Murder Unscripted

On April 5th, 1986, Howard and Connie Clery returned home from a vacation in Bermuda to find a police car waiting in their driveway. Their 19-year-old daughter Jeanne had been found murdered in her dorm room at Lehigh University.

What the Clerys discovered in the aftermath was as infuriating as it was devastating. In the three years before Jeanne's murder, there had been 38 violent crimes at Lehigh including rapes, robberies, aggravated assaults. Campus security had received over 2,000 reports of propped-open dorm doors in the year she was killed. 188 of those came from her building. None of this information had been available to them when they chose the school. Nobody was required to share it.

The man who killed Jeanne - fellow student, Josoph Henry - had walked through a propped door and found her room unlocked because her roommate didn't have her key. He was convicted of first-degree murder. But Howard and Connie Clery were not finished.

In 1990, the Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act was signed into law -- later renamed the Jeanne Clery Act. It requires every college and university receiving federal funding to publicly disclose campus crimes, issue timely warnings, and give students and families the safety information they need before choosing a school. Four decades later, it is still one of the most important pieces of campus safety legislation in the country.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alaskan Sophie Sergie came from a remote Yupik village of 70 people. She was going to be the first in her family to graduate college. The last thing she told her family was a promise to bring her little brother a brand new kite. She never came home.

On April 25th, 1993, Sophie Sergie was found violently murdered in a University of Alaska Fairbanks dorm bathroom. Her case went cold, and it stayed that way for more than a quarter century, until a woman uploaded her DNA to an ancestry site and unknowingly pointed investigators straight at her nephew, Steven Downs, who had been quietly living as a nurse in Maine the entire time.

Ed covers Sophie's emotional story, the 28-year cold case, and the genetic genealogy breakthrough that finally brought justice.

Ep. 107 | Collegiate Crimes Block | Murder Unscripted | June 2026

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/murder-unscripted/id1750146409

https://open.spotify.com/show/2AUGh12ei1wk8x7CvcX9qH

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yeardley Love was 22 years old and ten weeks from graduating from the University of Virginia. She was a D1 lacrosse player, a political science major with plans for law school in New York, and by every account, the kind of person who made every room warmer just by being in it.

She was also in an abusive relationship with a men's lacrosse player, George Huguely V, that had been escalating for years. Obsessive contact. Jealousy. Physical violence.

In February 2010, just weeks before her death, he had her pinned to a bed with his hands around her throat. Witnesses pulled him off. Yeardley told her mother. She even wrote a letter ending the relationship.

Yeardley locked her door...but he kicked it in.

In the early hours of May 3rd, 2010, Yeardley's roommate came home to find her unresponsive on her bed. She was gone. That's when police find an email from George in her inbox that read: 'I should have killed you.'

In this episode, Melissa walks through the full story of Yeardley's life and death, including: the escalation pattern that followed every textbook sign of a dangerous relationship, the trial that convicted George Huguely of second-degree murder and sentenced him to 23 years, the 2022 civil verdict of $15 million in damages, and the most important thing to come out of all of it: the One Love Foundation, built by Yeardley's mother Sharon and sister Lexie, dedicated to teaching young people to recognize the warning signs of unhealthy relationships before they become fatal.

This one is heavy, but it matters. If this episode makes you think of someone in your life, please take that seriously.

One Love Foundation: https://www.joinonelove.org

Written by Sue Grice | Hosted by Melissa Spivey

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/murder-unscripted/id1750146409

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2AUGh12ei1wk8x7CvcX9qH

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/MurderUnscriptedPod/membership

[email protected] | @murderunscripted

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you haven't listened to our DC Sniper episode yet (E104), start there first. This is the conversation that follows it.

Dr. Mildred Muhammad was married to John Allen Muhammad for 12 years. She knew him as a soldier, a father, a man she loved. What she didn't know was that after their separation, he had begun stalking her, that he had kidnapped their three children and taken them to Antigua for 18 months using forged documents, that she had been living under a restraining order that still permitted visitation, and that during October of 2002...while the DC metropolitan area was being terrorized by a sniper...she was living in that same region with no idea the man behind it was her ex-husband.

And then she found out she was allegedly the intended target all along.

In this episode, Dr. Muhammad walks us through her entire story. Growing up in Baton Rouge. Meeting John. What the marriage looked like from the inside. The kidnapping of her children and the 18 months she spent fighting to bring them home. The moment she learned his name. The aftermath. Being treated as a potential accessory. The court refusing to allow domestic violence evidence at trial. And what she has built since as an author, advocate, speaker, podcaster, and appointed member of the Maryland State Board of Victim Services.

Oh and listen until the end. We play a fun little game at the end testing Mildred's knowledge of all things Louisiana. She's from Baton Rouge. Melissa is not. It went about as well as you'd expect. 😂

🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/murder-unscripted/id1750146409

🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2AUGh12ei1wk8x7CvcX9qH

💛 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/MurderUnscriptedPod/membership

📬 [email protected] | @murderunscripted

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In October 2002, the Washington DC area woke up to something it had never felt before. People were being shot at gas stations, in parking lots, at bus stops, at a school...apparently at random, by someone nobody could see, in a car nobody could find. Police were sprinting between active scenes. Schools canceled outdoor activities. People crouched at gas pumps trying to make themselves smaller targets. Senators got police escorts to the Capitol.

Ten people would be killed in three weeks. Three more wounded. And almost none of it was random.

In today's spine-chilling episode, Ed walks through the case of the DC Sniper, including: the months of seemingly disconnected shootings across six states before the DC attacks began, the investigation that kept missing the blue Caprice that was hiding in plain sight, the tarot card left at a middle school, and the motive reveal that reframes everything.

Ed also shares something personal: in October 2002, he was a first-day intern at Forensic Files... and the DC Sniper case was his very first assignment. He watched it unfold, frame by frame, on two hours of raw news tape. It's what drew him into the true crime industry.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In post-Soviet Siberia, women were disappearing from the streets of Angarsk. Their bodies turned up in forests and industrial wastelands, mutilated beyond recognition. The weapons changed every time, but the tire tracks at the scenes were always from the same vehicle: a Lada Niva, the standard-issue Soviet police truck.

The man driving it was Mikhail Popkov: junior police lieutenant, champion biathlete, beloved neighbor, husband and father. His wife Elena, a fellow officer in the same department, called him a 'perfect husband and father.' His colleagues said he was the soul of every party. When women were attacked on his city's streets, he was often first on scene.

Because he was the one who had attacked them.

Popkov used his badge, his uniform, and the trust people place in law enforcement to lure women into his patrol vehicle on freezing Siberian nights. He killed them with weapons stolen from his own department's evidence room, varying the method each time to prevent investigators from finding a pattern. He then returned to work, attended briefings on his own murders, and offered his observations to his colleagues.

When a 15-year-old survivor picked him out of a photo lineup, his wife gave him an alibi. When biological evidence linked him to a victim, his wife gave him an alibi again. Investigators shelved the case. Popkov kept killing.

By the time a 3,500-officer DNA sweep finally caught him in 2012, Popkov had confessed to 87 murders, making him the most prolific serial killer in Russian recorded history. Some investigators believe the true number may be closer to 200. When a judge asked how many total murders he had committed, Popkov shrugged and said: 'I can't say exactly. I didn't write them down.'

Ed walks through the full story for the Who the Bleep Did I Marry block: the victims, the system failures, the jaw-dropping confession, and the impossible question Popkov's own daughter asked aloud while pregnant: would her child grow up to be a monster like him? She said she still didn't fully understand what her father was. And that she still loved him.

Researched & written by Sue Grice | Hosted by Ed Hydock | A Darkcast Network Production

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/murder-unscripted/id1750146409

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2AUGh12ei1wk8x7CvcX9qH

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/MurderUnscriptedPod/membership

[email protected] | @murderunscripted

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

His 13-year-old son found a skull in the backyard. Herb Baumeister said it was from his father's medical collection. His wife believed him.

Over ten thousand human bone fragments were eventually recovered from Fox Hollow Farm — the 18-acre Indiana estate where Herb hosted family pool parties, ran a thrift store empire, and murdered at least eleven men, possibly twenty-five, while his wife and kids had no idea.

Melissa walks through one of the most disturbing cases in our "Who the Bleep Did I Marry?" block cases MU has ever covered — including the I-70 Strangler theory, the missing tapes, and the DNA work that is still identifying victims in 2026.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

⚠️ Content warning: domestic violence, child abandonment, shooting.

She was abandoned by both parents before she was 17. She spent her life searching for a man who would finally take care of her. She found a 73-year-old millionaire who led her on for seven years — and then tried to walk away with a restraining order.

He didn't make it out of the parking lot.

Episode 101 is the finale of MU's "Rules of Murder" block — and one of the most psychologically complex cases Melissa has ever covered. Based on Ann Rule's "Old Man's Darling" from Crime Files Vol. 10: "Worth More Dead."

Ep. 101 | Rules of Murder Block Finale | Murder Unscripted | April 2026

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/murder-unscripted/id1750146409

https://open.spotify.com/show/2AUGh12ei1wk8x7CvcX9qH

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At age 14, her mother introduced her to Ted Bundy, and by 17, she was photographing killers in courtrooms.

For our special 100th episode, Murder Unscripted welcomes the incredible Leslie Rule - author, paranormal investigator, and daughter of true crime legend, Ann Rule! In a wide-ranging conversation, Leslie takes us inside her extraordinary childhood living in a haunted house, her decades of ghost hunting, and what she thought of America's most notorious serial killer. We talk about what it was like to grow up in Ann Rule's shadow, and how Leslie has carried the torch with her book: A Tangled Web, which details the murder of Nebraska mother Cari Farver.

Milestone episode. Legendary guest. Don't miss it!

🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/murder-unscripted/id1750146409

🎧 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2AUGh12ei1wk8x7CvcX9qH

❤️ Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/MurderUnscriptedPod/membership

📧 [email protected] | @murderunscripted

#MurderUnscripted #LeslieRule #AnnRule

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this Murder Unscripted bonus episode, Ed and Melissa take you through a brief but essential overview of the murder of Cari Farver—a case that spirals far beyond a simple missing persons story.

What begins as a sudden disappearance quickly unravels into a disturbing web of obsession, manipulation, and deception that went on for years before the truth came to light.

This case is the subject of Leslie Rule’s book, A Tangled Web, and we highly recommend listening to this episode before diving into our upcoming interview with Leslie for the full experience.

Consider this your primer… because once you hear what really happened, everything changes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices