True Crime Campfire

If there’s one old folktale that finds a frequent echo in true crime stories, it has to be ‘Bluebeard,’ about a man who marries and then murders a series of wives. It’s a pattern we’ve seen time and again, with both killer husbands and lethal wives, most often driven by greed. That, at least, is something comprehensible—there are some killers driven by urges so cold and petty that it’s hard to even recognize them as human.

Join us for the chilling true story of a serial husband whose entire life was a lie.

Sources:

The Stranger in My Bed, Michael Fleeman

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All of us have some tensions and frustrations with our families, and that’s fine. It’s just normal human nature. But for some people, these rough edges to everyday family interactions become absolutely unbearable, an insult to their overinflated sense of importance. And those resentments can seep like poison through every particle of their being until it's all they can think of.

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Sources:

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-jan-16-me-63999-story.html

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-jan-30-me-13611-story.html

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-12-12-me-13181-story.html

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-01-02-mn-15646-story.html

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Do you think people will still be talking about Scott Peterson or Chris Watts in a hundred years? How about five-hundred? Probably not, right? But there are some acts of cruelty and depravity that echo down the centuries, becoming entwined with myth and legend. This week, we’re going to take a look at two of these famous perpetrators.

Sources:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/transactions-of-the-royal-historical-society/article/counting-the-stakes-a-reassessment-of-vlad-iii-draculas-practice-of-collective-impalements-in-fifteenthcentury-southeastern-europe/F1B68C737C004D494BBE3B8B9B5E0FF7

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Vlad-the-Impaler

MJ Trow, Vlad the Impaler

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Death is not always the end. We’re not stepping into any kind of spiritual territory here, though, we’re talking about the very earthly fact that just because someone appears to be dead, it doesn’t necessarily mean that that is the case. Maybe someone needs to escape an upcoming personal disaster, maybe they need the insurance money, maybe they’ve tied their life into such a knot that it’s easier to just quit and start again. Faking your own death has an age-old history, and it almost always causes pain and damage all around.

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Forensic Files, S8E31, “Past Lives”

https://mycolumbiasc.wordpress.com/2007/04/27/what-do-you-want-on-your-tombstone/

Forensic Files, S14E5, “A Squire’s Riches”

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-16-adna-fakedeath16-story.html

https://www.dailyherald.com/20080306/news/police-lake-barrington-man-committed-murder-to-fake-own-death/

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Reddit is an endless archive of humanity’s most disturbing, bizarre, and deeply human stories. If you love going down internet rabbit holes, you are going to love CRIMES OF REDDIT with Alexis Linkletter and Sabrina Deana-Roga. 

Every Tuesday, one host brings a set of true-crime stories while the other reacts in real time with no prep, no spoilers asking the questions on everyone’s mind. They pull at every thread until the whole twisted picture comes into view. It’s dark, it’s messy, and the scariest part is simple: THESE ARE STORIES POSTED BY REAL PEOPLE. 

Follow CRIMES OF REDDIT for a new episode every Tuesday. https://pod.link/1838511303 

CRIMES OF REDDIT is a Crime House original powered by PAVE Studios. 

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Last week, we introduced you to Krystyna Skarbek, a daring resistance agent who smuggled valuable intelligence and thousands of refugees out of Nazi-occupied Poland. When we left off last week, she and her lover Andrzej had just fled Hungary, one step ahead of the Gestapo, and enjoyed a brief moment of peace in Belgrade. That wasn’t going to last for long. Join us for the finale of this incredible true story.

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Clare Mulley, The Spy Who Loved

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James Belushi once wrote, “Heroes aren’t born, they’re cornered.” It’s often extraordinary, and sometimes horrifying, circumstance that compels a person into actions they’d never have imagined previously. This week’s story is about a woman who was faced with horrors and discovered she had the courage to fight them.

Join us live at Wet Hot Bad Magic Summer Camp in Equinunk, PA, September 10-13th! Visit ⁠badmagicproductions.com⁠ for more info and to buy tickets.

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Sources:

The Spy Who Loved, Clare Mulley

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You can’t judge a book by its cover. There’s no shortage of gold-hearted biker dudes and wicked ministers—you can’t really know what someone’s like inside right away. Like that guy in the library over there, with the glasses and neat hair and preppy style and self-effacing affect. He seems harmless, right? He isn’t, though. He’s as full of anger and danger as someone on death row. Sometimes it’s the quiet ones you have to watch out for.

Join us live at Wet Hot Bad Magic Summer Camp in Equinunk, PA, September 10-13th! Visit ⁠badmagicproductions.com⁠ for more info and to buy tickets.

Tickets are on sale now for CrimeWave 2.0! Visit crimewaveatsea.com/CAMPFIRE to get your discount code for $100 off your cabin and a private meet-and-greet with us! The cruise is Feb. 8-12, 2027.

Stella Sands, Behind the Mask

https://library.law.fsu.edu/Digital-Collections/flsupct/dockets/sc02-1920/02-1920ini.pdf

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2002/06/05/defendant-described-as-kind-and-gentle/

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In Irish and other European folklore, a changeling is a fae child that is swapped with a human baby to be raised by humans. Sometimes it’s because the fae needed human milk to survive, in others, it’s because the fae needed a human to be a servant or sometimes, as revenge on the parents. The parents would raise the fae child unknowingly, but the infant would be… wrong. Maybe it would eat more than a human child could, or would be particularly mischievous, or would have extra fingers or toes, but in the stories, the parents eventually knew, somehow, that their child was no longer their own. In today’s story, we’re going to tell you about a real life changeling, but instead of being swapped by supernatural forces, the imposter took the place of the child himself.

Sources:

Grann, David. The Devil and Sherlock Holmes

The Imposter (2012), documentary film by Bart Layton

https://charleyproject.org/case/nicholas-patrick-barclay

https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/unpub/98/98-51227.0.wpd.pdf

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In August of 2012, the family of an Irish woman named Elaine O’Hara reported her missing. Investigators located her car near the seashore, but found no sign of Elaine herself. She had been struggling with her mental health for most of her life; in fact, the day she disappeared was the day she got home from a five-week stay in a psychiatric hospital. So after a brief investigation, everyone concluded that Elaine must have taken her own life. But Elaine had been living a secret life for the past year and half before she went missing—playing a dangerous game with a man obsessed with sexual violence. Every time she tried to escape his hold on her, he would draw her back in. Elaine’s loved ones knew nothing about her double life. And if it hadn’t been for a series of strange coincidences about a year after her disappearance, it would have stayed that way forever. But truth has a way of coming to the light—especially a truth as dark as this one.

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Join us live at Wet Hot Bad Magic Summer Camp in Equinunk, PA, September 10-13th! Visit ⁠badmagicproductions.com⁠ for more info and to buy tickets.

Tickets are on sale now for CrimeWave 2.0! Visit

Sources:

Almost the Perfect Murder, Paul Williams

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Elaine_O%27Hara

ITV's "Secrets of a Psychopath"

The Journal: https://www.thejournal.ie/graham-dwyer-timeline-1995085-Mar2015/

https://sk.sagepub.com/dict/edvol/the-concise-dictionary-of-crime-and-justice/chpt/piquerism

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Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfire
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Facebook: True Crime Campfire
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Email: [email protected]
MERCH! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.com

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