True Crime Brewery

Oxnard, California is a town like many towns across the United States.  Oxnard has its share of institutional racism and gender hate, but no one would have expected one junior high student to murder another in cold blood. Growing up transgender, biracial, and in an abusive home, Leticia King had many challenges in life.  At age 15, Leticia was struggling to find herself.  She was identifying as a female and asking her classmates to stop calling her Larry and begin calling her Leticia.

Leticia was adopted as a toddler boy.  As she reached adolescence, child abuse in her adopted home resulted in placement in a shelter for abused and neglected children. In the shelter, she found a supportive and accepting environment.  At school, she was teased, ostracized, and bullied.  But Leticia was strong and self-empowered. She refused to hide who she was from her classmates.  Some of her peers didn’t like that.

One of these peers was 14-year-old Brandon McInerney. Brandon was raised in a home where abuse, illegal drugs, and weapons were commonplace.

Join us at the quiet end for A Murder in Junior High. When interactions between Leticia and Brandon resulted in a shocking murder, parents, teachers, and community leaders all shared in responsibility.  Opinions and debates on the crime made one thing clear: gender identification and the behavior of teen-aged males are topics long overdue for society-wide discussions.

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Read “A Murder Over a Girl”

The story of Tina Fontaine’s life belongs to her and her family, but it parallels many others in Indigenous communities.  Her struggle for stability, the promises not kept, and the sexual exploitation she endured meant that Tina experienced more trauma and pain than most people could imagine.

Because of situations beyond her control, Tina needed housing, health, and educational services that were not easily accessed.  In the last years of her life, poverty, homelessness, and drug use led her into life threatening situations on an almost daily basis.  All of this by the time she was 15-years-old.

Today, at the quiet end, we’re telling Tina’s story.  After all, Tina was just a girl.  She was a girl with hopes and dreams, just like our daughters.  But Tina was left vulnerable to dangerous predators. Why was no one able or willing to protect or defend her?

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The life portrayed on social media by Jennifer Hart seemed perfect.  She and her wife, Sarah, were a progressive and loving couple with six adopted black children.  Pictures on Facebook showed two moms giving their disadvantaged children a better life.  Never mind that the pictures looked posed and the children were rail thin.

Real life for the Hart children was far from perfect.  A trail of abuse followed the family from Minnesota, to Oregon, to Washington, until Jennifer Hart drove the family’s SUV off a California cliff.

Join us at the quiet end for The Hart Family Tragedy.  This case is a disturbing example of unchecked child abuse, failures in the foster care and adoption system, and a society that doesn’t always value children enough to intervene on their behalf.  In the final analysis, Jen and Sarah Hart were responsible for the children’s deaths, but that doesn’t mean that there was no way the tragedy could have been prevented.

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On December 2, 2010, 24-year-old Phoebe Handsjuk was found dead on the floor of her apartment building’s garbage compactor room.  Her death was slow and painful as she bled to death, alone and in pain, on the dirty floor.  Now, nearly 10 years have passed, and her family is still searching for answers.

This was a strange way to die.  How and why Phoebe died that day has become a complex narrative of alcohol and drug abuse, domestic discord, police incompetence, and alleged cover-ups.

Join us at the quiet end for Phoebe’s Fall.  This is the story of a vibrant but troubled young woman whose violent death has left a veil of sadness, frustration and suspicion over everyone who knew her.

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Wendi Mae Davidson excelled in school and succeeded in her career, but her personal life was always a mess.  Wendi had a habit of either choosing the wrong men or sabotaging her relationships.  Unfortunately, her parents enabled her unstable and selfish behavior.

After two unplanned pregnancies, Wendi married 24-year old Air Force officer Michael Severance. Mike was a nice guy, less educated than Wendi, but hard-working and responsible.  For a while, it seemed like the marriage could work. Then, just one day before they were due to visit Mike’s family on the other side of the country, Mike vanished.

Join us at the quiet end for The Case Against Wendi Mae Davidson.  It would take months for investigators to find Mike, but analysis of Wendi’s internet searches and GPS tracking of her vehicle would lead to her arrest.

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In a small, quiet seaside town in 1991, the bodies of young nurse Lesley Howell and police officer, Trevor Buchanan, were found in a car filled with carbon monoxide.  Lesley wore headphones playing her favorite Christian music. She was surrounded by family photos. These deaths stunned the community and broke the hearts of family members.  What would cause these devout Baptists and parents of young children to take their own lives?

Lesley and Trevor did have one common struggle:  Their spouses were involved in a lengthy love affair. Both deeply religious, Lesley’s husband Colin played his role as a family man and a well-liked dentist while Hazel Buchanan lived her life as a teacher, a wife and a mother.  But they were living a lie.

The depravity and hypocrisy of this affair was a painful reality for Lesley and Trevor, but not everyone was convinced that they had resorted to a suicide pact.  Not until a surprise confession nearly twenty years later would the horrible truth come to light.

Join us at the quiet end for Indecency.  Infidelity is not a crime, but what this affair led to was one of the most twisted and memorable crimes in Ireland’s history.

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Maria Cruz was a perfect example of the American dream fulfilled.  Growing up in the Philippines, she moved to New York in 1992, received her M.B.A. from Fordham University, and took a job as a senior credit analyst.

On Palm Sunday, April 13, 2003, Maria attended mass at St. Malachy’s Church.  She stopped by her office that afternoon, excited about an appointment she had later that day for a cosmetic laser procedure.

When Maria didn’t show up for work that Monday or Tuesday, everyone agreed that it was not like her to miss work without calling.  On Wednesday, the police were called to her apartment, but there was no sign of Maria.  It would take months before detectives searched her emails and ran a check on her laser specialist, Dean Faiello, uncovering his lengthy criminal history.

Join us at the quiet end for The Pretender.  Dean Faiello had looks, intelligence, and charm, but Maria’s disappearance would reveal that he lacked a conscience.

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Dale Ewell worked hard to give his children all of the advantages he didn’t have as a child.  His wife, Glee, provided a loving home, staying home with their daughter Tiffany and son Dana, showering them with attention as well as possessions.

Growing up with every advantage, Dana Ewell didn’t appreciate what he was given. He always wanted more.  He didn’t inherit his parents’ strong work ethic, but wanted everything handed to him, all the while acting like he was a successful businessman in his own right.

On April 19th, 1992, the Ewell’s home was robbed. Two days later, the housekeeper found the house torn apart, with three dead bodies sprawled across the floors.  Join us at the quiet end for Eight Million Reasons to Kill. We all want to give our children the best things in life, but this may have backfired for Glee and Dale Ewell.

When things didn’t go the way Raynella Leath wanted, she could be calculating and vicious.  But she could also be quite charming.  After attempting to kill a man who considered her a friend, and after two husbands died suspicious deaths, the people where she lived in Solway, Tennessee wondered about Raynella.  Many feared her and even warned others not to cross her.

Raynella is a grandmother, formally married to a state prosecutor.  She is well-off, well-educated, and a former director of nursing.  It took years for her to go to trial for murder but, despite a conviction, she is now a free woman.

Join us at the quiet end for Until Death, a complex story of a justice system influenced by money and privilege and a woman who may had gotten away with murder twice.

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Read Her Deadly Web by Dianne Fanning