As Abe Lincoln once said—or possibly some guy named Peter Drucker, depends on who you ask—the best way to predict the future is to create it. But for a lot of us humans, that’s a little too loosey-goosey. We’re not big fans of the unknown, and we tend to seek out people who claim they can tell us what to expect from the future. Americans, for example, spend billions a year on psychics. A lot of these are legitimate businesspeople who genuinely want to provide counseling and comfort for their clients. But there’s also a bustling trade in psychic fraud—run by people who have no qualms about taking advantage of you at your most vulnerable and desperate. Today we’re gonna tell you about two of those cases. Case 1: The Mysterious Death of Seth Tobias. Case 2: Psychic Scammer Gina Marks

Sources:
New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/business/04tobias.html
ABC News: https://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=4279324&page=1
New York Magazine: https://nymag.com/news/features/43914/
The Times: https://www.thetimes.com/article/hunt-for-tiger-the-go-go-boy-after-seth-tobiass-death-5n923qml8pf
The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/12/bob-nygaard-private-investigator-psychic-fraud
NBC: https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/maryland-psychic-sentenced-to-6-years-for-scamming-clients/155294/
TV show "Pink Collar Crime," episode "The Psychic Didn't See Him Coming"

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Some of the easiest people on the planet to fool are those who have a real high opinion of their own brains based on very little evidence. A classic con-artist trick is to make the mark think they’re the one in charge, they’re the one making the decisions. They don’t realize they’ve been taken until their bank balance is empty and they’ve signed away the deed to granddaddy’s farm. Sometimes they won’t even see it then, because that would mean facing up to some unpleasant realities about themselves. In this week’s story, the consequences of gullibility and manipulation are a lot heavier than financial ruin—three generations of a family have their lives torn to pieces over greed and a web of the darkest lies imaginable. 

Sources:
Daddy’s Girl by Clifford Irving 
Court papers: https://casetext.com/case/ray-v-state-51
The Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1985/02/26/true-confessions/718e2739-0997-4ac0-a551-d860a9f51b7f/

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On June 10th, 1983, the decomposing body of a well-dressed man was found in a desolate canyon near Los Angeles. John Doe #94 would soon be identified as missing variety show producer Roy Radin. He'd last been seen after meeting with a mysterious woman in a gold dress. Her name was Lanie Jacobs.   Jacobs and Radin were obsessed with becoming Hollywood movie producers. And when their paths collided, it led them to a tantalizing film deal promising fame and fortune. But then, a twisted script unfolded, plunging them into a million-dollar cocaine and cash heist, a tangled web of lies, and ultimately – murder.

The trail led investigators right to Hollywood's doorstep, linking former golden boy producer Robert Evans to the case and dredging up Radin's own troubled past.   But the case turned ice cold. It would take more than five years of dogged pursuit by the L.A. Sheriff’s Department detectives, a secret undercover witness, and another murder almost 3,000 miles from Hollywood – to unlock the truth.   This is the story of a doomed Hollywood partnership, a grisly murder and the search that stretched across the country for a killer – or killers.   From Wondery, and the team behind the hit series Hollywood & Crime: The Dating Game Killer, The Wonderland Murders, Death of Starlet, and the Execution of Bonny Lee Bakley comes a six part series that dives into the dark side of Hollywood through a shocking murder – fueled by ruthless ambition and desperate dreams. Co-hosted by Tracy Pattin and Josh Lucas.   Listen to Hollywood & Crime: The Cotton Club Murder: Wondery.fm/TCCM_TCC

When we left you at the end of Part 1, fourteen year old Steven Stayner had escaped from seven years of captivity and abuse at the hands of child predator Kenneth Parnell—and he’d rescued Parnell’s next intended victim, a little boy named Timmy White. The story made international headlines, and Steven Stayner became his hometown’s living legend. It was March 1980, both boys were back home safe and Kenneth Parnell was behind bars where he belonged, waiting to go to trial. It seemed like a happy ending. But the story doesn’t end there. The second half of the Stayner saga is even darker than the first. Justice is denied. Secrets come to light. And another member of the family lets his most depraved fantasies cross over to real life.

Big thanks to Mike Moran of the podcast Confessional with Mike Moran for doing much of the work/research on this one and last week's! 

Sources:
Wikipedia: Cary Stayner
A&E's American Justice, episode The Yosemite Killer
The Crime Reel: Part 2 of The Troubled Lives of the Stayner Brothers
Casefile (podcast): Yosemite Sightseer Murders Parts 1 and 2 
CBS News: The Yosemite Murders
SF Gate: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/defense-to-fight-for-stayner-s-life-lawyers-2820211.php

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In classic literature—and in soap operas, too—there are a lot of families who become lightning rods for misfortune. Sometimes it really strains your suspension of disbelief—like, come on, one family could never go through this much tragedy. But every now and then, a family just seems to be haunted by something sinister. From February through July of 1999, the bodies of four women turned up around Yosemite National Park in California—all brutally murdered and mutilated. The killer was a handsome, likable guy named Cary Stayner, who confessed to the four murders once they had him in custody, and is suspected of quite a few more. And during his confession, the investigators realized why his name had seemed familiar to them. Cary was the brother of Steven Stayner, kidnapped by a pedophile in 1972, forced to change his name to Dennis and held captive for years, until one night in 1980 when he walked into a police station and said, “I know my first name is Steven.” That case captured the world, with books and documentaries covering Steven’s years-long ordeal and the courage of his escape. Now, nearly 20 years later, the Stayner family was once again in the throes of a nightmare. Would Cary have become a serial killer if his brother had never been kidnapped, or was that evil always lurking inside him? It’s a Shakespearean tragedy of a story, and we’ll be telling it in two parts. This is part one--the abduction of Steven Stayner.

Big thanks to Mike Moran of the Confessional Podcast for doing much of the work/research on this one! 

Sources:
All That's Interesting: https://allthatsinteresting.com/steven-stayner
Wikipedia: Kenneth Parnell
The Crime Reel: Part 1 of 2: Steven Stayner. The Troubled Lives of the Stayner Brothers
Casefile (podcast): Ep. 154, Steven Stayner
This Is Monsters (podcast): The Story of Kenneth Parnell, the Kidnapping of Steven Stayner

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In Part One, we met high-powered millionaire Ted Ammon and his…let’s say “eccentric” soon-to-be-ex-wife Generosa. When we left off, the Ammons were embroiled in a vicious divorce and a struggle over Ted’s wealth and custody of their twin children. Generosa, staying at the ritzy Stanhope Hotel, was renovating a townhouse and had just met a young electrician by the name of Danny Pelosi. Join us for part 2 of this wild true story.

Sources:
Almost Paradise by Kieran Crowley

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As much as most of us might try to live easy, conflict-free lives, sometimes you just can’t avoid an uncomfortable interaction. Maybe an unpleasant neighbor gets in your face about nothing at all, maybe someone behind a counter gives you all kinds of attitude, it’s more or less inevitable that sooner or later, someone will throw some grit into the smoothly turning gears of your life.  And most of us just deal with it and forget about it. Most of us don’t have actual “enemies,” but the main character in this week’s story made enemies like it was her full-time job. She would burn down years-long friendships over the smallest imagined slight, and if there were an actual, real betrayal—well, she’d burn down your whole life. Join us for part 1 of a story of explosive rage and revenge, set in one of the richest neighborhoods in the world. 

Sources:
Almost Paradise by Kieran Crowley

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Monsters in folklore are easy for us to comprehend. You can only kill a werewolf with a silver bullet, to stop a zombie for good, you have to destroy its brain, and vampires can’t enter your home without your permission. They also have pretty straightforward motivations. Werewolves: Animalistic rage. Zombies: Brains. Vampires: Blood. Human monsters have motivations that are a lot more opaque. What would possess someone to kidnap a woman in broad daylight? To break into a home in the middle of the night to kill the strangers inside? What if no one saw anything? How do you catch a ghost?

Case 1: The Murder of Ethel Kidd
Case 2: The Miyazawa Family Murders

Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/jan/07/jonathanwatts.theobserver https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/drumoorhouse/setagaya-family-murders-unsolved https://migration.ucdavis.edu/mn/more.php?id=1784
https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/15/TreatyBodyExternal/DownloadDraft.aspx?key=ymB6nZIkmtMHmD4fHNtFClpXxLVi5INdtxEH7GVV6SO/J3tQV0Oi1OZsY1fMY0sHi8/+hJhQOuHrWPxzeSFPfA==
https://japantoday.com/category/features/kuchikomi/new-book-claims-to-shed-light-on-2000-setagaya-family-murders https://mcsmrampage.com/2020/10/text/ https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/garden-of-unborn-children https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-29/the-house-of-horrors-in-setagaya-japan/11771304
https://smol.news/p/the-scary-strange-setagaya-family 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHI4Q6bmnnU&t=270s
https://medium.com/the-mystery-box/what-we-really-know-about-the-setagaya-family-murder-a87389875e71 https://www.keishicho.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/multilingual/english/safe_society/wanted/seijo.files/eng.pdf https://www.keishicho.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/multilingual/english/safe_society/wanted/seijo.html Unsolved Mysteries with Robert Stack, Season 4, Episode 3 https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/1074838/edward-wayne-beverly-v-commonwealth-of-virginia/

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We tend to cover strange cases on our show. We seek them out, because we find that there are always interesting lessons to be learned there. But when it comes to weird, some cases are in a category all their own. Like a pair of high school students so upset about a grade that they plot the brutal murder of their Spanish teacher…and a mother so obsessed with protecting her child from pain that she loses all sense of right and wrong. They’re two very different cases on the face of things, but underneath they have one major thing in common—the motive is just bizarre.

Case 1: Final Bell: The Murder of Nohema Graber
Case 2: Dark Magic: The Murder of Joey Fischer

Sources: 
Interrogation of Willard Chaiden Miller by Fairfield PD
Interrogation of Jeremy Goodale by Fairfield PD
Law & Crime network, YouTube
Couch Detectives, YouTube
NBC: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/slain-iowa-teacher-nohema-graber-remembered-best-us-rcna4710
The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1993/09/13/murder-on-the-border https://blog.chron.com/narcoconfidential/2013/09/twenty-years-later-recollections-of-wilder-than-fiction-south-texas-murder/
https://myrgv.com/featured/2021/12/11/motion-for-early-release-denied-dora-cisneros-to-serve-out-life-sentence/

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The philosopher and all-round barrel of laughs Albert Camus wrote, “To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.” Like any good philosophical quote, you can interpret it in a few ways. To not worry overly much about other people’s opinion of you can be a healthy lesson to learn, for example. But the main character in this week’s case would have a different interpretation—nothing and no-one mattered except his own grasping need for money and control, a need that would tear into pieces the lives of everyone around him. Join us for the story of a serial black widower--a man whose charm and pious Christian exterior hid a devious, murderous heart. 

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Sources:
Black Widower by Michael Fleeman
Rolling Stone: https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/black-widower-how-one-man-allegedly-murdered-two-wives-199999/
Court papers: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-10th-circuit/1868895.html

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