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Weatherly/Freeland, Pennsylvania. 2016.
 A house fire at 234 Third Street looks like simple insurance fraud… until federal agents start pulling at one landlord’s life and uncover something far worse.

Roberto Torner—a convicted felon turned “King of Weatherly”—ran a Pepto-Bismol-pink boarding house called The Cottage Hotel, collecting vulnerable tenants the way he collected distressed properties. Inside that world, fear was currency. Loyalty was demanded. And one man’s disappearance cracked the whole thing open.

That man was Jose “Pepe” Herran—a Cuban immigrant, a father, and a confidential informant for the FBI. Torner called him “brother.” Then Pepe got into a van headed for the woods of Buck Mountain Road… and never came back.

What followed was not just murder—it was domination. A cult-like kingdom built on threats, weapons, and control. And when investigators searched Torner’s properties after the fire, they found an arsenal, a trailer with blood hidden under oil-based paint, and a burn pit that would reveal the most haunting evidence of all: human skull fragments.

This episode stays close to court testimony and investigative records—and when we infer, we’ll tell you.

Content warning: graphic violence, desecration of a body, drugs, coercion, murder.

WHAT YOU’LL HEAR IN THIS EPISODE

• How a 2:00 a.m. fire in Weatherly triggered an ATF investigation that exposed a hidden “kingdom”
• The Pepto-Bismol-pink boarding house locals couldn’t ignore—and why tenants were too afraid to speak
• The eerie Buck Mountain Road property near “The Stone Couch” legend
• The “vampire disease” witness who watched Pepe enter a van and never return
• Dummy bullets, oil-based paint, bleach, and the chilling signs of premeditation
• How prosecutors built a first-degree murder case with no body—and still won
• The convictions and sentences that finally ended Torner’s control

True crime, Pennsylvania true crime, NEPA, Weatherly Pennsylvania, Freeland Pennsylvania, Roberto Torner, Jose Pepe Herran, Cottage Hotel Freeland, Buck Mountain Road, ATF investigation, FBI informant, murder without a body, cult-like control, landlord crime, arson investigation

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CRIMERY is reported, written, and hosted by Jennifer Novotney. Produced by Timothy Novotney.

Tip line & inquiries: [email protected]

If you found this episode valuable, follow, rate, and review in your podcast app it really helps others find the show.

Legal: Everyone mentioned is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Content may include descriptions of violence. Listener discretion advised.

©2025 CRIMERY. All rights reserved.

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It’s an ordinary Thursday night in Shavertown, Pennsylvania — until a family member walks through an unlocked door and finds the lights on… a ceiling fan still spinning… and a trail of blood cutting through the house like a roadmap of violence.

At the end of that trail is 56-year-old Jonathan Balester, stabbed repeatedly in the back inside his own home. No forced entry. No robbery. Just brutal, personal violence in a quiet neighborhood where residents said “nothing ever happens.”

Jonathan wasn’t just a name in a case file. He was a longtime local businessman, deeply rooted in the community — a man who opened his doors to people trying to get their lives back on track, taught Bible studies at the Luzerne County Correctional Facility, and even cared for stray cats.

For 14 years, investigators stayed tight-lipped and the case went cold. The family believed they knew who did it. Police said they had a suspect. Still — no arrest.

Then everything changed.

In a major break, Pennsylvania State Police arrested 69-year-old Frederick Balester and charged him with criminal homicide. Authorities allege the motive was “murder for profit,” tied to the attempted sale of the family business — and that evidence reexamined years later finally helped crack the case.

Content warning: graphic violence and murder.

WHAT YOU’LL HEAR IN THIS EPISODE

• The chilling discovery inside 137 North Lehigh Street — lights on, door unlocked, blood trail through the home
• Why “no forced entry” immediately changed the suspect pool
• What we know about Jonathan’s last 48 hours — and why investigators begged the public to help fill in the blanks
• How the case stayed cold for 14 years despite evidence collection and public appeals
• The forensic and investigative developments that led to an arrest — and why prosecutors say it was murder for profit

Have a tip or case suggestion? [email protected]
Host: Jennifer Novotney
Show: CRIMERY

Support the show

CRIMERY is reported, written, and hosted by Jennifer Novotney. Produced by Timothy Novotney.

Tip line & inquiries: [email protected]

If you found this episode valuable, follow, rate, and review in your podcast app it really helps others find the show.

Legal: Everyone mentioned is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Content may include descriptions of violence. Listener discretion advised.

©2025 CRIMERY. All rights reserved.

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Victorian Pittsburgh trusted her with the sick.

Martha Grinder was the woman neighbors called when illness crept into their homes — the quiet caregiver who brought soup, tea, clean linens, and patience. She sat through long nights at the bedside, whispering comfort, holding hands, earning a reputation as the perfect Victorian woman.

And then people died.

In this episode of CRIMERY: True Crime Uncovered, we examine one of the earliest and most disturbing “angel of death” cases in American history. Through court testimony, contemporary reporting, and forensic science that was revolutionary for its time, we trace how Martha Grinder used trust, caregiving, and arsenic to poison her neighbors — slowly, deliberately, and repeatedly.

The case unravels when one husband notices a pattern no one else wants to see, and insists on an autopsy that exposes massive arsenic poisoning. What follows is a sensational Victorian trial, a chilling confession, and an execution that forces society to confront an uncomfortable truth: some predators hide behind compassion, not violence.

We stay close to historical record — and when we infer, we tell you.

What you’ll hear in this episode:

• How a routine arrest and mounting suspicions cracked open deaths long dismissed as natural
 • Why arsenic was the perfect Victorian murder weapon — tasteless, legal, and almost impossible to detect
 • How a husband’s refusal to accept a diagnosis forced one of the earliest forensic poison investigations
 • Why prosecutors believed Martha Grinder wasn’t motivated by greed or revenge — but by fascination with death itself
 • How this 1860s case created the blueprint for modern “angel of death” killers

Content warning: poisoning, prolonged suffering, graphic descriptions of illness and execution, murder.

Have a tip or a case suggestion? [email protected]

Learn more: crimery.show
Host: Jennifer Novotney
Show: CRIMERY — True Crime Uncovered

Support the show

CRIMERY is reported, written, and hosted by Jennifer Novotney. Produced by Timothy Novotney.

Tip line & inquiries: [email protected]

If you found this episode valuable, follow, rate, and review in your podcast app it really helps others find the show.

Legal: Everyone mentioned is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Content may include descriptions of violence. Listener discretion advised.

©2025 CRIMERY. All rights reserved.

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Eighteen months after Holly Maddux was murdered, her killer walked free on bail — and vanished into Europe.

In Part Two of The Unicorn Killer, the story shifts from the crime itself to the longest and most relentless manhunt most people have never heard of. As Ira Einhorn disappears across borders, changing names and building a new life abroad, Holly’s father, Fred Maddux, makes a promise at her grave: he will bring her killer home — no matter how long it takes.

What follows is an eighteen-year pursuit across continents, courtrooms, and governments. A private citizen takes on international law, forces Pennsylvania to change its statutes, and challenges Europe’s human-rights protections — all to prevent a murderer from escaping justice through paperwork and time.

This episode is not about mystery.
 It’s about endurance.
 About obsession.
 About what justice costs — and who pays the price for refusing to let a crime be forgotten.

CRIMERY is reported, written, and hosted by Jennifer Novotney. Produced by Timothy Novotney.

Tip line & inquiries: [email protected]

If you found this episode valuable, follow, rate, and review in your podcast app it really helps others find the show.

Legal: Everyone mentioned is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Content may include descriptions of violence. Listener discretion advised.

©2025 CRIMERY. All rights reserved.

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For years, Ira Einhorn was celebrated as a visionary.

He called himself The Unicorn — a peace activist, environmental prophet, and counterculture icon with powerful friends and devoted followers. He spoke about consciousness, love, and the future of humanity. People believed him.

Then, in March of 1979, police opened a padlocked closet in his Philadelphia apartment.

Inside was a steamer trunk.
 Inside that trunk was the body of Holly Maddux.

In Part One of this two-part Crimery series, we peel back the mythology surrounding Ira Einhorn to reveal the man behind the movement. Through his own journals, survivor testimony, and long-buried history, we trace a disturbing pattern of control, sadism, and violence — years before Holly was murdered.

This episode isn’t about speculation.
 It’s about how charisma becomes camouflage.
 How power protects predators.
 And how a man who preached love lived with a corpse beside his bed for eighteen months.

Next episode: the arrest, the bail that set him free, and the international manhunt that followed.

Content warning: intimate partner violence, homicide.

CRIMERY is reported, written, and hosted by Jennifer Novotney. Produced by Timothy Novotney.

Tip line & inquiries: [email protected]

If you found this episode valuable, follow, rate, and review in your podcast app it really helps others find the show.

Legal: Everyone mentioned is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Content may include descriptions of violence. Listener discretion advised.

©2025 CRIMERY. All rights reserved.

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On February 22, 1985, in rural Winfield Township, Pennsylvania, eight-year-old Cherrie Mahan stepped off her school bus at 4:10 p.m. She had only 150 feet to walk home.

She never made it.

Witnesses reported two suspicious vehicles near the stop—a bright blue van with a painted skier mural and a small blue car. In the snow, investigators found tire marks… but no footprints leading up Cherrie’s driveway.

The case became one of Pennsylvania’s most haunting child disappearances—fueling nationwide awareness when Cherrie was chosen as the first missing child featured on National Center for Missing & Exploited Children postcards.

And now—four decades later—new leads, a major reward, and active searches have reignited hope that the truth may finally come out.

In this episode of CRIMERY, we reconstruct the last known moments of Cherrie’s walk home, the vehicles that still haunt the investigation, the anonymous “Pastor Justice” letter, the decades of false claims, and the renewed 2025 push to finally bring Cherrie back to her mother, Janice.

Content advisory: child abduction, violence, and sensitive details involving a missing child case.

If you have information about Cherrie Mahan, contact:
 • Pennsylvania State Police Butler Barracks: 724-284-8100
• Pennsylvania Crime Stoppers: 1-800-4PA-TIPS (8477)
You can also email us at [email protected]
.

CRIMERY is reported, written, and hosted by Jennifer Novotney. Produced by Timothy Novotney.

Tip line & inquiries: [email protected]

If you found this episode valuable, follow, rate, and review in your podcast app it really helps others find the show.

Legal: Everyone mentioned is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Content may include descriptions of violence. Listener discretion advised.

©2025 CRIMERY. All rights reserved.

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On November 28, 1969—the quiet day after Thanksgiving—a 22-year-old Penn State graduate student walked into Pattee Library to retrieve one final source for a research paper.

She never walked out.

Betsy Ruth Aardsma was stabbed once—cleanly, precisely—between the shelves of the basement stacks. No scream. No visible blood. Students and staff believed she had collapsed from a medical emergency and unknowingly wiped away crucial evidence while trying to save her life.

By the time doctors discovered the wound, the killer had already left the building—possibly after calmly telling others, “Some girl back there needs help.”

More than fifty years later, no one has been charged.

In this episode of CRIMERY, we reconstruct the final hour of Betsy’s life, examine the man known only as “the man in the stacks,” and explore how a murder committed in broad daylight—with witnesses nearby—became one of Pennsylvania’s most baffling unsolved cases.

Content advisory: violence against a young woman.

Keywords: Betsy Aardsma, Penn State, Pattee Library, unsolved murder, 1969 cold case, library homicide, Pennsylvania State Police.

If you have information about this case, please contact Pennsylvania State Police.
 You can also reach us at [email protected]
.

CRIMERY is reported, written, and hosted by Jennifer Novotney. Produced by Timothy Novotney.

Tip line & inquiries: [email protected]

If you found this episode valuable, follow, rate, and review in your podcast app it really helps others find the show.

Legal: Everyone mentioned is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Content may include descriptions of violence. Listener discretion advised.

©2025 CRIMERY. All rights reserved.

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A 26-year-old woman vanishes from Long Pond, PA on May 11, 1983. Her husband waits 72 hours to call police. Fifteen years later, two separate accounts surface—one claiming her remains were dumped off Seaside Heights, another pointing to a shaft in Centralia, the ghost town that’s been burning underground since 1962. If investigators are right, Susan Cerritelli rests in a place no one can safely search—an impossible grave.

In this episode, we trace the timeline, the red flags, and why “no-body” cases are so hard to prosecute—then confront the grim reality of Centralia’s mine fire and what it means for a family that has waited more than forty years for answers.

Content advisory: domestic violence, homicide, missing person.

Keywords: Centralia mine fire, Long Pond, Poconos, 1983 disappearance, no-body homicide, Pennsylvania State Police, Seaside Heights NJ.

Have information about this case? PSP Wyoming Barracks: 570-697-2000 • [email protected]

CRIMERY is reported, written, and hosted by Jennifer Novotney. Produced by Timothy Novotney.

Tip line & inquiries: [email protected]

If you found this episode valuable, follow, rate, and review in your podcast app it really helps others find the show.

Legal: Everyone mentioned is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Content may include descriptions of violence. Listener discretion advised.

©2025 CRIMERY. All rights reserved.

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Eighteen-year-old Jennifer Barziloski walks out into a warm June night in 2001 and never makes it home. Three years later, her closest friend, 22-year-old Phylicia Thomas—the one who wouldn’t stop asking what happened to Jennifer—vanishes too. One skull is found along an ATV trail years later; the other woman is still missing. The same names, the same party talk, the same rural pocket of Luzerne County keep surfacing. Coincidence—or a pattern everyone’s been too afraid to say out loud?

In this episode, we trace parallel timelines, pressure-test statements, and follow the geography that ties Lake Township, Hunlock Creek, and Ross Township together. We center the families’ voices and the records they’ve guarded for two decades, while separating rumor from what’s in the paperwork. Someone at that party knows exactly what happened. If fear kept you quiet then, it doesn’t have to now.

Content note: non-graphic discussion of suspected homicide, sexual violence, and post-mortem concealment.

Tips (anonymous welcomed):
 PA State Police – Wyoming Barracks: 570-697-2000
 PA Crime Stoppers: 1-800-4PA-TIPS (1-800-472-8477)
 Email us: [email protected]

Sources include Pennsylvania State Police materials, regional reporting (Times Leader, Citizens’ Voice, WNEP), court records, and family statements.

CRIMERY is reported, written, and hosted by Jennifer Novotney. Produced by Timothy Novotney.

Tip line & inquiries: [email protected]

If you found this episode valuable, follow, rate, and review in your podcast app it really helps others find the show.

Legal: Everyone mentioned is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Content may include descriptions of violence. Listener discretion advised.

©2025 CRIMERY. All rights reserved.

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An 11-year-old leaves Mercy Hospital in Scranton with a stuffed animal for her mom and starts the short walk home—broad daylight, one block to go. Witnesses see a girl matching Michelle “Jolene” Lakey get into a light yellow car near North Washington Ave. She is never seen again.

This episode of CRIMERY traces the chilling threads that still haunt Northeast PA: the three-day ransom call that named Nay Aug Park, the unexplained purse found on Jolene’s dresser, and years of scrutiny around a familiar adult she called “Uncle Frank”—later convicted in a separate child-murder case. We follow renewed leads sparked by a 2020 anonymous letter about screams and fire along I-81, and the annual August 26th walk that retraces Jolene’s final route, feather and purple ribbon in hand.

You’ll hear:

• Timeline: Mercy Hospital → Myrtle St. → North Washington Ave. → the light yellow car
• Why the “purse on the dresser” detail fractures the case narrative
• Known persons of interest and what’s confirmed vs. unresolved
• How modern re-checks (letters, searches, community memory) keep the case alive

Content warning: missing child, potential child homicide.

Know something? Tips can be anonymous.
Scranton Police: 570-348-4139 • PA State Police: 570-963-3156 • NCMEC: 1-800-THE-LOST
Reward: $5,000

Host: Jennifer Novotney • Show: CRIMERY – True Crime Uncovered

CRIMERY is reported, written, and hosted by Jennifer Novotney. Produced by Timothy Novotney.

Tip line & inquiries: [email protected]

If you found this episode valuable, follow, rate, and review in your podcast app it really helps others find the show.

Legal: Everyone mentioned is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Content may include descriptions of violence. Listener discretion advised.

©2025 CRIMERY. All rights reserved.