Prey Tell

On November 7th, 2006, a college football player pulled into the parking lot of his apartment complex. He was only twenty-two years old and a defensive lineman for the University of Miami. Bryan Pata was a future NFL draft hopeful. He pulled into his complex, but he never made it inside.

Just about 15 years went by without anyone charged in connection to his murder. But then, in 2021, shockingly, police arrested one of Bryan’s own teammates. A trial finally commenced in February 2026, but it ended in a mistrial.

So, what exactly happened to Bryan Pata? Why did it take so long to arrest a suspect? And why, now twenty years after the crime, is there still no answer or conviction?

For a full list of source materials, please visit: www.preytellpodcast.com/episodes/murder-of-bryan-pata

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For more information on the podcast or to suggest a case, visit: www.preytellpodcast.com

Picture that you’re in England in the town of Hyde located outside of Manchester. Maybe you or a family member is ill. Thankfully, there’s a doctor who still makes house calls. He comes off as a genial guy, and a well-respected doctor. When you think of a serial killer you think of someone incredibly violent, menacing and ruthless with no regard for human life.

You likely don’t think of a calm and mild-mannered man. That’s the thing about people. Can you ever really know anyone? 

The real name of the man that people now call the British Doctor Death is Harold Shipman. He was convicted of murdering fifteen of his patients. However, the number is reported to be significantly higher with some estimates as high as 250 victims. All of whom were his patients, and most of them were elderly women.

For a full list of source materials, please visit: www.preytellpodcast.com/episodes/serial-killer-british-dr-death

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For more information on the podcast or to suggest a case, visit: www.preytellpodcast.com

Imagine it’s 2007, and the Saturday before Halloween. Swarms of people all jam into a bar dressed in their best Halloween costumes. Among those costumes are reportedly a lion, a clown, a cowboy, a hunter, a Joker, and a woman dressed as Paris Hilton.

And then there’s a man named Joel Lovelien who decided to dress up as a hockey player wearing a green jersey for the North Dakota Fighting Sioux.

Joel is at this bar with his fiancée, and offers to help someone outside the bar. But later that night Joel dies under mysterious circumstances.

For a full list of source materials, please visit: www.preytellpodcast.com/episodes/unsolved-murder-of-joel-lovelien

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For more information on the podcast or to suggest a case, visit: www.preytellpodcast.com

This week I’m doing something different and leaning into spooky season, hauntings and horror in some of America’s most haunted cities. It's a five-stop tour, featuring: St. Augustine, Florida; Charleston, South Carolina; Salem, Massachusetts; New Orleans, Louisiana; and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Don’t be fooled by these picturesque locations.

When you visit a haunted place there’s often a quietness that seems to settle in the air. You can’t escape it. It’s not silence exactly. It’s something even eerier. Something you can’t quite put you’re your finger on, but instinctively you know you might not be alone. 

For a full list of source materials, please visit: www.preytellpodcast.com/episodes/americas-most-haunted-cities

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For more information on the podcast or to suggest a case, visit: www.preytellpodcast.com

February 12, 2010 was a chilly day in Huntsville, Alabama. It was unusually cold and hovering in the mid 30s. Huntsville is known as the rocket city. It’s where NASA and the space program were born and where many aerospace companies call home.

Instead of heading to the space center, this story takes place at the University of Alabama in Huntsville in an ordinary conference room with professors. It’s a run-of-the-mill meeting that quickly turned fatal.

By the end of that meeting, three professors were shot dead and three more were wounded. When we hear school shooting, we typically think of a student offender. However, this shooting was carried out by a professor who was quietly sitting among her colleagues before the unprompted spree. That professor shot and killed another person back in the 1980s, and some say that foreshadowed the UAH shooting.

For a full list of source materials, please visit: www.preytellpodcast.com/episodes/university-of-alabama-huntsville-shooting

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For more information on the podcast or to suggest a case, visit: www.preytellpodcast.com

The town of Cloverdale, California sits at the northern end of Sonoma County’s wine country. Way back on May 23, 1982 it was warm, although the heat from  peak daytime had worn off by the evening. 

Sarah Geer left her friend’s house and set off walking downtown. She was a child and only thirteen-years-old at the time. She had no way of knowing she wouldn’t come home that night, and she would never make it to the eighth grade. Sarah was brutally raped and murdered by an unknown man in an alleyway. Her case went cold for over 40 years. 

The charming, small town feel Cloverdale was known for fractured instantly. 

For a full list of source materials, please visit: www.preytellpodcast.com/episodes/murder-of-sarah-geer

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For more information on the podcast or to suggest a case, visit: www.preytellpodcast.com

Somewhere around mile marker 83, near a little town called North Utica, a white Pontiac is pulled over onto the shoulder.

It's a 1985 Pontiac T1000 with New Jersey plates. And behind the wheel is a Twenty-one-year-old college senior named Tammy. Tammy was on the last leg of a 1,500 mile drive from her family's home in New Jersey headed to her college in Iowa. 

Somewhere between three and four o'clock that afternoon, several drivers passing by on I-80 remember seeing a young woman standing near her disabled car. And parked close by was a tractor-trailer with a faded orange stripe running down the side. The drive-by witnesses remember the tractor-trailer driver too. 

That was the last confirmed sighting of Tammy Zywicki alive.

For a full list of source materials, please visit: www.preytellpodcast.com/episodes/murder-of-tammy-zywicki

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For more information on the podcast or to suggest a case, visit: www.preytellpodcast.com

This is a tangential part two of Wednesday’s episode on the mysterious death of Bernadette Vander Meer. While there was no trial and conviction in that case, but it raised questions about the horrors of Alpine Divorce.

Alpine divorce goes something like this: a couple go for a hike, often to a high peak, and one spouse falls over the edge. In my reported cases, it's the woman that falls, but not always. Usually, there's no witnesses. And what follows is a sentence that investigators often hear in one form or another: She just slipped. Or, she just fell.

There's a name for this: Alpine divorce. But here's the twist. Depending on who you ask, that phrase means murder, or it means something else entirely. Today, I’m attempting to sort out which, and figure out where Bernadette's story fits, if at all.

For a full list of source materials, please visit: www.preytellpodcast.com/episodes/horrors-of-alpine-divorce

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For more information on the podcast or to suggest a case, visit: www.preytellpodcast.com

On Tuesday, August 22, 2006, the beautiful singing voice of Bernadette Vander Meer went silent on a ridge in Zion National Park, in Utah. She was twenty-eight years old. And she was there with her husband to celebrate ten years of marriage.

Her husband’s story was simple. She was standing near the edge of a roughly twelve hundred foot cliff edge. He was setting up a photo. He turned away only for a moment, and when he turned back, Bernadette was gone.

Investigators initially ruled the fall an accident. Then, in June 2026, a court document was made public and it told a different story.

Charges were officially filed. Her husband was arrested on a Monday. And by Thursday, the man accused of killing Bernadette Vander Meer was dead.

For a full list of source materials, please visit: www.preytellpodcast.com/episodes/bernadette-vander-meer

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For more information on the podcast or to suggest a case, visit: www.preytellpodcast.com

On October 19th, 2023, a group of ten people rented kayaks and paddleboards from a small outfitter on the shore. They're not experienced paddlers. They're a yoga group and most of them were strangers to each other just a week earlier. And they’re out for one more excursion before they fly home. Two of the women drift away from the rest of the group, out past where the guides can clearly see them. When the group paddles back to shore that afternoon, one of the two women who went out further doesn't come back to shore.

Her name is Nancy Ng. She's twenty-nine years old. On that day in October, she went out onto the water and was never seen again.

Nancy Ng's case remains classified by U.S. missing persons databases as open and unresolved. No charges have been filed against anyone in connection with her disappearance. The Guatemalan government remains the lead investigative agency, with the FBI continuing to assist. 

If you have any information about what happened to Nancy Ng on October 19th, 2023 in Guatemala, you're asked to contact the Monterey Park Police Department directly at 626-573-1311.

For a full list of source materials, please visit: www.preytellpodcast.com/episodes/disappearance-of-nancy-ng

Connect with Prey Tell Podcast on social media and stay up-to-date on the latest case updates.

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For more information on the podcast or to suggest a case, visit: www.preytellpodcast.com