In Virginia in the 80s, women were being attacked, little evidence was being left behind, and the wrong man was sitting in a prison cell.This week I bring you the unbelievable story of Timothy Wilson Spencer — a serial killer whose audacious crimes were eerily quiet, yet the impact was like a bomb going off in these bedroom communities of Arlington and Richmond. A story of investigatory missteps, false confessions, and new discoveries in science that finally blew the case wide open.

This story has it all, so press play and let's get into it. @melaninmayhempodcast

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Noir Nation… this one is WILD. We’re going back in time for a dusty and disgusting tale of brick-to-the-dome brutality, creepy break-ins, and press coverage so racist you’ll want to fight the newspaper. Robert Nixon was a young cat committing grown-man crimes—and the system wasted no time making sure he didn’t live long enough to become anything else.
But here’s the twist: the deeper you dig, the uglier it gets. Add to that sensationalized press coverage, racist tropes, shaky evidence, and a system that loved a convenient villain.
How many of these brick crimes were truly his… and how many were just easy to pin on him? @melaninmayhempodcast

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This week on Melanin Mayhem, we’re dragging James Edward Swann Jr., aka the “Shotgun Stalker.” In 1993, DC had a real-life nightmare rolling through two very different neighborhoods in the metro area and baby—this case is equal parts terrifying and infuriating. Random victims. A hunting ground that he never switched up. And a police response that’ll have you yelling at your speaker. Press play and let me tell you all about the shotgun shenanigans of it all.@melaninmayhempodcast

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It’s been a year of audacity, diabolical behavior, and pure mayhem — and now it’s time to run it back.

In this 2025 Year-End Review, your favorite country girl counts down the Top 10 Melanin Mayhem Podcast episodes of the year, based on listener engagement and the sheer what-the-hell-did-I-just-listen-to factor.

From serial offenders and scandalous lovers to insurance schemes, courtroom chaos, and crimes that left communities reeling, this episode revisits the cases that shook Noir Nation in 2025. And did I mention I made a video for this episode??

Whether you’ve been rocking with the mayhem all year or you’re new to these streets, this countdown is both a greatest-hits replay and a reminder of why Black true crime stories deserve to be told with depth, nuance, and respect.

Lock in, revisit the madness, and see if your favorite episode made the list.

Welcome to the mayhem.

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America’s Forgotten Black Female Serial Killer

The FBI says serial killers are usually white men — but Roberta Elder shatters that profile. In this retelling of the inaugural episode of Melanin Mayhem, your favorite country girl brings you the chilling story of a Black woman in Jim Crow–era Georgia who is believed to have poisoned at least 13 people, including husbands, children, relatives, and boarders, all from inside her own home.

Operating quietly from the 1930s to the 1950s, Roberta Elder exploited racism, respectability, and systemic neglect to hide a decades-long killing spree fueled by insurance payouts and unchecked access to her victims. Though authorities suspected multiple murders, she was ultimately convicted of only one, raising disturbing questions about who the system chooses to investigate — and who it ignores.

This episode has been refreshed with improved audio quality

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For the final episode of Love Kills, your favorite country girl is closing the series with a story that begins in love and ends in devastation. What starts as a young family building a life together slowly unravels after a husband returns home from war… changed.

As isolation tightens, paranoia grows, and control replaces care, a once-happy home becomes something far more dangerous. When the road finally runs out, the consequences are irreversible — and the truth is impossible to ignore.

This finale isn’t just the end of a series, it’s a reflection on how love, loyalty, and unchecked trauma can turn deadly — and why these stories still need to be told.

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This isn’t about glorifying a killer—this is about the women he tried to erase and the system that helped him do it. In Quiet Carnage, I'm closing out The Samuel Little Files by confronting the part America avoids: the deadliest violence is often the violence nobody treats like an emergency. We’re talking unchecked movement across state lines, cold cases that lost urgency the moment Sam died, and the reality that “Jane Doe” is somebody’s daughter whether the world respected her or not.

This week I wrap this series with reflections on how a killer traveled the U.S. like a rolling stone, how “women on the margins” became a loophole in the system, and how the machinery of justice failed so consistently it might as well have been policy. Sam is gone—but the conditions that made him possible? Still here.Tap in, Noir Nation—then meet me in the discussion group, because we need to talk.@melaninmayhempodcast

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This chapter isn’t about Samuel Little. It’s about the women whose voices were stolen long before their lives were taken.
In Part 3 of The Samuel Little Files, we shift the focus where it always should’ve been—on the victims the system ignored, dismissed, and failed to protect.

Many of these women lived on the margins, and because of that, their disappearances didn’t raise alarms. Their names weren’t shouted from headlines. In many cases their names were never even known. Their cases weren’t pursued with urgency because in many cases nobody knew they were missing. And Samuel Little not only counted on that silence, he capitalized on it.

This episode honors the lives lost. In this episode we say her name, as much as we can. This episode brings to light how apathy and bias allowed a predator to move freely, and asks the uncomfortable question: how many voices were lost because no one was listening?

It’s New Year’s Eve… and there’s a man laid out dead on the floor.
This wasn’t random — it was a setup. And once the body dropped, the heat came down fast looking for somebody to pay.
One stupid ass decision cost one brother everything.
So lock in, because this is a story about how sibling love can turn lethal. And nah — this ain’t Cain and Abel. This diabolical duo is giving Menendez-style brothers, real twisted, real tragic.

And the wild part? The murder wasn’t even the biggest atrocity.
The real fuckery shows up in the courtroom. Because the legal shenanigans in this case damn near steal the whole show.

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America’s deadliest secret was exposed in 2012. It all started with a traffic stop in Kentucky which led to a cheek swab in California. This DNA sample would link what looked like an unassuming senior citizen to being a serial killer. They knew they were prosecuting a killer; they had no clue they would be uncovering the most prolific serial killer the US had ever seen.

In Part 2 of The Samuel Little Files, I am going to walk you into the interrogation room where the man that had lived in the shadows, keeping the lowest of the low profiles, finally started talking and drawing revealing decades of murders hidden in plain sight.