The incredible story of a 1958 murder that ended with the last woman to ever be executed in California—a murder so twisted it seems ripped from a Greek tragedy.

Deborah Larkin was only ten years old when the quiet calm of her California suburb was shattered. Thirty miles north, on a quiet November night in Santa Barbara, a pregnant nurse named Olga Duncan disappeared from her apartment.

The mystery deepens when it is discovered that Olga’s mother in-law—a deeply manipulative and deceptive woman—had been doing everything in her power to separate Olga and her son, Frank, prior to Olga’s disappearance.
From a forged annulment to multiple attempts to hire people to “get rid” of Olga, to a faked extortion case, Elizabeth seemed psychopathically attached to her son. Yet she denied having anything to do with Olga’s disappearance with a smile.

The book is A LOVELY GIRL and my guest is its author, Deborah Larkin

In 1910 in the tranquil seaside town of Asbury Park, New Jersey, ten-year-old schoolgirl Marie Smith is brutally murdered. Small town officials, unable to find the culprit, call upon the young manager of a New York detective agency for help. It is the detective’s first murder case, and now, the specifics of the investigation and the daring sting operation that caught the killer is captured in all its rich detail for the first time by author Alex Tresniowski in his thrilling, True Crime book, “The Rope.”

 Mr. Tresniowski joins me now.

On a cold winter day in 1832, Sarah Maria Cornell wasfound dead in a quiet farmyard in a small New England town. When her troubled past and a secret correspondence with charismatic Methodist minister Reverend Ephraim Avery was uncovered, more questions emerged. Was Sarah’s death asuicide...or something much darker?

Determined to uncover the real story, Victorian writer Catharine Read Arnold Williams threw herself into theinvestigation as the trial was unfolding and wrote what many claim to be the first American true-crime narrative, entitled Fall River. 

The murder divided the country and inspired NathanielHawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter—but the reverend was not convicted, and questions linger to this day about what really led to Sarah Cornell’s death. Until now.
In The Sinners All Bow, acclaimed true-crime historian KateWinkler Dawson travels back in time to nineteenth-century small-town America, emboldened to finish the work Williams started nearly two centuries before.

And it is my pleasure to welcome Kate Winkler Dawson toMurder Most Foul.

Would you kill for love?

After Alice, a desperate young mother in a gritty Wyoming boomtown, kills her husband in 1974 and dumps his body where it will never be found, she slips away and starts a new life with a new love. But when her new love's ex-wife and twokids start demanding more of him, Alice delivers an ultimatum: Fix the problem or lose her forever. With Alice's help, he "fixes" the problem in an extraordinarily ghastly way ... and they live happily ever after.

That is, until 2013, almost forty years later, when somebody finds a dead man's skeleton in a place where Alice thought he'd never be found.

Bestselling true-crime author Ron Franscell revisits a shocking cold case that was finally solved just when the murderers thought they'd never be caught and joins me today!

At just 41 years of age, Florida State law professor Dan Markel was among the most well-known and accomplished criminal law scholars in the country.  He was also a newly divorced dad, his toddlers Ben and Lincoln the center of his universe.

​On the morning of July 18, 2014, Dan dropped his boysoff at preschool, hit the gym for a workout, and headed home to his quiet, tree-canopied neighborhood.  Within seconds of pulling into his garage, two .38-caliber bullets fired from point-blank range were lodged in his brain.

​His brutal slaying seemed to defy logical explanation, the case stone cold for nearly two years.  Finally, dogged pursuit by the Tallahassee Police and FBI led to the apprehension of two men with lengthy rap sheets who had apparently driven ten hours from Miami with one singular purpose:  to assassinate the revered professor. 

But why?  Were his ex-wife Wendi Adelson and her South Florida family the masterminds behind this horrific crime?

My guest today, author Steven B. Epstein may have theanswer as we dig into a story I call DEATH BY DENTIST.

In the fall of 1966, Eduardo Tirella, close confidant of

In 2018, Lance, who started his career as a cub reporter for The Newport Daily News eight months after Tirella's death, began a re-examination of the case and proved that the mercurial tobacco heiress got away with murder.

Book available at AMAZON at:

In Part One of our two part series on 5 time Emmy winning investigative reporter Peter Lance’s Book, HOMICIDE AT ROUGH POINT, we left off as Mr. Lance was detailing how, back in the fall of 1966, the Newport, Rhode Island police covered up the murder of art curator and designer Eduardo Tirella, whom Doris Duke, crushed to death under the wheels of a two-ton station wagon just minutes after he told the notoriously possessive, billionairess that he was leaving her for a career in Hollywood.

As Peter explained, with little or no investigation,

Seven years before Lyle and Erik Menendez gunned down their parents in Beverly Hills, after years of abuse, suffered by he and his sister, Richard Jahnke ambushed their father in the garage of their home on Cowpoke Lane in Cheyenne, Wyoming and shot him dead.

THE POISON TREE is a riveting account of the sadistic physical, mental and sexual abuse suffered by Richard and Deborah. The book also covers the murder, trial

My guest today is the author of THE POISON TREE, Alan Prendergast.

Lyle and Erik Menendez, two brothers who murdered

Interest in the murders, trials and convictions has peaked with this new twist. I am no different. But rather than weigh in on whether the brothers, have served enough time and being model prisoners, have earned their freedom, I wanted to go back to the crimes and their claims of

Self-defense is defined as “using force or violence to

Who better to guide us on this journey than Attorney

Based on true events. In 1975 Florida, a series of violent disappearances go unnoticed, and young Annie (Madison Wolfe) is targeted by an ominous white van that stalks her every move. As the menace escalates, her parents dismiss her fears, and Annie is soon plunged into a terrifying nightmare that shatters her world. Also starring Brec Bassinger, Skai Jackson, Ali Larter, and Sean Astin. Directed by Warren Skeels.