True Crime: DECODED with Scott Rolle

In this episode, Scott Rolle is joined by Kenneth Bowman, a former Air Force bomb technician, railroad police investigator, and self-taught researcher, to explore one of history’s most bizarre cold cases. On October 3rd, 1849, Edgar Allan Poe was found outside a Baltimore tavern, incoherent and wearing clothes that weren’t his, and was dead four days later. No death certificate, no medical records, no clear cause of death. The standard theories range from alcoholism to rabies to a scheme called cooping, where men were drugged and forced to vote multiple times on election day. But Bowman has a different theory entirely: that Poe faked his own death, with the help of his doctor, to escape the macabre and start over under a new identity. He also believes Poe used cryptic anagrams in his final words as a coded message to future investigators, and that Poe’s essay Eureka reveals a mind that had somehow accessed knowledge from the future. Scott takes it all in and lets you decide what to make of it.

In this episode, Scott Rolle and Jersey Joe shift from Dallas to Martha's Vineyard to tackle the scandal that may have ended the last Kennedy's shot at the presidency. On the night of July 18th, 1969, Senator Ted Kennedy's car went off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, and 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne never made it out. Kennedy didn't report it until the next morning. Jersey Joe makes the case that Kennedy wasn't even in the car when it went over, and that the story the nation was told was constructed at the Kennedy compound to save a Senate career. Scott and Joe also trace the full arc of Kennedy family tragedy, from Joe Junior's death in World War Two to JFK and RFK's assassinations, and ask whether the so-called Kennedy curse was really just a dynasty undone by its own ambitions.

In this episode, Scott Rolle is joined in the studio by attorney, writer, and conspiracy theorist Joe Racioppi, aka Jersey Joe, for the first installment of a deep dive into the Kennedy family's darkest chapters. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy remains the most investigated crime in American history, and six decades later, the central question still has no definitive answer. Scott and Jersey Joe, who visited Dealey Plaza together to see the scene firsthand, debate the Zapruder film, the magic bullet theory, Oswald's suspicious background, Jack Ruby's even more suspicious timing, and whether the CIA had both the motive and the means to orchestrate it all. The prosecutor and the conspiracy theorist go head to head, and neither one fully convinces the other.

In this episode, Scott Rolle is joined once again by attorney, writer, and self-described conspiracy theorist Joe Racioppi, aka Jersey Joe, to take on the Mount Everest of cold cases. In the autumn of 1888, five women were slaughtered in the fog-soaked streets of Whitechapel, London, with a savagery that paralyzed an entire city and launched the world's most infamous unsolved murder investigation. Scott and Jersey Joe break down the canonical five victims, the taunting letters that gave the killer his name, and the parade of suspects that researchers have been arguing over ever since. From Aaron Kosminski to the Duke of Clarence to a possible Freemason cover-up, they dig into what little evidence survives, and why 137 years later, no one can say with certainty who Jack the Ripper really was.

In this episode, Scott Rolle and Jersey Joe go deeper into the prosecution's strategy, the courtroom chaos, and whether Charles Manson would survive a trial today. They break down the credibility of witnesses who were themselves killers, the Helter Skelter theory that convicted him, and the death sentences that somehow never got carried out. Over fifty years later, the debate over guilt, motive, and justice is still very much alive.

In this episode, Scott Rolle is joined by attorney, writer, and conspiracy theorist Joe Racioppi, aka Jersey Joe, to decode one of the most infamous criminal cases in American history. Seven people were slaughtered across two nights in Los Angeles in August 1969, and the man who became synonymous with the killings never laid a hand on any of them. Scott and Jersey Joe dig into the competing motive theories, the unlikely connections that tied Manson to the victims, and the question that still haunts the case: would a jury today, armed with modern forensic standards, ever convict a man who never pulled a trigger?

In this episode, Scott Rolle and Buddy Levy pick up where they left off, digging deeper into the case for Kenny Christiansen as D.B. Cooper. They examine the potential accomplice hiding in plain sight, the missing cigarette evidence that could have cracked the case wide open, and why the FBI's reasons for ruling Christiansen out may not hold up to scrutiny. With the case now officially inactive, did law enforcement ever truly give their strongest suspect a serious look? And does the perfect crime only work if someone was waiting on the ground?

In this episode, Scott Rolle is joined by Buddy Levy, his co-star from the History Channel's Brad Meltzer's DECODED, to revisit the only unsolved skyjacking in American history. On Thanksgiving Eve 1971, a man calling himself Dan Cooper boarded a Northwest Orient Airlines flight, handed a stewardess a bomb threat note, collected $200,000 and four parachutes, and leaped into the night sky over the Pacific Northwest without a trace. Scott and Buddy break down the crime itself, the airport security lapses that made it possible, and the circumstantial case building against their top suspect, Kenny Christiansen. From a hidden stash of cash and a suspiciously well-timed home purchase to a deathbed secret and a hidden compartment in the attic, does the evidence finally point to D.B. Cooper's true identity?

In this final episode investigating the Charles Lindbergh case, Scott Rolle is joined again by special guest Joseph Racioppi, aka Jersey Joe, an expert on the Lindbergh kidnapping case, to explore the trial of Bruno Hauptmann. Did the evidence truly prove he built the ladder and wrote the ransom notes? Or was the wrong man executed? We analyze the wood evidence, handwriting claims, and the theory that Charles Lindbergh himself may have been involved.

In this episode Scott Rolle and special guest Joseph Racioppi, aka Jersey Joe, examine the ransom negotiations and the strange role of Dr. John Condon as the go between in the Lindbergh kidnapping. They analyze the cemetery meeting, the marked ransom bills, suspicious suspects, and the growing theory that this may have been an inside job. Did critical decisions early on derail the investigation?