WOW LOOK WHO'S FINALLY BACK!!! 

Sorry folks, the deli has been "closed for renovations" as it were, but we're finally open for business yet again and today I've got a new story for y'all! 

Phil Spector played a big part in the music industry from the 60's to the 80's. I invented the "wall of sound" recording process and worked with a big list of headline acts to help them create some of the most recognized Number 1 singles ever heard on the radio. He also had the worst hair in the business. But he also killed an actress one night in his house in cold blood. Not a huge list of victims, this one, but a tale worth telling nonetheless.

Welcome back to my podcast if you've been a faithful listener and didn't abandon me during my unexplained absence. Today I talk about a couple examples of unexplained deaths or suicides that happen at hotels. Seriously though, I'm barely chipping the tip of the iceberg, as there is a long history regarding hotels and murders/suicides. It's an information-rich subject that I only have so little time to dive into. 

Listen in as we conclude the horrific tale of the crimes committed by Paul and Karla. After that, it'd probably be a good idea to follow this episode up with something a little easier on the heart and the mind to process; something that involves people with a good moral fiber and a happy ending. Something like a Wes Anderson movie or with adorable stop-motion anthropomorphic animals that have a fun and innocent adventure.

The first segment of a two-episode story, we cover the truly depraved story of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka, an attractive pair of young newlyweds who had dark secret: they were both obsessed with the murder and rape of young girls, and decided to put their fantasies into practice on the young and unsuspecting. Their private life would involve one of the worst examples of sex crimes, if such a thing can even be given a rating system. Truly, the worst.

Listener discretion is most advised.

Those who knew Manuel Pardo when he was young never saw anything out of the ordinary from the boy. He was a boy scout and would later join the Navy and become a State Trooper afterwards. But somewhere along the line, Manuel got a taste for blood, and he satisfied that thirst by killing nine drug dealers and associates over their money and their drugs, or sometimes over petty inconveniences. 

Was he a corrupt ex-cop who switched his badge in exchange for an easy paycheck and all the drugs and money he could ask for? Or was he simply a bad former law enforcement who became disenchanted with the job and watched too many Charles Bronson movies?

You figure it out! I'm off to bed...gotta go to work tomorrow.

If you've ever watched 1994's "Natural Born Killers," you might be a little familiar with what a spree killer is, although barely. This episode covers three of the more profound cases of rampage killings, one of which is the deadliest in American history and happened just a few years ago. It was hard to narrow the list down so small with such a plethora of options to choose from, so this may be the 1st in a few scattered installments for the future.

Gary was one of those rare cases where you have to wonder if there is in fact, the existence of pure evil. "Depraved" is too gentle a word to describe what happened in Gary's basement over the course of a decade. 

I honestly don't have a whole lot to add here, except that this episode is particularly disturbing if you find sex-crimes to be particularly triggering. In any case, after you've listened to this episode, it would do you well to cleanse your mental palette with a different podcast or TV show that leaves you with a warm fuzzing feeling. 

This week we take a temporary (calm down, my crime junkies) break from murder and depravity to learn about a few of the creatures of urban legend and local folklore that make up a small part of our history and culture. Bigfoot is boring and a little overdone at this point, so instead I chose a handful of others to talk about. A few you may have never heard of, a couple you probably have.

At least for this episode, you won't have to depend on headphones or for the kids to be out of earshot. Nothing too shocking or controversial. Isn't that nice?

#LONGLIVEBATBOY

It's fairly common for the aggressor in an abusive relationship to take things a step further over time. What starts as a push, becomes a slap, a punch, a full out brawl around the house, and so on. It goes without saying that after that, in some cases, the next step can be deadly. That's not always the case, but regarding Katherine Knight, it certainly was. A butcher by trade, Katherine was used to throwing around large hunks of meat and carving them up, removing meat from the bone with little-to-no effort. She was also a fighter, quick to put her fists up in a fistfight with anyone who crossed her, man or woman. Abusive and manipulative by her very nature, she was a formidable person to cross if ever you got on her bad side.

For all of the men in her life, she was an absolute terror, and those that were lucky enough to survive her wrath are probably grateful every day that they made it out alive. One of them wasn't so lucky, and in this episode we cover everything that led up to that night when she crossed into that last threshold between abuse and murder.

If this episode sounds a little like it inspired a certain premium cable series that had something to do with a certain blood-splatter analyst from Miami, you're not the only one to come to that conclusion.

Pedro, known by some as Killer Pete, seemed to be aimed towards violence at a young age, killing two before he was 15 and scores of others over the span of 30 years. Here's the catch though: Pedro had a tendency to be very particular about his prey. They had to be criminals. Rapists. Murderers. You might actually be hard pressed to find someone who felt his knife who wasn't guilty of one serious crime or another. 

Whether he was a heroic anti-hero who removed 70-100 criminals from the Brazilian population, or just another murdering loose cannon for the books, I'll leave that up to you. I'm just here to tell you all about him.