DINNER PARTNERS with Christopher & Eric

This episode of Heartland Horrors Month surprises Christopher and Eric with a 1990's serial killing spree that found gay men being targeted in one of the Midwest's most progressive cities, a story that somehow managed to escape the notice of your queer-savvy hosts until now. In season 2, episode 6 of HOMETOWN HOMICIDE entitled "Unsafe Anywhere", we head to Minneapolis/St. Paul where a vicious, self-loathing killer stalks the gay men who've sought sanctuary in its more accepting neighborhoods. But a responsive police force — with some help from an undercover gay detective — put a stop to the murders before they could exact an even more terrible toll. Still, why are many of us just learning of this story now? Was it swallowed up by the nightmarish murder spree and arrest of a more famous Midwestern slayer of queer men?

Heartland Horrors Month continues as Christopher and Eric give the coast-hugging, city dwellers among us several good reasons not to leave their urban idylls. And season 5, episode 1 of HOMICIDE FOR THE HOLIDAYS — never a show for the faint of heart — just might take the cake for most gruesome episode in TDPS history. In "The Last Thanksgiving", your hosts are confronted by a crime that is shocking in both its grotesqueness and its competent incompetence, leaving them with stunned questions about the motivations at play, motivations that seem to lie just outside the reach of this hour of television they watched with jaws on the floor and sick bags within reach. Happy Thanksgiving it isn't.  Sorry. Or, you’re welcome.

Leave it to Christopher and Eric to come up with reasons *not* to go home for the holidays. That's apparently the objective of Heartland Horrors Month here at TDPS, starting with this twisted tale of double lives and chatty wives. In season 1, episode 6 of MURDER IN THE HEARTLAND entitled, "A Deceitful Heart", we head to a Detroit suburb where everyone's desperate to tell you what a quaint and wholesome town they live in while simultaneously recounting a disturbing tale of addiction, murder and (incompetent) deceit. Quaint is in the eye of the beholder, we guess. Or the guilty. Does "double-life" end up being code for "gay twist"? Follow along with your ever curious hosts to find out.

In the second episode in a two parter serving up the landmark HBO documentary series LAST CALL: WHEN A SERIAL KILLER STALKED QUEER NEW YORK, Christopher and Eric are left breathless. The reveals come fast and furious throughout as the conclusion comes into focus in this moving exploration of a serial killer who used homophobia to thrive. Forensic science advances. A killer is unmasked. Heroes and advocates step forward to bring long overdue justice to an investigation marked by bigotry and dismissal. It's a deeply upsetting and satisfying conclusion to a confounding story. And for your hosts, LAST CALL makes for a painfully nostalgic tour through a challenging and not too distant period in gay history. But it's also the story of the persistence and dedication required to bring justice when the justice system spent years refusing to see the victims as fully human.  (We're looking at you, NYPD.)

Some murders happen twice in a row. First comes the killing, then comes the erasure of the victim by the very institutions equipped to find the perpetrator.  Christopher and Eric mark the tragic anniversary of the brutal slaying of Billy Newton, whose decades old murder was solved thanks in part to the attention brought to it by this podcast, by serving up the first two episodes of a landmark HBO documentary LAST CALL: WHEN A SERIAL KILLER STALKED QUEER NEW YORK. As the dismembered bodies of two queer men turn up outside New York City in the early 90's, the similarities between their stories feel starkly alike — victims who struggled with homophobia and shame, a media that refused to see them as full-fledged humans. Your hosts share their own heartbreaking and disturbing experience of watching Billy's story get erased by supposed allies once again. It's all build up for their next episode, in which the shocking twists at the end of LAST CALL leave Christopher and Eric breathless.

Sometimes a host of gory details only serves to distract from the real story. Eric believes that may well be the case with this episode of HOMICIDE FOR THE HOLIDAYS, season 4, episode 1, entitled "Halloween Horror". When the Liskey family is massacred in their sleep the night before Halloween, their isolated Ohio farmhouse becomes a scene of horrifying mystery. Blood splatter evidence abounds, but what led to this shocking outburst of savage violence against this seemingly happy Oak Harbor family? Was there a deeper and darker secret here this particular hour of television was too timid to lay bare? Brotherly love gone tragically wrong, perhaps? Bring your theories to the table. Eric has his own, as always.

We’re renaming October as we celebrate the legacy of our beloved Premiere Party Person, Anne Rice, born this month of darkness, mystery and transition. Travel along with Christopher and Eric has they share their memories of the woman who changed fiction forever. As your hosts reminiscence about book signings and fan club gatherings of yore, we'll even hear from Anne herself, with a special archival interview recorded in her New Orleans hotel suite the morning after a glittering costume ball celebrating Prince Lestat's return to bestsellerdom. Your hosts also bring you the latest about Anne's forthcoming Celebration of Life in New Orleans and how you can get all the updates.

Back to School month comes to a devastating conclusion with this disturbing exploration of a case that's been the butt of too many jokes and not enough explorations into the twisted manipulations employed by the seemingly gentle predator at its core.  As Christopher and Eric serve up the documentary MARK KAY LETOURNEAU: NOTES ON A SCANDAL, they're whisked back to the 1990's when a school teacher's shocking (and criminal) sexual affair with an underage male student made headlines around the world. But what at first threatens to be an apologia for an abuser turns into a deep dive into a legacy of obsession and abuse. Yours hosts are left wondering what would have become of young Vili Fualaau if he hadn't crossed paths with this deceptive predator.

It's a quiet night in a small Texas panhandle town when one of its most beloved high school students vanishes, leaving behind a threadbare trail of mystifying clues. Within hours of the discovery of Tom Brown's abandoned SUV, one of the most baffling unsolved true crime stories of a generation is born. What truly happened to this beloved high school senior who'd recently been cut from the football team and turned his attention to the theater in response? As Christopher and Eric serve up episode 2 of season 1 of MURDER UNDER THE FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS entitled "Where Is Tom Brown?" on Discovery Plus, they find themselves awash in conspiracies and baffled by the mysterious appearance of various pieces of key evidence years after the young man failed to return home. As Eric confronts whether or not the local journalist at the center of the episode is too reflexively (and conservatively) dismissive of some of the more outlandish theories of the case, Christopher reveals a key detail that was strangely omitted from the episode.

Back to School Month continues as Christopher and Eric head to a posh New England prep school where secrecy and lies mask a legacy of abuse. But this tragedy extends far beyond the leafy borders of the seemingly idyllic campus of St. George's School, founded in the 19th Century to educate the offspring of the Gilded Age elite. A stunning expose in Vanity Fair magazine unveils the lengths administrators went to in order to protect the predators in their midst and the school's prestigious reputation. Christopher and Eric work to keep their tempers in check as they serve up episode 10 of season 3 of the series VANITY FAIR CONFIDENTIAL entitled, "St. George's Hidden Dragons" on Max and Discovery Plus. Brace yourself as you discover the true and terrible meaning of the term "passing the trash".