Crime Nerds

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The night of July 22nd, 1957, would change several lives forever and start an investigation that would last almost 50 years. 

A man robbed and sexually assaulted 4 teenagers in California, then just a few minutes later, he murdered two cops. Then, he seemed to have disappeared.

46 years later a man living a completely normal life, with a wife, kids, and a wealthy retirement answered a knock at his door, only to be met with dozens of cops, and it was time to answer to his past. 

You've heard of a Ponzi Scheme. Lots of multi-millionaires and billionaires have been in the news for running Ponzi schemes and getting sent to prison. 

Well, this episode covers the man that the scheme is named after. 

Charles Ponzi had $2.50 cents when he arrived in America in the early 1900s. He had even less when he left 30 something years later, but in the time that he was in America, he conned thousands of people out of millions of dollars. 

This is the story of how he did it. How he rose to millions and how he lost it all. 

Thank you for listening to this episode. 

If you would like to join the Crime Nerds fan club there are two ways. One is through Buzzsprout subscriptions, you can sign up by clicking on one of the "locked" episodes that show up in the podcast feed or you can join on Patreon at the link below. I greatly appreciate all of the support for this podcast! 

Subscriber-only episode

The Briley Brothers were three brothers, Linwood, James Jr. and Anthony Briley. From a young age, the three shared very concerning behavior. While they were well liked around the neighborhood for helping elderly neighbors, behind closed doors they had exotic pets and for fun would feed them live animals. 

As the three got older, they had a seven month crime spree through Richmond, Virginia where they murdered several people. 

Once they were eventually caught, it wasn't over. Because two of the three brothers orchestrated what sounds like a scene straight out of a horror movie. A prison escape where several convicted murderers escaped death row. 

Subscriber-only episode

This is one of the craziest stories that we have covered. 

It takes place over the course of a few weeks in Sydney, Australia in 1935. 

A shark was captured and placed on display in a tank. The shark threw up an arm, with a distinct tattoo. This led investigators to a missing person, which turned into a murder investigation. 

When investigators started narrowing in on a suspect, he attempted to take his own life, when that didn't work, he led cops on a boat chase (yes, a boat chase). Once he was caught, things in the case changed drastically...

A lot of times I wonder about the timing of just how things seem to work out. For example, if you’re running late going somewhere because you forgot your phone in the house, then on your way, there is a bad car crash, that could have lined up with where you would have been if you weren’t two minutes late. Now, that’s just a very small scale example of this…but a theory that I tend to think of probably too much, of how one small decision leads to something later down the line. 

While researching this case, I couldn’t help but think about that a lot, if the timing of several small things would have been a little bit different, would we be talking about this case today? This is the story of Rico Harris. 

Thank you all for the support! 

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In 1980, a young couple from Florida moved to Texas in search of a better job opportunity. Just a few months later, their family quit receiving letters from them. 

The family in Florida was visited by a religious group that told them the young couple had joined their group and was cutting out their family, so they would never hear from them again.

40 years later...the family learned that the young couple were the unidentified victim's of a gruesome murder scene in Texas in 1980.

When the family found out, their first question was, "What about the baby?"

Along the way, several organizations including a popular true crime podcast network, Audiochuck (Crime Junkies, Counter Clock, Red Ball...many, many more) got involved to help fund the search for answers, from genealogy testing to spreading the word through social media. 

Then, this case was linked to a pretty large religious cult that spread across the south west of the United State.