Serial Napper | True Crime for the Chronically Tired

Sandra Birchmore grew up dreaming of becoming a police officer. At just 12 years old, she joined the Stoughton Police Explorers program in Massachusetts, where she found a sense of belonging and looked up to the officers who were supposed to mentor and protect her.

One of those officers was Matthew Farwell.

Years later, in February 2021, 23-year-old Sandra was found dead inside her apartment in Canton, Massachusetts. She was pregnant, excited about becoming a mother, and making plans for her future. Her death was initially ruled a suicide. But Sandra's family and friends weren't convinced.

As investigators began digging into her relationships with members of the Stoughton Police Department, they uncovered years of disturbing messages, allegations of sexual exploitation, and a relationship that had begun when Sandra was just 15 years old.

What followed was a years-long fight for answers, a federal murder investigation, and a trial that would expose what had been happening behind the badge.

Sources:

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/matthew-farwell-convicted-murdering-sandra-birchmore-and-causing-death-her-unborn-baby

https://apps.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2024/12/sandra-birchmore-part-1/

https://apps.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2024/12/sandra-birchmore-part-2/

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/08/28/metro/sandra-birchmore-matthew-farwell-stoughton-police-timeline/?p1=BGSearch_Advanced_Results

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/media/1365626/dl

https://www.serpalaw.com/boston-criminal-law-updates/sandra-birchmore-matthew-farwell-federal-trial/ 

https://crimetimelines.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Findings-from-internal-affairs-investigation-into-three-former-Stoughton-Police-Department-officers.pdf

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What happens when the person students trust to guide and protect them starts experimenting with hypnosis?

At North Port High School in Florida, principal Dr. George Kenney was known for going above and beyond for his students. He was popular, approachable, and always looking for ways to help teenagers succeed... but he also had an unusual interest: hypnosis.

Students came to him hoping to improve their grades, overcome anxiety, and perform better in sports. Some swore his sessions worked. Parents gave their permission, and for years, few people seemed particularly concerned.

Then, in 2011, three students who had participated in Kenney's hypnosis sessions died within just two months of one another.

As grieving families began asking questions, investigators uncovered just how extensive Kenney's hypnosis activities had become, along with troubling revelations about his qualifications, the warnings he'd received, and the school district's failure to enforce restrictions on his conduct.

Was there a connection between the hypnosis sessions and the students' deaths? Or was something else happening at North Port High School?

Sources:

https://people.com/inside-george-kenney-hypnosis-deaths-case-12207281 

https://trellis.law/doc/149875964/complaint-receipt-790089-date-12-19-2012

https://www.pullcom.com/education-law-notes/hypnotic-suggestion-north-port-high-school-and-the-complicity-of-indifference 

https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/2015/10/07/students-shared-bizarre-hypnosis-stories/64613690007/

https://abcnews.com/US/florida-high-school-principal-lied-hypnotizing-students-died/story?id=13966704

https://www.bangordailynews.com/2011/07/10/news/hypnotist-principal-faces-questions-after-suicides/

https://ktar.com/national-news/us-principal-faces-charges-stemming-from-hypnosis

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/principal-charged-over-hypnotized-fla-students/

https://www.sarasota.k12.fl.us/agenda2/AgendaTOC.htm

https://www.sarasota.k12.fl.us/agenda2/October%206,%202015%20Board%20Meeting%20on%20Tuesday,%20October%2006,%202015/D0F57AF4-29D4-45E8-820C-004CAB018656.pdf

https://www.pullcom.com/education-law-notes/hypnotic-suggestion-north-port-high-school-and-the-complicity-of-indifference

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On July 19, 2025, nine-year-old Melina Frattolin was supposed to be returning home to Montreal after a week-long vacation in the United States with her father, Luciano Frattolin.

But that evening, Luciano called 911 from upstate New York with a terrifying story. He claimed that two men in a white van had kidnapped Melina from the side of the highway.

Police launched an urgent search, issuing an Amber Alert and stopping vehicles matching the description. But as investigators tried to retrace Luciano's movements, they began finding inconsistencies in his account.

The following afternoon, Melina's body was discovered in a remote wooded area near Ticonderoga, New York.

What followed was an investigation involving cellphone records, surveillance footage, handwritten notes, and evidence that raised serious questions about what had happened during the final hours of Melina's life.

Sources:

https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2025/07/frattolin_redacted.pdf

https://www.nycourts.gov/reporter/current/3dseries/2026/2026_05235.shtml

https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/documents-show-police-zeroed-father-frattolin-case-21335399.php

https://troopers.ny.gov/node/24481

https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/montreal-father-faces-judge-daughter-s-killing-22476316.php

https://www.mynbc5.com/article/luciano-frattolini-trial-day-5/73299407

https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/documents-show-police-zeroed-father-frattolin-case-21335399.php 

https://winnipeg.citynews.ca/2026/08/15/her-daughter-never-came-home-the-hours-before-the-death-of-melina-frattolin/

https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/police-issue-amber-alert-9-year-old-abducted-lake-20777199.php/

https://apnews.com/article/daughter-drowned-adirondack-region-luciano-frattolin-pleads-19b1df205cbab3dea98e9ccf85ff137a

https://toronto.citynews.ca/2026/10/14/father-set-to-be-sentenced-in-new-york-for-the-murder-of-nine-year-old-montreal-girl

https://infonews.ca/news/7810536/her-daughter-never-came-home-the-hours-before-the-death-of-melina-frattolin/

https://www.collingwoodtoday.ca/national-news/father-charged-with-murder-in-new-york-in-death-of-montreal-nine-year-old-10968833

https://www.yahoo.com/news/melina-frattolin-father-hid-9-175313545.html

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In December 1997, a fire tore through a Philadelphia home. Ten-day-old Delimar Vera was believed to have died in her crib, leaving her family devastated. But her mother, Luz Cuevas, never stopped questioning what happened that night.

Six years later, at a child's birthday party, Luz noticed a little girl who looked remarkably familiar. The resemblance was unsettling, but it was one tiny detail that made her wonder whether the impossible could actually be true.

What followed was an extraordinary investigation involving five strands of hair, DNA testing, and a woman with a troubling connection to the night of the fire.

For the final episode of *Serial Nightmare*, we're revisiting the story of Rapunzel through the real-life case of Delimar Vera, a little girl whose disappearance was only the beginning of a much more complicated story.

Sources:

https://www.ranker.com/list/bizarre-true-crime-twists/chrissy-rose?fbclid=IwAR0qev8Z5bqknM-RQqWZAjL1dLcOmnS0wvjOh2FNA9gmouQP7RPKhpjm0XE

https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2004/03/21/murky-details-cloud-girl-s-return/ 

https://www.reddit.com/r/mrballen/comments/vslejy/delimar_vera_1998_stolen_years_a_baby_who_was/ 

https://phila.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?GUID=A64C0F8A-17BB-4BAC-B1AC-4A7943ED46F0&ID=1227921

https://time.com/archive/6737931/back-from-the-blaze/

https://puertorico-herald.net/issues/2004/vol8n12/LittleGirlFound.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2004/03/03/a-mothers-instincts-borne-out/5a932e90-773b-4609-9d65-3db46cdf93fd/

https://www.inquirer.com/philly/hp/news_update/20080725__Little_Girl_Lost___Lifetime_movie_based_on_kidnapping_of_Feltonville_baby.html

https://www.firehouse.com/home/news/10526350/woman-in-pennsylvania-kidnap-arson-case-surrenders

https://www.casemine.com/judgement/us/5914b4f4add7b0493476fa35

https://puertorico-herald.net/issues/2004/vol8n12/LittleGirlFound.html

https://phila.legistar.com/ViewReport.ashx?GID=30&GUID=9BD121DE-1315-466B-9B11-EA3EDCBCFDC3&ID=1276386&M=R&N=Text&Title=Legislation+Text

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/oct/24/i-was-thought-to-have-died-in-a-house-fire-at-10-days-old-in-fact-i-was-kidnapped

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In 1940, a woman in Key West, Florida, made a horrifying discovery. Her sister, Elena, had been dead for nine years, but her body wasn't where the family believed it had been buried. It was inside the home of Carl Tanzler, a man who claimed he'd been destined to love her.

Carl had met 20-year-old Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos while she was receiving treatment for tuberculosis. When she died in 1931, he refused to let her go. Two years later, he secretly removed her remains from a cemetery, reconstructed her body using wire, wax, and other materials, and kept her inside his home for years.

But the discovery of Elena's remains was only the beginning of another disturbing chapter. As newspapers turned Carl into a tragic romantic figure, thousands of strangers lined up to see the woman at the centre of his obsession.

For this episode of Serial Nightmare, we're revisiting the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty through one of the strangest true-crime cases in American history.

Sources:

https://www.kwahs.org/exhibit/ghosts-of-east-martello

https://www.monroecounty-fl.gov/DocumentCenter/View/22013/20180116---Historic-Jail---Historical-Structural-Report---Final-Report

google.com/url?q=https://www.keyslibraries.org/post/october-6-2026

https://www.ripleys.com/stories/carl-tanzler

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In November 2010, a mother, her two children and a family friend seemingly vanished from a home in Apple Valley, Ohio.

The investigation would lead police from an abandoned pickup truck to a stranger in a parking lot, a trail of unusual purchases, and eventually a small house in Mount Vernon, unlike anything they expected to find.

Inside, the floors were covered in leaves - and somewhere in the house, police made a discovery that completely changed the case.

For this episode of Serial Nightmare, we're returning to the dark forests of Hansel and Gretel through the disturbing crimes of Matthew Hoffman, a case involving a house in the woods, a trail investigators had to follow, and two siblings whose story would end very differently from the fairy tale.

Sources:

https://abcnews.com/US/bodies-missing-people-found-ohio-police/story?id=12184250

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ohio-girl-found-alive-bound-no-word-on-others/

https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/columbus-oh/tina-herrmann-10670725

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/legacyremembers/tina-herrmann-maynard-obituary?id=9269815

https://vindyarchives.com/news/2010/nov/13/authorities-seeking-4-missing-from-home/

https://abcnews.com/US/missing-ohio-family-prompts-college-lockdown-search/story?id=12139637

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ohio-family-mourned-murdered-mother-son-friend-remembered-ahead-of-funerals/

https://www.aetv.com/articles/killer-matthew-hoffman-victims-in-tree 

https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/ng/date/2010-11-18/segment/01

https://tfpl.sfo2.digitaloceanspaces.com/Newspapers/Times-News_2010-11/PDF/2010_11_21.pdf

https://www.wosu.org/news/2010-11-19/bodies-of-three-missing-knox-county-residents-found

https://www.thehour.com/norwalk/article/Bodies-of-missing-Ohio-family-found-8297265.php

https://legalclarity.org/the-tina-herrmann-murders-rescue-trial-and-aftermath/

https://websleuths.com/threads/oh-two-women-child-killed-13yo-abducted-apple-valley-10-nov-2010-9.120603/page-16

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What if the miracle everyone wanted came with a price no one bothered to tell you about?

At the beginning of the twentieth century, radium seemed almost magical. It was rare, extraordinarily valuable and celebrated as a scientific breakthrough that could transform medicine, consumer products and even something as ordinary as a watch.

During World War I, young women were hired to paint luminous numbers onto watches and military instruments using radium-based paint. The jobs were coveted. The pay was good, the work was considered glamorous, and the women were taught a simple technique to keep their tiny brushes sharp: Lip. Dip. Paint.

They were told it was safe. Then the women began getting sick.

Teeth loosened. Jaws deteriorated. Bones fractured. Mysterious illnesses appeared years after some of them had left the factories. When the women began questioning whether their work was responsible, they found themselves fighting not only for their lives, but to be believed.

Sources:

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/tuesday-ferry-boat-survivor-radium-girls-author-no-possum-drop-and-more-1.2941016/remembering-mae-keane-the-last-of-the-radium-girls-1.2941019

https://www.buzzfeed.com/authorkatemoore/the-light-that-does-not-lie 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRkeghENceY

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/madame-curies-passion-74183598/#:~:text=Marie%20extracted%20pure%20radium%20salts,purified%20and%20converted%20into%20chlorides.

https://text-message.blogs.archives.gov/2018/01/04/the-radium-girls-at-the-national-archives/

https://www.dolphin-geoscience.ca/resources/death-by-numbers-the-mysterious-illness-of-the-dial-painters

https://home.nps.gov/articles/000/b-reactor-health-physics-exhibit-an-order-for-safety.htm

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In July 2009, fifteen-year-old Brenda Lin left her home in Sydney, Australia, for a school trip to New Caledonia. When she returned, her entire immediate family was gone.

Her parents, Min and Lily Lin, her twelve-year-old brother Henry, her nine-year-old brother Terry, and her aunt Irene had all been murdered inside the family's quiet North Epping home.

There was no obvious forced entry. The electricity had been cut. Nothing significant appeared to have been stolen. And whoever moved through the darkened house seemed to know exactly where they were going.

At first, police looked everywhere for an explanation. An armed robbery connected to the family's business. Financial dealings in China. Organized crime. Even the possibility of professional killers. But as the investigation stretched from months into years, detectives began looking much closer to home.

What followed was an extraordinary investigation involving secret surveillance, bloody shoeprints, a tiny and fiercely contested DNA stain, an alleged improvised murder weapon, undercover officers, a jailhouse informant, and a family relationship that was far more complicated than investigators first understood.

Sources:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-07-20/sydney-murders-dead-dad-witnessed-armed-robbery/1360030

https://www.abc.net.au/lateline/archive/articles/2009/12/17/s2775222.htm

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-11/xie-trial-told-blood-stain-linked-to-lin-family-murder/6461520

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-29/murdered-sydney-boys-involved-in-struggle-robert-xie-trial-hears/7552572

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When 20-year-old Sophie Lionnet left France for London, she hoped working as an au pair would give her a little independence, help her improve her English, and allow her to build a future working with children. Instead, she found herself inside a home increasingly consumed by suspicion.

Sophie's employer, Sabrina Kouider, had spent years making extraordinary accusations against a former boyfriend, Mark Walton, a former member of the original Boyzone lineup. She believed he was stalking her, hacking her accounts and somehow interfering with her life, even after he had moved thousands of miles away.

Eventually, Sabrina's suspicions turned toward Sophie.

There was just one rather enormous problem. Sophie had never met Mark Walton. But inside the house on Wimbledon Park Road, the truth became increasingly irrelevant.

Sources:

https://expressdigest.com/chilling-audio-tapes-reveal-murdered-nannys-interrogation-ordeal/

https://www.tf1info.fr/justice-faits-divers/francaise-au-pair-tuee-a-londres-sophie-lionnet-temoignages-amis-elle-etait-la-gentillesse-personnifiee-2065271.html

https://www.rte.ie/news/uk/2018/0524/965702-sabrina-kouider-ouissem-medouni/

https://www.lemonde.fr/police-justice/article/2018/04/17/proces-lionnet-a-londres-j-aurais-du-lui-acheter-un-billet-et-la-renvoyer-chez-elle_5286481_1653578.html

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/19/french-nannys-body-was-thrown-on-a-bonfire-jurors-told

https://www.itv.com/news/london/2018-05-24/nanny-verdict-sophie-lionnet-ripe-for-exploitation-by-abusive-employers-court-told

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/sophie-lionnet-murder-couple-jailed-for-life-over-murder-of-french-nanny-lose-appeal-bids-a4150016.html

https://decider.com/2026/09/18/the-seemingly-perfect-family-movie-true-story-sophie-lionnet-netflix-lifetime/

https://news.sky.com/story/couple-guilty-of-murdering-french-nanny-sophie-lionnet-11383710

https://www.bfmtv.com/police-justice/obseques-de-sophie-lionnet-on-va-commencer-a-faire-notre-deuil_AN-201806070035.html

https://www.leparisien.fr/faits-divers/le-dernier-adieu-a-sophie-lionnet-06-06-2018-7757349.php

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Alexandra Pesic knew something was wrong. The former beauty queen and young mother had begun noticing a white car appearing around her. Then a disturbing package arrived in the mail: a true-crime book about a woman who had reported years of stalking and terror before her mysterious death. Certain passages had been deliberately marked.

Days later, something described in those pages seemed to happen outside Alexandra’s own home.

But Alexandra didn’t ignore the warning signs. She wrote down a licence plate. She told people she was afraid. And when she still couldn’t get answers, she hired a private investigator to find out who was watching her.

Then, on August 5, 1992, 25-year-old Alexandra was shot outside the Vancouver-area dental office where she worked.

What investigators uncovered afterward would involve a stolen red Camaro, a mysterious white car, $30,000 in cash, multiple suspects and evidence Alexandra herself had gathered before her death.

For this chapter of Serial Nightmare, we’re telling Alexandra’s story through the dark fairy-tale lens of Snow White. Because sometimes danger doesn’t arrive looking dangerous...Sometimes it comes disguised as someone you once trusted.

Sources:

https://tricitiesdispatch.com/payoff-cash-in-1992-murder-for-hire-scheme-finally-forfeited/ 

https://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/jelka-pesic-spurs-more-outrage-over-her-daughter-in-laws-murder

https://www.oxygen.com/killer-relationship-with-faith-jenkins/crime-news/jelka-pesic-organized-murder-of-former-daughter

https://nationalpost.com/news/grandmother-who-hired-hit-man-to-kill-daughter-in-law-seeking-early-parole 

https://www.scc-csc.ca/cases-dossiers/search-recherche/26020/

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