For thirty years, the people of Wichita, Kansas thought BTK was a phantom. Bind. Torture. Kill. Three words signed at the bottom of taunting letters mailed to police and newsrooms by a man who wanted to be feared more than he wanted to stop. The truly sickening part is who he turned out to be. A married father of two. The president of his church council. A Cub Scout leader. The local compliance officer who might show up to measure your grass for the city.

This week we walk through the crimes of Dennis Rader, the ten lives he stole between 1974 and 1991, the decade of silence, and the ordinary vanity that finally undid him. We are keeping this one exactly where it belongs, with Joseph, Julia, Josie, Joey, Kathryn, Shirley, Nancy, Marine, Vicki, and Dolores.

Follow us: linktr.ee/triggeredthepodcast

Join the Inner Circle and become a member! Monthly bonus episode, VIP Discord chat and ad-free listening: triggeredthepod.supercast.com

Make sure to follow us on social media and check out everywhere you can listen at linktr.ee/triggeredthepodcast

Contact us at [email protected]

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A man walks into a bar. It's caught on camera. You can watch him ride the escalator up, stand outside the doors at 1:55 in the morning, and wave goodbye to two strangers. Then he steps off the edge of the frame, and he is never seen again.

This week, Chantal takes Ashley (broadcasting through roughly one working sinus, bless her) into one of the most baffling missing persons cases in modern American history: the 2006 disappearance of Brian Shaffer.

Brian was a 27-year-old Ohio State medical student, a devoted Pearl Jam fan, three weeks out from losing his mother, with a girlfriend and a booked vacation and every reason to keep going. Then, on the Friday before spring break, he vanished from inside the Ugly Tuna Saloona in Columbus, Ohio. No body. No sighting. No financial activity. No answer in 20 years.

Somebody knows something. This one stays with you.

If you have any information on the disappearance of Brian Shaffer, contact the Columbus Division of Police at 614-645-4545 or Central Ohio Crime Stoppers at 614-461-8477. You can remain anonymous.

Follow us: linktr.ee/triggeredthepodcast

Make sure to follow us on social media and check out everywhere you can listen at linktr.ee/triggeredthepodcast

Contact us at [email protected]

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The cold case of Namiko Takaba, the Nagoya housewife murdered in 1999, and the husband who paid rent on her bloodstained apartment for 26 years to preserve the DNA that finally caught her killer.

On November 13, 1999, 32-year-old Namiko opened her door to a woman posing as a beverage saleswoman. Minutes later she was dead, stabbed in her own home while her two-year-old son sat unharmed beside her. Police interviewed 5,000 people and had almost nothing: a blood type, a shoe size, and one drink on the table that didn't belong.

But her husband Satoru refused to let the case die. He never cleaned the blood. He kept paying rent on the empty "haunted house" for 26 years, all to preserve the killer's DNA until science could catch up. In 2025, it finally did.

One of the most haunting cold cases we've ever covered. Tap in for the full story and the twist nobody saw coming.

⚠️ Discusses violent crime. Listener discretion advised.

🔮 Inner Circle (ad-free + bonus episodes): triggeredthepod.supercast.com

🎧 New episodes Tuesdays & Fridays.

In memory of Namiko Takaba.

Make sure to follow us on social media and check out everywhere you can listen at linktr.ee/triggeredthepodcast

Contact us at [email protected]

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 2011, a con man vanished from Australia one step ahead of fraud investigators. He resurfaced in the Philippines and what he built there would become one of the most disturbing cases in the history of the internet.

Peter Gerard Scully didn't just commit crimes. He monetized them.

Operating deep inside the Dark Web : the hidden, encrypted layer of the internet that can't be reached by Google, that runs on anonymous payments and untraceable routing, Scully built a pay-per-view network that catered to the worst impulses human beings are capable of. His clients were anonymous. His victims were children. And for years, he believed the dark web made him invisible.

He was wrong.

Follow us: linktr.ee/triggeredthepodcast

Make sure to follow us on social media and check out everywhere you can listen at linktr.ee/triggeredthepodcast

Contact us at [email protected]

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

*****If you are struggling, please text *988* from anywhere in Canada or the US*****

This week we are not solving a crime. In all three of these stories, we already know exactly what happened. The person did it, admitted it, and it is all on the record. The fight is over what to call it.

Chantal walks you into three rooms. A man who mailed the means to die to people all over the world and got the lesser charge. A Saskatchewan father who ended his severely disabled twelve-year-old daughter's life and called it love, and got the most serious charge there is. And the grieving, addicted survivors of overdoses who shared a supply with someone they loved, nearly died themselves, and got charged with murder.

Same act, supplying the means, three completely different verdicts.

Content warning: this episode discusses suicide, the death of a disabled child, and drug overdose. Please take care of yourself. If you are struggling, you can call or text 988 anytime in Canada and the US.

Make sure to follow us on social media and check out everywhere you can listen at linktr.ee/triggeredthepodcast

Contact us at [email protected]

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

TRIGGER WARNING: Pregnancy loss, murder, infant murder.

In 2019, Taylor Parker photographed Reagan Simmons-Hancock's wedding.

A year later, she murdered her for the baby in her belly.

For nearly a year, Parker had been telling her boyfriend she was pregnant. She faked a bump, threw a gender reveal, and even set a due date. The only problem was that there was no baby. So on October 9, 2020, she drove to Reagan's home in New Boston, Texas, where the 21 year old was 36 weeks pregnant with her daughter Braxlynn. What happened inside that house is one of the most horrifying things we have ever covered, and Reagan's three year old was home for all of it.

Parker was pulled over by a state trooper later that morning, claiming she had just given birth. She had not. This week we walk through the wedding photographer who became a killer, the trial that put her on Texas death row, and where the case stands now that her appeals have run out. Plus, with the new Netflix documentary putting this case back in the spotlight, we get into what the cameras left out.

Rest in power, Reagan and Braxlynn.

Follow us: linktr.ee/triggeredthepodcast

Make sure to follow us on social media and check out everywhere you can listen at linktr.ee/triggeredthepodcast

Contact us at [email protected]

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In February 1987, Allen and Debbie Tallman bought a bunk bed at a second-hand shop in Horicon, Wisconsin. Within days, their children started describing the same red-eyed woman they had never compared notes about. Within months, Allen was sleeping on the floor of his daughters' room, a pastor was refusing to come back, and a family member who didn't believe in any of it ran screaming out of a bedroom in the middle of the night.

On January 11th, 1988, Debbie Tallman loaded her kids into a car and left. She didn't pack. She didn't wait for her husband to get home from his shift. She vowed never to go back, and she never did.

Follow us: linktr.ee/triggeredthepodcast

Make sure to follow us on social media and check out everywhere you can listen at linktr.ee/triggeredthepodcast

Contact us at [email protected]

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Seven-year-old Athena Strand disappeared on November 30, 2022, from her home in Wise County, Texas. The last person to see her alive was the FedEx driver who had just dropped off a package at her front door. He was also the person who killed her.

Tanner Horner claimed he accidentally clipped Athena with his truck as he backed out of the driveway. But rather than call for help, he pulled her into his van and strangled her with his bare hands. Then he dumped her body in a creek. Athena had even told him her name.

We're covering the digital evidence that led straight to Horner's door, the devastating footage from inside that delivery truck, and the trial that ended on May 5, 2026, with a death sentence.

Athena liked to climb her favorite pear tree and hang from the branches with her sister. She deserved so much more.

Content warning: Child abduction, murder, and references to sexual violence.

Follow us: linktr.ee/triggeredthepodcast

Make sure to follow us on social media and check out everywhere you can listen at linktr.ee/triggeredthepodcast

Contact us at [email protected]

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What happens when a bad night between friends spirals into a 250-page murder manifesto? This week on Triggered, we dive into the most meticulously planned crimes we've ever covered: the case of Adrian Loya, a U.S. Coast Guard petty officer who spent over a year plotting the murder of his former colleague Lisa Berlanga.

From a friendship forged in the frozen tundra of Kodiak, Alaska to a premeditated attack on Cape Cod complete with fake bombs, a boombox blasting the Star Wars theme, and a GoPro strapped to his chest — this case is as bizarre as it is devastating. We're talking surveillance runs, a 250-page manifesto called "Loya Wars," a near-death ambush of a police officer, and a trial where three forensic experts couldn't agree on a single diagnosis.

But at the center of all of it is Lisa Berlanga — a woman who deserved so much more than what she got.

Follow us: linktr.ee/triggeredthepodcast

Make sure to follow us on social media and check out everywhere you can listen at linktr.ee/triggeredthepodcast

Contact us at [email protected]

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kayla Rose Huff was 16 years old. She loved track, basketball, her church youth group, and playing Roblox with her little brother. Her family called her Kayla Bug. On the morning of May 6, 2026, she went missing from Moberly, Missouri, and the community turned itself inside out searching for her. One week later, her body was found in a wooded stretch of the Rudolf Bennitt Conservation Area. She had been beaten, placed in the trunk of a car, driven to a remote location, and shot.

What makes this case so disturbing isn't just the violence, it's the deliberate planning. Court documents allege that suspects disabled Kayla's car the night before by pouring motor oil into the gas tank. That it may have involved the person she trusted most. And that multiple people, some of whom called police after the fact, allegedly knew what had happened and said nothing.

Five adults and a 17-year-old now face charges in connection with her kidnapping and murder. The motive remains 'officially unknown', but there are rumours swirling online.

Follow us: linktr.ee/triggeredthepodcast

Content warning: this episode contains descriptions of violence against a minor.

Make sure to follow us on social media and check out everywhere you can listen at linktr.ee/triggeredthepodcast

Contact us at [email protected]

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.