severe discretion advised: surgical injury and death.
I tell the truth. You decide what to believe. Come closer.
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Credits: Video editor / Sound Design: [email protected]

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29 min