Melissa is joined via telephone by one of the most fascinating crime-fighting duos ever to bring really bad guys to justice!  Except this bad "guy" was actually a female, but just as - or even more - evil than your average serial killer. Kelly Cochran was more than just a "black widow" - she is suspected of knocking off at least 10 men, including her last husband, Jason - whom she had enlisted in helping murder the man she was cheating on Jason with - Chris Regan.  Cochran was finally  brought to justice by the cunning, determination and sheer will of an unlikely pair of law enforcement professionals three hours away from each other - Iron River, Michigan police chief Laura Frizzo and Hobart, Indiana detective Jeremy Ogden.  The Cochran case - including Frizzo and Ogden's story - is the subject of the Investigation Discovery documentary "Dead North."  It's an incredible journey - and Melissa fell in love with the documentary so much that she found Frizzo and Ogden living in Indiana and invited them for an interview on JUST THE TIP-STERS - and they said yes!  It's a fascinating, hour-plus conversation with two true original Good Guys pf law enforcement you won't soon forget.

What ties together the still-unsolved 1981 Halloween murders of photographer Ronald Sisman and Smith College coed Elizabeth Platzman in a Greenwich Village apartment...and the murder of young, beautiful Arlis Perry in the Stanford University chapel some seven years prior to, and 3,000 miles away from, the Sisman/Platzman crime?  Well - it ain't anything...or anyONE...you'd suspect.  Join Melissa on her favorite holiday as she takes the spooky Halloween Trail linking two completely different cases through the ramblings of a single twisted (and well-known) psychopath.  Lots of tricks, no  treats from that guy.  Buckle up.  BOO!

In certainly what appears to be a series of gross miscarriages of justice, in the late 1970s Texas millionaire Cullen Davis was (a) acquitted of one murder, (b) not charged in a second murder and the attempted murder of his ex-wife and two others, then (c) got a hung jury in a SECOND trial where he was charged with soliciting the murder of two other people (and acquitted in the re-trial).  ALL of this with evidence that was so compelling it would have resulted in convictions in any other place and with any other defendant.  Join Melissa as she relives this outrageous story of mad entitlement, wild jealousy and how the American justice system can be corrupted through wealth and influence.

Melissa unravels another cold case brought to us by a Tip-Ster - this one frustrating to the point of maddening.  In July 1999 in Fresno, California, teacher/wife/mother, 54 year-old Sandra Kerby went to Target to pick up a few things - and was never seen or heard from again.  In the intervening years, lots of evidence points to one suspect - but not enough of it to issue an arrest warrant.  And that is a tragedy - because Sandra Kerby, by all accounts, was one of the truly good people, and she left behind dozens of friends, family and former students who, to this day, seek answers.  Someone out there knows something about what happened to Sandra...is it you?  Now's the time to drop your tip on us!

On this special edition of JUST THE TIP-STERS, Melissa travels south into deep Orange County California, to the campus of the University of California Irvine School of Law, where she spends a fascinating just-under-an-hour with Super Ninja Justice Lawyer Annee Della Donna, a private practice attorney in Laguna Beach who started and leads Innocence Rights Orange County.  Together with a hearty band of law students from the UC Irvine Law School, Ms. Della Donna's homegrown innocence project has already worked on several impressive cases - including the case of the man she believes was wrongly convicted of the 1979 brutal murder of Joan Virginia Anderson - which, some of you Tip-Sters may remember, bore a lot of resemblance to the rapes and murders committed by the Golden State Killer (!).  Della Donna and her team have convinced the Orange County D.A. to reopen that case...and they are now hot on the trail of a cold case also familiar to Just The Tip-Ster devotees - that of Garden Grove housewife Patricia Neufeld, whose murder in 1978 also looks suspiciously like the work of our old pal EARONS/GSK.  A fascinating discussion with a remarkable champion for justice - and her personal story of her own possible...well... probable...encounter with you-know-who when she was a 17 year-old high school girl...

Friendly, regular family guy Altemio Sanchez - affectionately known around his neighborhood in suburban Buffalo, NY as "Uncle Al" - couldn't have been more of your basic solid citizen.  A wife, kids, a good job at a local factory for more than two decades - all the markings of the Friend Next Door.  Until he wasn't.  Until he used his mornings off to attack, rape and murder unsuspecting women throughout  the Buffalo area.  With a string of assaults and murders stretching from 1990 to 2006 - and possibly going as far back as 1981 - Sanchez' capture and prosecution in 2007 remains one of law enforcement's most important successes.  But the road to the killer's capture was fraught with miscues and outright bungles - and Melissa takes us through all the twists and turns of the investigation, arrest and conviction.

Hey!  Don't be distracted by that...er...more Podcasty sounding introduction...it was just a little something we tried...for about 30 seconds...and then realized we just ain't traditional Podcasty People!   Plus this is no time to mess around, since it's time for another TIP-STERS TWO CENTS, featuring listener emails, comments and general chit-chat.  PLUS Melissa and Producer Mark mix it up on a wide variety of topics ranging from weirdly-pronounced city and street names to mispronounced words to...yes...peeing in the back yard.  PLUS PLUS - there are scintillating updates in the seemingly bottomless trough of new stories coming out of the GSK investigation...and then Paul Holes news...and so much more!

In this week's podcast, Melissa rips a story directly from the headlines in a shocking, still-developing story out of Oregon, where Chef Daniel Brophy - a professor and chef at a prestigious school for the culinary arts - was found on the floor dying from a gunshot wound in one of the institute's kitchens in June 2018.  Just three months later, Brophy's wife, Nancy - a writer of romance/mystery novels - was arrested for the murder.  But the police have convinced a judge to keep the reasons for the arrest under wraps - at least for now...

Who could have guessed that the trail to catching the infamous Golden State Killer led straight through the brilliant mind of a retired attorney, medical doctor and Ph.D. who took on genealogy as a hobby!  But that's exactly what happened when Det. Paul Holes recruited then 69 year-old Barbara Rae-Venter after reading about her phenomenal work two years earlier in San Bernardino.  In this episode Melissa explains in detail how Dr. Rae-Venter used her scientific and deductive skills to help Det. Holes and his team track down GSK - and also hear the story of the amazing case of "Lisa," who, abandoned as a little girl by a convicted serial killer she had thought was her father, finally found a family through the work of Dr. Rae-Venter, a dogged police detective and a whole lot of good people who volunteered to help.

Kicking September off with a Big Bunch of a Bang, Melissa covers some fascinating new ground in the ongoing prosecution of Joseph D'Angelo, the accused Golden State Killer.  Including a discussion of the brilliant legal move made by the Contra Costa County District Attorney to turn what could have been a legal dead end into a possible new prosecutorial avenue to get justice for more victims...a background profile of one of the unsung (hopefully soon to be loudly sung) heroes of the case - a retired attorney-turned genealogist who played perhaps the biggest role in capturing the suspect...and Melissa's take on the Sacramento County District Attorney's behavior at the recent boffo press confab (spoiler alert: it ain't pretty).