Dark and Devious

In 1873, the people of Labette County, Kansas were confronted with a horrible crime. A family from the area, the Benders, had spent the last couple of years robbing and murdering travelers in the area and disposed of many of them in the orchard on their small farm. The discovery of the horrible crime set off a cross-country manhunt and set the people of Kansas on edge. Listen to today's case sourced from the fascinating book: Hell's Half-Acre by Susan Jonusas.

Join us this week for a special 'Show n' Tell' Minisode! Listen as Chris tells us about a chain of mysterious Russian "deaths by suicide" involving prominent businessmen and Patrick gives us a brief history of the hate and discrimination towards the Asian American and Pacific Islander community in the USA.

Sometimes we need to be reminded that the bad guys usually get caught and this week we're talking about some quick true crime cases about some recent dumb criminals. We have a wife who wrote a how-to essay on killing a husband, some battery thieves going after police property, and one guy who just couldn't hold out for the bathroom. These stories will definitely have you shaking your head and wondering what were they thinking!

On August 5, 2017, Emily Claire Hari (known at the time as Michael Hari), Michael McWhorter, and Joe Morris of Clarence, Illinois, detonated an improvised explosive inside the Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Center and Mosque in an effort to scare Muslims into leaving the United States. McWhorter and Morris pled guilty to crimes relating to the attack and Hari was convicted of several crimes in a 2020 federal trial. But despite their charges and sentences, what does that say about future religious hate crimes?  What can we do to raise awareness and stop religious / cultural hate crimes?

How far would you go to prevent a damaging truth from getting out? That is the question that centers around this case that includes lost treasures, forged documents, and the Church of Latter Day Saints (LDS). Documents from the founders of the Mormon faith are extremely valuable to collectors and the church leadership, so when Mark Hofmann began digging up unbelievably rare pieces, high ranking officials took notice. With increasingly valuable material turning up all around Hofmann the higher the payoffs, the higher the danger. Find out how all of this is linked to the bombing deaths of a Salt Lake City businessman (Steve Christensen) and the wife of one of his associates (Kathy Sheets).

Join us for our third minisode where Patrick tells the tale of a coroner's office oopsie poopsie and BIG NO NO!

Spring break. It’s time to cut loose. It’s time to party. And like many teenagers, 17 year Brittanee Drexel just wanted to get away and blow off some steam.  She told her parents she was going to stay at a friend's house, but in reality she snuck away to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, to party with people she thought were her friends.  She was hundreds of miles away from home with people who did not have her best interests at heart. More importantly, she vanished, never to be seen again. While officials believe they know what happened to her, we may never know until something comes up to confirm it.  Listen now for the terrifying, unsolved case, of missing person Brittanee Drexel.

If anyone has any information regarding the disappearance of Brittanee Drexel please contact the Myrtle Beach Police Department at (843) 918-1000, or call the FBI tip line at 1-800-CALL-FBI.

A 67-year-old, Idaho man named Duke E. Wilson, who was on the front lines of the insurrection of January 6, 2021, recently plead guilty to attacking United States Capitol Police. Wilson received a 51 month prison sentence, the second longest handed out so far to a rioter from that day. The sentence shows how serious the threat to democracy was and may indicate how future trials may go for other serious offenders.

Shanda Sharer was a bubbly 12-year-old attending Hazelwood Middle School in New Albany, Ind. She was, by all accounts, a normal girl who made friends easily and had fun at school dances. But it was one such dance that set in motion a chain of events that would soon bring Shanda Sharer’s life to a gruesome, torturous end at the hands of four teenage girls.

*Listeners Advised: This episode includes discussion of sexual assault and the torture and murder of a child.