I think that we have covered on this podcast very well that criminals come in all shapes and sizes.  One thing that does seem to come up fairly often, especially when it comes to killers, is the fact that many of them have higher than average IQ’s.  This week we are going to look at a man who had a good life, had a heck of a lot of brains and then seemingly after what appears to be years of researching and learning about murder he randomly pulled up alongside a perfect stranger and took his life.  What’s more is that the world that was unravelled by investigators was weird and elaborate.  This was a man who seemingly had planned to kill for a long time even though he seemingly did not plan out the circumstances nor the victim.

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Two of the arguments that I think that I have presented both sides of and felt both sides of over the life of this podcast are the argument over whether a criminal deserves a second chance at life and the argument over whether mental health patients should serve time within mental health facilities or prisons.  This episode is going to focus on both of those questions in a very different way and add in a layer of what can happen when a criminal is deported back to their home country.  This episode, in research, made me feel a lot of things and then when I took the time to watch the documentary that was made WITH the man we are about to talk about, I felt a whole new series of things.  Hopefully this case is as interesting to you as it is to me. 

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It is a certain fact that I could continue to write and record episodes of GBNF forever and I would quite  literally never run out of stories to tell or horrors to relay.  Perhaps the saddest part is that there are so many stories that nobody is able to tell because of the complete lack of information and reporting and there are also so many crimes that remain open because of the inability to find guilty parties, lay charges and receive convictions.  This week we are going to talk about a story that is fairly well known and that is one of those cases that just has not ever come to a resolution.  This week we look at the murders of three very young girls that may or may not be connected and the murderer or murderers has never been found. 

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When I was younger I attended a youth conference that was named “Reverse the Curse” and the underlying theme of the conference was that you do not have to be all of the things that happened to you and you don’t have to become the people who raised you.  One of the things that we see a lot when studying true crime is that often people are unable to reverse that curse and they either are doomed to repeat evil actions or they eventually act out against their abusers in ways that are shocking and sometimes, much as we true crime fanatics hate to admit it, they act out against their abusers in ways that some of us are willing to lend a pass to. 

This week we are going to look at a very rare case.  A case where a daughter struck back against her mother who had seemingly turned her into a victim of Munchausen by Proxy.  The daughter grew up believing, and having everyone else around her believing, that she was an incredibly sick young woman whose mom was a saint for taking care of her.  The truth however appears to have been very much the opposite.  

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I once had someone say something that really stuck in my brain for one reason or another and that was you believe that you have done just about all that you can do when your child reaches the age of 18.  You figure that you have helped them navigate some of the worst things that will happen to them when they were very vulnerable.  We talk a lot about jobs that are underpaid and overworked and parenting is certainly at the top of that list.  When you are a parent you are the bad guy to the child or children in your care and you can do no right, then they grow up and they move off and live their own lives.  It’s such an important job, as we all know, in more ways than one being a parent.  Sadly today though, we are again going to talk about a child who committed the ultimate crime of murder against her own mother.

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We talk a lot about the things that make true crime attractive to it’s fans.  For some people it is the psychology, for some people it is the human interest but I think for each and every person that loves true crime it really comes down to at least one common denominator.  Each and every one of us love to listen to a good story.  This week I am going to serve you up a story that covers a whole lot of years and a whole lot of people.  Imagine living your life not knowing that your father or your husband was a killer.  The children and spouses in this story found out exactly that after the man that they knew passed away.  They found out that on a different continent their father had not only killed his parents but he had served time and then escaped from prison.  Does that sound like a story that you may want to listen to?  Well, you have come to the right place! 

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Here on the podcast we have covered many cases that are unsolved and many cases that seem as though they COULD get solved if the right information or the right evidence came to light.  Today we are going to climb into the way-back machine and head to 1920’s Germany though to take a look at what may be Germany’s most well-known unsolved murder.  This week’s case has six murders, strange circumstances and absolutely no resolution.  It has now been over one hundred years since this case took place so it’s obvious that the guilty parties, and anyone that knew who the guilty parties were first hand,  are no longer with us.  What we are left with is plenty of people of interest, plenty of people who believe that they know what happened and the hope that perhaps one day, someone will come forward with evidence that will at least let us know who was behind the horrifying story that wiped out an entire family. 

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It feels like since the dawn of time we have, as a society, tried to find ways to make ourselves feel better than others or tried to find ways to make others look worse than us.  That shows itself in every kind of prejudice that we see around us in our every day lives.  Unfortunately, if you know much at all about true crime you also know that this systemic way of thinking seems to creep into every single level of law enforcement that exists today.  The reality is that much like most professions that exist today, law enforcement also is overworked and under paid.  There simply are not enough people to look into all of the crime that exists and as such you tend to get things like we are going to talk about today.  Certainly, there are more people at fault in this case than investigators but this case was picked up by Esquire Magazine in April 2016 for a reason.  This case was covered because reporter Tom Junod presented that this case was a case where the person at the centre of the story did not trigger what is often called “missing white woman syndrome”.  Instead, he attested that this case showed that even for young women that you would reckon would get a publicity storm around their cases, things like previous criminal records and things like drug addiction can turn the volume way down on a media storm. 

One of the things that people complain about most within legal systems in their countries are the delays in the legal process that are brought on by endless paper-pushing, endless hurdles and what seems to amount to mindless defense in order to keep some of the worst criminals from the worst charges possible for the crimes that they have committed.  Two of the defenses that are very contentious depending who you ask are the defenses to try and keep criminals out of jail or on lighter sentences because of mental health issues or because of drug or alcohol abuse.  This week we are talking about a story where the culprit certainly had both in her past but the jury ruled that her past substance and mental health issues should not keep her from being held responsible for the disgusting acts that she committed against a man that she said that she loved. 

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So many nights on the town end with stories of merriment, joy and good times and yet at the same time there are many nights on the town that wind up with the complete opposite kinds of stories.  When you add alcohol to a situation unfortunately the events of an evening can change at a moment’s notice.  Sadly, no matter how you look at this week’s story it is one of those stories on the awful side of that spectrum.  A group of friends heads out to the bar and one of those friends is never seen again.  To make matters worse, now over twelve years later that night out is still the subject of a missing person’s case that is widely believed to be a homicide investigation as well.  A case where it seems that a lot of people know what happened and yet no answers have been given to the family and no charges have been laid. 

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