When a missing Texas teenager miraculously reappeared in Spain three years after vanishing, his family thought their prayers had been answered. But the boy who came home wasn’t Nicholas Barclay. He was Frédéric Bourdin — a 23-year-old French conman who had stolen a child’s identity, a family’s hope, and the world’s belief in miracles. This chilling story unravels one of the strangest deceptions in true-crime history, exposing how grief and love can blind even the sharpest eyes.

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In February 2003, a gang of Italian thieves pulled off what would be called the Heist of the Century, slipping into Antwerp’s Diamond District, bypassing six layers of security, and walking out with more than $100 million in gems, gold, and cash. No alarms. No witnesses. No fingerprints.

But behind the perfection lay a single fatal mistake that brought the mastermind, Leonardo Notarbartolo, undone.

This is the incredible true story of the world’s most sophisticated vault robbery and how ego, routine, and a half-eaten sandwich ended it all.

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In 1929 Kentucky, a six-year-old boy picked up his father’s shotgun—and changed American legal history.

When little Carl Newton Mahan shot and killed eight-year-old Cecil Darnell after a fight over scrap metal, he became the youngest person ever tried for murder in the United States.

Reporters packed the Knott County Courthouse as the barefoot child sat at the defence table, playing with a toy car while adults debated whether he should spend life in prison.

Convicted of manslaughter and sent to reform school, Carl’s case forced America to confront questions about childhood, morality, and justice that still echo a century later.

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In December 1978, a crew of mobsters slipped into JFK Airport and pulled off the largest cash robbery in American history.

They stole nearly $6 million in unmarked bills and jewels from a Lufthansa vault — and vanished before sunrise.

Behind the job was Jimmy Burke, the real-life inspiration for Goodfellas’ Jimmy Conway.

But what should have been the perfect score quickly turned into a bloodbath as Burke began eliminating anyone who might talk.

This episode takes you inside the heist that shook New York — from the planning inside Robert’s Lounge to the FBI investigation and the chain of murders that followed.

A story of greed, loyalty, and how one night at the airport rewrote organised-crime history.

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Between 1971 and 1972, six young girls vanished from Washington, D.C.

Their bodies were found along the highways leading out of the city — discarded like they didn’t matter. The press called him The Freeway Phantom: a predator who hunted the streets of Anacostia and Prince George’s County, targeting children and leaving behind a single, taunting note.

This episode unravels the terrifying sixteen-month killing spree that paralysed the U.S. capital, the massive multi-agency investigation that followed, and the half-century of silence that still hangs over one of America’s most disturbing unsolved serial murders.

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In 2009, a woman walking her dog in Albuquerque stumbled across a human bone in the desert. What followed would become one of the largest crime scenes in U.S. history. Eleven women and one unborn child were recovered from shallow graves on the city’s West Mesa — victims of a serial killer who, to this day, has never been caught.

This is the chilling story of a community blindsided, of victims who vanished in plain sight, and of an investigation haunted by more questions than answers. Was Lorenzo Montoya the man responsible… or is the real killer still out there?

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In the late 1990s, a Scottish teenager named Elliot Castro discovered just how easy it was to cheat the system. What began with a stolen credit card quickly escalated into an international crime spree.

By his late teens, Castro was living a double life — conning banks, jetting off on first-class flights, staying in luxury hotels, and moving through high-society circles. But behind the glamour, he was a young man hurtling toward disaster.

This episode follows his rise and fall: the scams, the police hunt, the glamorous parties, and the moment it all came crashing down. A true story that proves sometimes the most dangerous weapon isn’t a gun… it’s charm.

Keywords: Elliot Castro, teenage con artist, credit card fraud, Scotland true crime, white collar crime, international fraud, true crime podcast, 1990s scams, financial crime.

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On the night of 11 June 1962, three inmates carried out the most daring prison break in American history — and vanished without a trace. Frank Morris and brothers John and Clarence Anglin spent months chiselling through cell walls, fashioning a raft from raincoats and creating lifelike dummy heads to fool the guards. Their target: the inescapable Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, the infamous island prison built to keep the most dangerous criminals behind bars.

In this gripping episode of Crime at Bedtime, we step inside the cold, concrete cells of Alcatraz to uncover how the plan was set in motion, the extraordinary ingenuity of the escape itself, and the decades-long investigation that followed. From homemade tools to secret alliances and mysterious letters years later, the case remains one of America’s greatest unsolved mysteries.

Did they drown in the icy waters of San Francisco Bay… or did they pull off the impossible?

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Australia’s most infamous serial killer left a trail of terror that changed the country forever. In the early 1990s, Ivan Milat, later dubbed The Backpacker Killer, stalked young travellers hitchhiking along quiet highways in New South Wales. What began as mysterious disappearances soon unravelled into one of the most chilling murder investigations in Australian history.

In this episode of Crime at Bedtime, we take you deep into the world of Ivan Milat, exploring who he was, how he lured his victims, and the brutal methods that stunned the nation. You’ll follow the painstaking police work that finally brought him down, the extraordinary survival story that cracked the case wide open, and the lasting impact his crimes had on how Australia viewed safety and travel.

This is the dark story of a man who became a symbol of fear and the relentless detectives who refused to let him walk free.

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In 1941, a quiet Denver street became the centre of one of the strangest murder cases in American history. A killer hid for months in a cramped crawlspace above his victim’s home — listening, waiting, and moving only when no one was watching. This is the unnerving true story of Theodore Edward Coneys.

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