The horrors inside the Knotek home escalate as Shelly’s cruelty consumes everyone around her—family, friends, and anyone who dares to care. In Part 2, Marina covers the final years of Shelly’s reign of abuse and the shocking truth that finally brought it all to light.

From the outside, the Knotek home looked ordinary, just another farmhouse tucked behind the trees on the Washington coast. Inside, though, things were different. Part I traces Shelly Knotek’s path from troubled daughter to abusive wife and mother, as her control and cruelty escalate—ending with the death of family friend Kathy Loreno.

In the fall of 1982, a wave of sudden deaths swept through the Chicago area — healthy people collapsing just hours after taking Extra Strength Tylenol. As panic spread, shelves were cleared, public trust shattered, and investigators raced to find out who had poisoned one of America’s most trusted products.

In 1987, a 911 call from a Philadelphia payphone led police to a row house on North Marshall Street—and to horrors they could barely comprehend. Women chained in a basement. Human remains in the freezer. A pot boiling on the stove. At the center of it all was Gary Heidnik, a preacher and self-styled investor whose neighbors thought he was eccentric but harmless. In this episode, we unravel Heidnik’s disturbing childhood, his twisted church, the pit in his basement, and the crimes that made him one of the most notorious killers in American history.

In September 1989, Annamaria Phelps and Daniel Lauer set out on what should have been a short drive. Days later, their car turned up miles off course, and their bodies were discovered in the woods nearby. Their murders added new complexity to the string of Colonial Parkway cases and shifted how investigators viewed the pattern. This episode explores the final couple connected to the parkway, the evolving investigation, and the many theories that have surrounded the case ever since.

Between 1986 and 1989, four young couples were killed along Virginia’s Colonial Parkway. Isolated turnouts and quiet overlooks became crime scenes, and investigators struggled to connect the cases.

In this first part, we look at the early victims, their lives, and how the investigation began to take shape.

A family vacation in the Caribbean should have been nothing more than a week of sun, music, and memories. For the Bradleys, it began that way—laughter over dinner, dancing late into the night, and plans for the next day’s adventures. But before the ship could reach its next port, their 23-year-old daughter, Amy, was gone. In the years since, sightings, rumors, and unsettling leads have pointed in every direction—from chance encounters on remote beaches to the shadowy world of human trafficking. More than two decades later, the question remains: what happened to Amy Lynn Bradley?

When 9-year-old Elizabeth Olten vanished just a few hundred feet from home, her small Missouri town sprang into action—searching woods, knocking on doors, and hoping for the best. But the truth behind her disappearance would stun even seasoned investigators. In this episode, we walk through the heartbreaking case that raised difficult questions about justice, rehabilitation, and the capacity for violence in the very young.

When Somerset staff dug into Charles Cullen’s medication logs, the pieces finally started falling into place. In Part 2, Lisa takes us through the investigation that exposed Cullen’s pattern of quiet killings, the legal fallout, and the staggering number of lives he may have claimed—while hospitals looked the other way.

Charles Cullen was supposed to keep patients alive. Instead, he became one of America’s most prolific serial killers. In Part 1 of this two-part series, Marina’s sister Lisa is back by popular demand to tell the story of Cullen’s troubled early life, his path into nursing, and the suspicious deaths that followed him from hospital to hospital. By the time Somerset Medical Center started questioning his use of the Pyxis machine, the true scope of the horror is only starting to come into focus.