Murder Coaster

Richard Chizmar joins the show to discuss his new book Becoming the Boogeyman a blending of true crime and horror fiction..

Richard is not only a New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Amazon and Publishers weekly bestselling author, screenwriter and extremely prolific short story writer, he is also the founder of Cemetery Dance Magazine and the Cemetery Dance book imprint, and has won two World Fantasy awards, four International Horror Guild Awards, and the Horror Writers Association Board of Trustees award, and we are truly honored to have him with us.

Becoming the Boogeyman is the much anticipated sequel to his highly acclaimed book Chasing the Boogeyman which Stephen King called, “Genuinely chilling.”

Both of these booksare a blend of true-crime, horror fiction, and memoir with Richard writing himself into the story as the narrator, and I can tell you the second one is just as good if not better than the first, an action packed thrill ride of the first order.

Join us to hear Richard tell us what true crimes influenced his work, whether he believes in ghosts, and if Stephen King calls him a scaredy pants or not.

Becoming the Boogeyman will be released October 10th from Simon and Schuster.

The Wineville Chicken Coop murders stand as some of the most horrifying and unsettling chapters in the annals of true crime, marked by a plot twist so bizarre it defies belief.

Today, we delve into these gruesome crimes through a four-act narrative we've titled "A Tale of Two Mothers."

Sarah Louise Northcott's love for her son, Gordon, knew no bounds. Gordon was a charismatic, intelligent, and gifted young man, a classically trained concert pianist, whom she indulged with luxury cars, tailored suits, and lavish grooming. Yet, Sarah's boundless affection allowed her to turn a blind eye to his darker inclinations—his vanity, his explosive temper prone to violence, and, most shockingly, his sinister predilections as a pedophile, rapist, sadistic torturer, and burgeoning serial killer.

Christine Collins cherished her son, Walter, above all else as well. She, too, would move heaven and earth for her child. But unlike Gordon Northcott, Walter Collins was a gentle, kind-hearted boy whose life would be marred by a tragic fate that would rock the world to its core.

The paths of these two women would intersect in a gripping narrative of unfathomable cruelty, grotesque sexual brutality, and a form of psychological manipulation so bewilderingly bizarre that it challenges comprehension.

Join us as we journey back to 1920s Los Angeles to uncover one of the most astonishing, heart-wrenching, and disquieting stories you've ever encountered.

Website: www.murdercoasterpodcast.com

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Creepy Amusement Park theme by Brandon Fiechter and Derek Fiechter, used by permission and with many thanks.

References:

The Road Out of Hell: Sanford Clark and the True Story of the Wineville Murders by Anthony Flacco

Changeling 2008 film directed by Clint Eastwood

The Disappearance of Walter Collins: A Mother’s Undying Hope & the Wineville Chicken Coop Case – StMU Research Scholars (stmuscholars.org)

The Wineville Chicken Coop Murders - Crime Museum

The Wineville Chicken Coop Murders - Alcatraz East Pigeon Forge

The Leslie Van Houten Story Part 2: Marauders in the desert, the way of the coyote, arrest, trial, rehabilitation and release.

Leslie has gone from flower-power, love-child hippie to marauding, violent outlaw running wild in the desert of Death Valley under the command of the Infinite Soul Charlie Manson.

Then it all comes crashing down. The Family is busted and crazy Sexy Sadie is telling anyone who will listen about their bizarre beliefs, lifestyle, and crimes, including the murder of Sharon Tate.

The trial is a circus and a freak show in every sense of the word, Charlie making wild demands and trying to stab the judge, Family members showing up with knives and snakes, Leslie, Katie and Sadie singing merrily with haunted spaced-out eyes, much of it televised.

Leslie gets up on the stand and says that sorry is only a five-letter word and she has no remorse. By the time guilty verdicts are read the defendants have shaved their heads bald and carved Xs into their brows.

Leslie is sentenced to death but California abolishes the death penalty. Then she is given a new trial. And another. She’s free for an instant but then put back in prison where she’d remain for over five decades despite being recommended parole, until 2023 when she is released at 73 years old.

Join us on a wild ride that captures the zeitgeist of America, the darkness of the sixties, and examines youth culture gone horribly wrong, and see the dark and terrifying journey of Leslie Van Houten come to an end.

Website: www.murdercoasterpodcast.com

Facebook: Murder Coaster

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/murdercoasterpodcast/

Creepy Amusement Park theme by Brandon Fiechter and Derek Fiechter, used by permission and with many thanks.

References:

Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties by Tom O’Neill

The Shadow Over Santa Susana: Black Magic, Mind Control And The Manson Family Mythos by Adam Gorightly

Helter Skelter: the True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi, and Curt Gentry

Manson in His Own Words: The Shocking Confessions of ‘The Most Dangerous Man Alive’ by Charles Manson and Nuel Emmons

The Garbage People: The Trip to Helter Skelter and Beyond with Charlie Manson and The Family by John Gilmore and Ron Kenner

The Family by Ed Sanders

(219) Leslie Van Houten, December 29, 1969, interviewed by Marvin L. Part - YouTube

(219) Leslie Van Houten Interviews - November 26, 1969 and November 28, 1969 - YouTube

(219) Leslie Van Houten 1977 Interview Part 1 - YouTube

Leslie Van Houten: A Friendship, Part 1 of 5 | HuffPost Latest News

Ex-Manson follower Leslie Van Houten released from prison after 53 years - BBC News

From Homecoming Queen to Acid Orgies: The Leslie Van Houten Story Part 1

After 53 years in prison, former Manson Family member Leslie Van Houten is now a free woman. This is her story.

Leslie sang in the choir as a little girl and lived to dance, sliding across the wooden floors of the Harmony Ballroom in Anaheim to the surf rock sounds of Dick Dale.

As a teenager she heard the hippie call to turn on, tune in, and drop out, so she did, wandering up to Haight Ashbury in San Fran where she met the travelling minstrel Bobby Beausoleil, the love of her life.

It was Bobby who introduced her to Charlie Manson and the Family.

Within a year she'd participated in a double homicide and abandoned the flower power lifestyle to scavenge the desert as a violent marauder against society.

Join us for part one of our two-part series detailing the fascinating, and at times horrifying and mind-boggling, life of the iconic Lulu, Leslie Van Houten.

Website: www.murdercoasterpodcast.com

Facebook: Murder Coaster

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/murdercoasterpodcast/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MurderCoaster

Creepy Amusement Park theme by Brandon Fiechter and Derek Fiechter, used by permission and with many thanks.

References:

Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties by Tom O’Neill

The Shadow Over Santa Susana: Black Magic, Mind Control And The Manson Family Mythos by Adam Gorightly

Helter Skelter: the True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi, and Curt Gentry

Manson in His Own Words: The Shocking Confessions of ‘The Most Dangerous Man Alive’ by Charles Manson and Nuel Emmons

The Garbage People: The Trip to Helter Skelter and Beyond with Charlie Manson and The Family by John Gilmore and Ron Kenner

The Family by Ed Sanders

Dick Dale at the Harmony Ballroom in Anaheim:

https://youtu.be/cztu-juq1mw

Bobby and Gypsy in RAMROD: (199) Gypsy and Cupid Charles Manson Family Filmed At Spahn Ranch Backporch Tapes - YouTube

Leslie Van Houten: A Friendship, Part 1 of 5 | HuffPost Latest News

Leslie Van Houten, Ex-Manson Follower, Approved for Parole (nbcnews.com)

The craziest suspected serial killer you probably never heard of!

In 1982 Treasury Department agents were hot on the trail of a counterfeiter traveling across the country passing off fake twenties at shopping malls, earning him the monicker “The Mall Passer.”

Authorities would eventually apprehend Mike DeBardeleben, and the horrors they would uncover when they searched his many storage compartments was like something straight out of a horror movie.

Far from just a counterfeiter, DeBardeleben was a sadistic rapist, torturer and serial killer, who documented his crimes with photographs and tape recordings.

Take a thrilling and soul-chilling ride into the world of Mike DeBardeleben, the wild story of his capture for counterfeiting and the terrifying secrets that were revealed.

Website: www.murdercoasterpodcast.com

Facebook: Murder Coaster

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/murdercoasterpodcast/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MurderCoaster

Creepy Amusement Park theme by Brandon Fiechter and Derek Fiechter, used by permission and with many thanks.

Resources:

Beyond Cruel: The Chilling True Story of America's Most Sadistic Killer by Stephen G. Michaud

(196) James "Mike" DeBardeleben Recordings - YouTube

Mike DeBardeleben - Wikipedia

Get ready for a rootin-tootin, true-crime good time, as we get into the life of notorious Wild West outlaw, gunslinger, and old-time serial killer Levi Boone Helm: The Kentucky Cannibal.

The American Frontier of the 1800s was a ruthless, brutal and lawless place where might made right and violence reigned, and no one epitomized this savagery better than Boone Helms.

Boone Helms’s reign of terror and bloodshed is the stuff of Wild West legend. In his murderous journeys across the American Frontier, from Missouri to San Francisco, from Oregon and Utah to the Montana territories, he escaped prisons and mental asylums, was a paid assassin, was a member of the infamous Innocents Gang, and in order to survive often resorted to cannibalism.

Join us as we take you on a wild historical journey that is often so crazy it’s hard to even believe. But it’s all true, as we document the life, crimes and utterly insane death of the Kentucky Cannibal, Levi Boone Helms, one of America’s most notorious and blood thirst gunslingers.

Website: www.murdercoasterpodcast.com

Facebook: Murder Coaster

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/murdercoasterpodcast/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MurderCoaster

Creepy Amusement Park theme by Brandon Fiechter and Derek Fiechter, used by permission and with many thanks.

References:

The Kentucky Cannibal by Ryan Green

American frontier - Wikipedia

Levi Boone Helm – Murderer, Cannibal & Thief – Legends of America

Every abandoned place is haunted, if not by the ghosts of the dead, then by the relics of the past. And no place appears more eerie and forlorn than the abandoned amusement park.

Today we will be covering two abandoned and haunted amusement parks.

First there's the Rocky Point Amusement Park in Rhode Island.

Most locals scoff at the supposed Gypsy curse that's said to be upon Rocky Point Amusement Park, but there can be no denying the strange events that have happened there, including suicide and murder most foul.

In 1893 Frank Sheffield, an opium addict prescribed cocaine by his doctor, took his five-year-old daughter to Rocky Point Amusement Park for their world-famous clam cakes, and by the shore of the bay, caved her head in with a rock for seemingly no reason.

Bizarre occurrences would continue to befall the amusement park until its closing in 1996.

The second is the Lake Shawnee Amusement Park, widely considered to be one of the most haunted places in the world.

The story of Lake Shawnee Amusement Park is truly epic and mind-blowing, a tragic and American story of ghosts, sacred Native American burial grounds, and doom.

Join us as we take you on a ride through two of the most haunted and infamous American amusement parks.

Website: www.murdercoasterpodcast.com

Facebook: Murder Coaster

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/murdercoasterpodcast/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MurderCoaster

Creepy Amusement Park theme by Brandon Fiechter and Derek Fiechter, used by permission and with many thanks.

References:

Murder at Rocky Point Park: Tragedy in Rhode Island's Summer Paradise by Kelly Sullivan Pezza

Haunted America by Michael Norman and Beth Scott

Shawnee attacked, murdered children of Mitchell Clay in 1783 | Wyoming County History | wycoreport.com

Mitchell Clay (anamericanfamilyhistory.com)

A Brief History of the Lake Shawnee Amusement... | Culture Trip (theculturetrip.com)

What were the real beliefs of Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell?

We get nitty-gritty and trace it back to an 1860 Mormon offshoot group called The Church of the Firstborn, a dooms-day cult that believed in reincarnation and started a war.

We also take a deep dive into the entire twisted tale of Lori Vallow, detailing the lives of both Lori and Chad, how they met and came to hold the bizarre beliefs that led to multiple murders, including the ritualist killing of Lori’s own daughter and adopted son.

We also see how sex, money and power went hand-in-hand with the rituals and beliefs. Surprise, surprise!

And author and filmmaker Aaron Crocker joins us today to help tell the story, and afterwards discusses his thoughts on religious cults, having been in one himself. So, be sure to listen afterwards for an in-depth discussion on the belief systems cults use to ensnare.

Website: www.murdercoasterpodcast.com

Facebook: Murder Coaster

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/murdercoasterpodcast/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MurderCoaster

Creepy Amusement Park theme by Brandon Fiechter and Derek Fiechter, used by permission and with many thanks.

Website for author and filmmaker Aaron Crocker: www.aaronkcrocker.com

Facebook page for Aaron's film Poison Tree: https://www.facebook.com/poisontreethemovie?mibextid=LQQJ4d

Aaron's Production Company: http://www.669productions.com

References:

Under The Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer

Melanie Gibb court testimony (includes taped phone call):

https://youtu.be/UHQRpc9Lukk

Melanie Gibb interview with Nate Eaton (must watch) https://youtu.be/n173Cv1BWB0

Feel The Fire Podcast (Lori and Melanie interviewing Chad) (166) "Feel The Fire" Podcast - Full Audio - [MELANIE GIBB/ LORI VALLOW DAYBELL/ CHAD DAYBELL] - YouTube

Sins of the Mother Netflix Documentary

Church of the Firstborn (Morrisite) - Wikipedia

Randy Kraft was one of the most prolific serial killers in American history, and also one of the most brutal, cruel and sadistic. It is believed he killed at least 67 young men and boys from 1971 to 1983, marking each victim down in code on a score card.

Join us for the third and final installment in our Freeway Killers series, where we have taken deep dives into the methodologies, histories and psychologies of Patrick Kearney, William Bonin and Randy Kraft, three men who became known as the Freeway Killer. Three men who were all killing the same victim profile, in the same place at the same time.

Today we will be studying Randy Kraft, also known as the Score Card Killer and the Southern California Strangler, as well as taking a look at the pervasive homophobia present in law enforcement at the time that enabled to him to kill for so long, including having the murder of male sex workers considered a “misdemeanor homicide” by detectives.

By day Randy Kraft was a successful computer analyst, in a healthy, committed and long-term relationship, but by night he was one of the most savagely cruel and sadistic killers the world has ever seen. How was he able to commit so many brutal crimes? Did he have an accomplice? Why weren’t homicide detectives ever able to track him down? These are but some of the questions we will delve into today on the finale of our thought-provoking, disturbing and truly terrifying series: The Freeway Killers.

Website: www.murdercoasterpodcast.com

Facebook: Murder Coaster

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/murdercoasterpodcast/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MurderCoaster

Creepy Amusement Park theme by Brandon Fiechter and Derek Fiechter, used by permission and with many thanks.

References:

ANGEL OF DARKNESS by Dennis McDougal

THE SCORE CARD KILLER: Life of Serial Killer Randy Steven Kraft by Jack Smith

William “Billy” Bonin would be described by prosecutors as, “the most arch evil person who has ever existed.”

A decorated Vietnam War hero, he was also a sexually sadistic serial killer who murdered over 21 young men and boys in a death van with an accomplice dressed as Darth Vader who performed magic tricks to subdue their victims. He would become the first person put to death by lethal injection in the state of California.

Join us for part two of our Freeway Killer series, where we compare and contrast the history, methodologies and psychology of the three men who became known as The Freeway Killer: Patrick Kearney, William Bonin and Randy Kraft.

All three of these brutal murderers were targeting the same victim type, at the same place and the same time, yet each were very distinct killers. By studying them and their differences we hope to uncover some of what it is that creates a human monster.

In this riveting series we also explore the culture of Southern California in the late 1970s, a freewheeling and accepting time of hitchhiking and sexual liberation that unfortunately made it possible for the three men to kill for so long with such a prolific number of victims.

Website: www.murdercoasterpodcast.com

Facebook: Murder Coaster

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/murdercoasterpodcast/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MurderCoaster

Creepy Amusement Park theme by Brandon Fiechter and Derek Fiechter, used by permission and with many thanks.

References:

William Bonin: The True Story of the Freeway Killer by Jack Rosewood

The Freeway Killer: The Shocking True Story of Serial Killer William Bonin by Rodger Harrington

Profile of Serial Killer William Bonin, The Freeway Killer (thoughtco.com)