True Crime Reporter

A Texas Sheriff and a U.S. Marshal describe the violent criminal history of Kenneth Allen McDuff -- AKA  "The Broomstick Killer."

They and their fathers helped capture McDuff for the abduction and murder of three Fort Worth teenagers in 1966.

The brutality and rape of a teenage girl with a jagged broomstick handle were seared into their memories.

Twenty-five years later, they discover that McDuff is the modern-day  “Jack The Ripper” of Central Texas. 

Two days after the former death row inmate walked out of prison on parole, women’s bodies started showing up.

And women started getting snatched in plain sight, never to be seen alive again.

A violent crime wave swept across Texas in the late 1980s and early 1990s. You could pick up the newspaper any day or turn on the television anywhere, Houston, Dallas, particularly Houston, and the lead story was a stranger on stranger crime, horrific violence.

A Houston mother was pulled out of her car by her hair women at a busy intersection by ex-cons looking for a full tank of gas. 

They executed her and ran over her body as they drove away in her car with a full tank of gas.

Stories like this always start and end with, “The killers were out on parole.” 

Little did the public or members of the Texas Legislature know, but the Texas Governor had secretly swung open the doors to relieve prison overcrowding.  Thousands of violent criminals, including former death row inmates, flooded back into Texas communities.

In their wake, murder and mayhem spread like a plague across Texas.

Among the inmates released was Kenneth Allen McDuff, a sadistic sexual serial killer known as the “Broom Stick Killer."

McDuff had been sentenced to die in Texas’ electric chair for the brutal murder of three teenagers in a farming community outside Fort Worth. 

Women's bodies started showing up a few days after McDuff walked out of prison on parole in 1989.

This is the story of the dedicated law enforcement officers who worked tirelessly to stop McDuff's killing spree and to bring him to justice.

It is the story of how Peabody Award-winning investigative reporter Robert Riggs uncovered widespread corruption in the Texas Parole and Prison systems that led to the wholesale release of thousands of violent criminals.

Investigative Reporter Robert Riggs created an original true crime genre podcast based on three decades of real-life stories ripped from his reporter’s notebooks.

The True Crime Reporter™  podcast tells the backstory of criminal cases using interviews with the law enforcement law officers that played key roles in the investigation.

In every episode, Riggs pulls out his reporter’s notebooks. His law enforcement sources open up their case files. And they take listeners on a journey into darkness.

Riggs set out to create serialized immersive content that is character-driven. He brings the true crime audience into the story with characters that they care about so much that they want to binge-listen.

His stories strive to create a connection between true crime fans. The next phase of the production is to roll out a True Crime Reporter® Fandom where the community contributes to solving cold cases and organizes digital neighborhood watches.

True Crime Reporter™ features stories that are compelling to provide a new source of scripts for Hollywood screenwriters.

During his journalism career, Riggs never settled for standing outside the yellow crime scene tape. He went inside by knocking on doors, digging through records, and cultivating sources to get to the bottom of the story.

He is a recipient of television’s prestigious Peabody Award for investigative reporting and three coveted Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Awards for Investigative Reporting.

The American Bar Association honored Riggs with its Silver Gavel Award for his investigation of corruption in Texas’ parole and prison systems.  The Dallas Crime Commission in conjunction with the FBI awarded Riggs its first-ever “Excellence In Reporting Award” for his investigation of teenage heroin deaths in Plano, Texas and a landmark series on identity theft.

Riggs was appointed Chief Investigator for the Joint Committee on Defense Production by the late Congressman Wright Patman during the Watergate scandal.  Patman as Chairman of the House Banking Committee launched the first Watergate investigation. Riggs held a Top Secret Security clearance from the Department of Defense.

True crime stories reach into our consciousness and make us want to know how and why it happens.

The 5,300-year-old frozen skeleton named the Ice Man found in a European glacier was murdered by an arrowhead.  It seems plausible not only that murder has ancient roots in human history but also that fascination with murder does as well.

The public appetite for true crime dates back to the British daily newspaper, The Daily Courant, a single-sheet news flyer that debuted in 1702. It spawned the lurid “True Detective’ magazines. The Victorian Age spun out the “penny dreadfuls”.

Now the True Crime Reporter podcast takes listeners on a journey into darkness featuring interviews with prosecutors, investigators, victims, and ex-cons directly involved in the case.

P.S.

If you like this podcast, we invite you to listen to our Justice Facts Podcast -- True Crime Is Stranger Than Fiction.

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Bill Johnston, the federal prosecutor featured in "Free To Kill" and Investigative Reporter Robert Riggs, the host of True Crime Reporter™ talk about criminal cases from their careers and dissect cases making news.