The First Degree

A teenager is getting ready for a school dance. She’s quiet and shy but tonight, her friends are making her look and feel like a million bucks. It’s the summer of 1963, and they will all be dancing to the early strains of rock n roll. But for Margaret Willams, it would be the last dance she would ever attend. The next day her body would be found half naked on a nearby baseball field. Her killer is swiftly captured—but that is just the beginning of this story. In episode 99, Jac, Alexis and Billy look into a serial killer whose crimes spanned across decades and continents—and who was finally captured during the search for The Golden State Killer.

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You drive past a lakefront mansion, see kids playing in the yard under the watchful eye of a smiling couple and you wish you could be that happy. They have it all. But what if there was something lurking in the shadows? Not everything is perfect. In episode 98, Jac, Alexis and Billy enter the home of the Short family on the shores of Lake Minnetonka, Minnesota, and discover that not everything is what it seems.

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In the middle of the night, a man bangs on the door of a suburban house. A mother and daughter huddle in the bathroom. A father goes to the front door to investigate. Within minutes, both the mother and father are killed with shotgun blasts. And the daughter was kidnapped. In episode 97, Jac, Alexis and Billy are joined by a true crime obsessive who followed the crime—who learned of her unthinkable connection to the case after Jayme’s miraculous escape. For Killing Time, they discuss the death of Robert Fuller, a black man found hanging from a tree in Palmdale, California.

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The story of how Keith Raniere became an international self-help guru — and, later, a convicted sex-cult leader — is one of those cautionary tales that’s not unfamiliar. A man who is a master of manipulation, able to seduce, exploit, alienate and control countless individuals after developing keen abilities to select precise prey, bait them, and slowly coerce them into doing exactly what he wants. In episode 96, Jac, Alexis and Billy are joined by Josh Block of the podcast, Uncover: Escaping NXIVM as they dig into the cult that branded women, controlled their entire lives and eventually was brought to justice.

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This week, we are handing our mic over to our Black listeners to share their experiences of living in this country as a Black American. To everyone who sent their stories in, thank you. We appreciate the time and energy you gave us, and we feel honored that we can amplify your voices.

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The story of Lorena Bobbitt drew media attention in 1993 for being one of the most and disturbing domestic dispute stories to ever hit the news. Lorena was not the first woman to ever fight back against her husband- and she wasn’t the last. But her story was one of the first to demand change in the way the world perceived domestic abuse and sexual assault. On episode 93, Jac, Alexis and Billy are joined by Lorena, as they reexamine the impact of the single cut that forever changed pop culture and sent shivers down the spine of domestic abusers around the world.

And thank you for this episode's sponsors:

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You get a call that your father is dead. You rush home and find he has been murdered. He was tied up, stabbed 31 times and beaten over the head. What could be worse? Police believe your mother—who was found tied up and locked in the bedroom closet—is the lone suspect in his death. In episode 93, Jac, Alexis and Billy tell the story of the murder of Jim Melgar, and how law enforcement disregarded key evidence and employed tunnel vision to zero in on Sandy Melgar as his killer.

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It was a trial that seduced, consumed, and horrified the nation— Jodi Arias, facing the death penalty for the murder of her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander. Over the course of four months, Arias was up against a mountain of physical and circumstantial evidence. How did she defend herself? She went on the attack, grasping at straws, telling shocking and fabricated lies about Travis. In episode 92, Jac, Alexis and Billy examine the evidence against Jodi and explain how one woman spared the most hated woman in America from death.

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Travis Alexander was found Murdered in his shower—shot in the face, stabbed in the back, his throat slashed ear to ear. Many of his friends pointed a finger at his ex-girlfriend, Jodi Arias. But police had to piece together her whereabouts on the day of the murder—and her calculating actions made that incredibly difficult. In episode 89, part two of a three part series, Jac, Alexis and Billy delve into the investigation of Jodi Arias, including blood evidence, her bank and credit card statements and the most shocking discovery: a camera found in the washing machine containing images of Travis’s last moments—shot by the killer.

🎟 Catch up to FOUR bonus episodes per month plus full video episodes over on Patreon:

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