Human Delicatessen

In 1922, in Germany, a farming family was brutally murdered by an unknown intruder for an unknown reason. The killer had likely been living above them in their own attic in the days or even weeks before he picked them off one by one in a single evening, not a single one of them knowing what was coming. The case remains unsolved as it turns 100-years old this month. Details are scant and the list of suspects is complicated. 

In 1971, university professor and psychologist Philip Zimbardo conducted an experiment with 24 volunteers to record what would happen if you split them into two groups to live out life as Prison Guards and Inmates for a few weeks. Today, it sounds like a bad idea waiting to happen, but that's because we know about Abu Ghraib, and we know about the Stanford Prison Experiment. This episode, we'll discuss the experiment and the how it progressed day-by-day until they were forced to pull the plug early before the volunteers got so into their roles that someone would end up hurt.

Within the past few weeks, a 34-year old cold case involving the violent rape and murder of three women in Eugene, Oregon was finally solved thanks to a few determined detectives and advances in DNA science. Bravo Zulu to the folks over at Parabon Nanolabs for coming in clutch.

Part 2/2 of the Satanic Panic that permeated the darkest fears of any parent: our own children were at risk of being kidnapped by satanic sex cults and pedophile rings. The Salem Witch Trials, the Satanic Panic, and QAnon...how different were they really when you get down to it? 

DEVIL IS REAL AND HELL IS HOT!! For 30 years, Americans were gradually warming up to the idea that Lucifer was more than the red-skinned deal-maker with a pointed tail and sinister goatee. They also had the idea that he was pulling the strings at the moral hearts of the youth of the nation, and there were a growing number of occultists and devil-worshippers plotting to commit the vilest acts behind closed doors and in dark rooms. The first part of a 2-part episode, we'll break down the rise in the belief of demonic cults and the updated Salem witch trials that would follow.

Robert Hansen moved with his wife to Anchorage, Alaska for a fresh start to start their family and to escape Robert's occasional brush-ins with the law. Raising two children together, Robert owned his own bakery business and was known about town as a talented hunter. What nobody knew was that over a decade, Robert had been murdering women who worked the sex trade, hunting many of them for sport in the Alaskan woods. 

Identical twins have always fascinated the general public in some way or another. Stories and anecdotes always tell tale that there's a connection between twins that can't be measured or recorded. In this episode, we learn about June and Jennifer Gibbons, identical twin sisters from the UK that spent the majority of their lives talking to no one else besides each other, in their own secret language, and were institutionalized in a mental facility simply for being "strange". 

In Fort Lauderdale, a young group of friends sat in a booth around a tray of pizza. To the other patrons, they looked like any other group of kids hanging out at the pizzeria during the dog days of summer in 1993. For anyone within earshot of the group. they could hear the plans that were being put in motion for the cold blooded murder of one of their own. In this episode, we cover the story of how those friends got to the point where the extrajudicial execution of a supposed bully became a reality. 

They say that music soothes the most savage beast. In the case of the Axeman killer that plagued The Big Easy from 1918 to 1919, that music was Jazz. The Axeman broke into homes in the dead of night and hack at people while they slept, with an axe or hatchet. He wrote the papers and vowed to kill anyone in the city at night where he did not hear jazz music playing. That night, almost every home was alive with jazz musicians pumping out into the night sky, and no one was killed. At least that night. 

On this episode, we talk about the notorious Zodiac Killer, who has eluded police for 6 decades and who's identity may still remain a mystery for some time. A couple of suspects have come close to fitting the bill, but not quite. Today we'll go over this much talked-about killer and speculate on who he might have been, including the most recent suspect whose name has been floating around social media for a big part of 2021. Oh! And HAPPY NEW YEAR!!