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This week in True Crime Today's Week in Review, with the guilty verdict now on record, the legal decisions made during the final stretch of the Kouri Richins murder trial deserve a complete accounting. On Day 13, following the denial of a directed verdict motion and the final cross-examination of lead investigator Detective Jeff O'Driscoll, the defense rested without calling a single witness. Three were reportedly prepared. One hour behind closed doors. Then silence.

Tony Brueski examines the legal architecture of that decision — the directed verdict standard, why it failed, and the procedural position the defense was in when that recess ended. Viewed against a guilty verdict on all counts returned in three hours, the choice to rest without testimony takes on added weight.

Eric Faddis, defense attorney and former felony prosecutor, provides the most rigorous pre-verdict legal accounting of where this case was vulnerable and where it wasn't. The drug use theory had been challenged on three fronts: a judicial ruling, witness testimony from Eric's personal circle, and forensic toxicology. Both key prosecution witnesses held immunity agreements and altered their accounts. A detective's recorded statements were used against the state mid-trial. Faddis assessed each of these defense arguments with full credibility — and then turned to the deception record the jury ultimately had to weigh. A forged insurance signature. A jailhouse letter written as a destruction instruction. Phone searches. Text messages requesting fentanyl three days after Eric Richins died.

The jury deliberated for three hours. This is the legal map of how the verdict got there.

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This week in True Crime Today's Week in Review, the Walk the Dog letter is not treated as a news story. It is treated as an exhibit. Tony Brueski examines the six-page jailhouse letter attributed to Kouri Richins with the specificity the legal record demands — each section analyzed not for shock value but for evidentiary function. The Ronney witness narrative and what it establishes about alleged tampering intent. The airport drug story as a constructed defense mechanism rather than authentic recollection. The GMA media coordination and what it implies about narrative management. The Lotto suppression request. The Katie ask. The Crest whitening strips passage, which read carefully speaks directly to state of mind.

That legal analysis extends into psychological territory with direct implications for how juries evaluate defendants. Psychotherapist Shavaun Scott and former FBI Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Chief Robin Dreeke examine the documented background of Kouri Richins and what behavioral research tells us about the development of deceptive conduct over time. Whether a pattern of behavior predates the alleged crime is not an academic question — it is often precisely what the government uses to build a consciousness of guilt argument.

This is the legal and analytical work this case requires. Kouri Richins has pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

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Kouri Richins is watching her story collapse in Utah. The friend who testified. The boyfriend. The housekeeper. The financial records.

One by one, people are talking.

This is Part 5 of The Perfect Wife — examining why the long con always ends.

Denise Williams held hers together for seventeen years.

Mike Williams disappeared December 2000. Duck hunting. Drowned, eaten by alligators.

Denise collected $1.75 million in insurance. Five years later, she married Brian Winchester — Mike's best friend. The man who shot him.

They raised Mike's daughter together. Built a life on top of what they'd done.

Mike's mother Cheryl spent seventeen years fighting. Being called paranoid. Refusing to stop.

She was right.

Brian cracked in 2016. Divorce made the math simple: his survival mattered more than their secret. He confessed. Led investigators to Mike's body.

Every perfect crime has witnesses. And witnesses talk when their survival is on the line.

Kouri's foundation is cracking. The texts. The testimony. The financial records.

The long con always ends. Not through brilliant detective work. Through human nature.

People talk.

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A murder conviction that shut the courtroom doors but opened a flood of new questions about what’s next — that’s Kouri Richins. A disappearance now stretching into its seventh week, packed with leads but still no arrest — Nancy Guthrie. And a cop-on-cop shooting where the officer who was shot now faces trial in front of a judge alone — Kelsey Fitzsimmons.

Tony Brueski and retired FBI Behavioral Analysis Chief Robin Dreeke dig into what no one else will: the holes in the stories, the decisions that don’t make sense, and the people left waiting for real answers. No summaries, no soft takes — just the hard questions these three stories demand.

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The Murdaugh name meant power for a hundred years. Now it means murder.

Part 5 of "The Name" explores what remains after the collapse. The victims still suffering — Gloria Satterfield's sons, Mallory Beach's family, every client Alex robbed. The survivors trying to rebuild.

And Buster Murdaugh, the surviving son, carrying a name that will never mean what it used to mean.

This episode asks the question anyone who's escaped a toxic family knows: How do you separate yourself from a legacy you didn't choose?

The dynasty is over. The wreckage keeps spreading. And the people holding it didn't all choose to be there.

You can't choose your family. But you can choose what you carry forward.

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Kelsey Fitzsimmons is a North Andover, Massachusetts police officer who was shot in the chest by a fellow officer at her own home in June 2025 — and she's the one facing criminal charges. Her trial on assault with a dangerous weapon begins March 23, and today she waived her right to a jury trial, placing her fate entirely in a judge's hands. The circumstances of the case are genuinely contested. Officers say Fitzsimmons pointed her service weapon at them when they arrived to serve a restraining order obtained by her fiancé and remove her infant son. Fitzsimmons says she pointed the gun at herself — that she was in the grip of a postpartum mental health crisis and was trying to take her own life. There is no footage of the moment the gun was raised. Her legal team alleges her ex-fiancé subsequently broke into her home while she was hospitalized and allegedly stole money and personal records — and that prosecutors have declined to charge him. In this listener Q&A, Tony Brueski and retired FBI Behavioral Analysis Chief Robin Dreeke walk a new audience through every layer of this case and take on the questions that get to the heart of it: about mental health, about the system, about accountability, and about what justice looks like when the facts are this disputed.

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The Kelsey Fitzsimmons assault trial opens Monday in Massachusetts — and two developments this week changed the entire shape of what happens next.

Fitzsimmons waived her right to a jury trial. Judge Jeffrey Karp alone will decide whether the former North Andover police officer is guilty of assault with a dangerous weapon for allegedly pointing her service weapon at a colleague who came to serve a restraining order. She says she was pointing it at herself. He says she pointed it at him. There is no body camera footage. One judge picks.

And the June 30th text exchange between Fitzsimmons and former fiancé Justin Aylaian — the messages sent on the day of the shooting — was unsealed and admitted as evidence.

Those texts are the story. And the story they tell is one that true crime coverage has been largely unwilling to say plainly.

Read the patterns in that exchange. The dismissal of Aylaian's physical abuse allegation in four words. The child deployed as emotional leverage every time he tries to state a boundary. The financial threats pulled in rapid succession. His debit card and ID in her possession leaving him unable to move. His entire support network dismissed as liars. His tone — measured, factual, calm — against an escalation that never stops.

Now ask the question True Crime Today is asking: if those messages had come from him, what would we call it?

There would be no conversation about mental health softening the read. There would be a victim and a restraining order we would call necessary. The behavior in those messages has a name when a man sends it. It does not always get that name when a woman does.

This episode examines the texts pattern by pattern, breaks down the bench trial decision from both strategic directions, and addresses the system failure that sent officers to that door with no crisis plan for a situation already flagged as dangerous. Both sides. Full context. The question the verdict won't answer.

Trial starts Monday. This is the coverage it deserves.

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The Courtney Clenney murder trial begins April 27, 2026 in Miami — and if you haven't been following this case, now is the time to catch up. Because this one is not straightforward. Not even close.

Clenney, known online as Courtney Tailor, is charged with second-degree murder in the April 2022 stabbing death of her boyfriend, cryptocurrency trader Christian Obumseli, inside their luxury Edgewater high-rise. She has maintained from day one that she acted in self-defense — that Obumseli grabbed her by the throat, that she threw a knife from ten feet away to create distance, and that she never meant to kill him.

The medical examiner says the wound — three inches deep, severing the subclavian artery — is inconsistent with a thrown knife. The defense says a battered woman in terror doesn't move the way she remembers moving.

The evidence trail runs back two years across multiple cities. Obumseli's secret recordings of Clenney hurling racial slurs and striking him. Elevator surveillance footage of Clenney hitting him months before his death. But also: police records of Clenney requesting a restraining order two days before he died. A witness who told investigators Obumseli hit her in private. A security guard who described Obumseli charging toward her in the lobby.

And then there's the investigation itself — a circuit judge ruled prosecutors violated attorney-client privilege. Computer charges against Clenney's parents were dropped. The defense alleges evidence was destroyed and a witness was withheld.

Hidden Killers is bringing you complete coverage of this trial. This episode is where it starts — the full case, both sides, all the evidence. Subscribe and don't miss a day.

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Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of Today show anchor Savannah Guthrie, was abducted from her home in Tucson, Arizona on February 1st. Six weeks later, investigators have not publicly named a suspect, have not made an arrest, and this week confirmed that newly recovered surveillance footage from her property shows nothing suspicious. In this listener Q&A, Tony Brueski and retired FBI Behavioral Analysis Chief Robin Dreeke take on the questions followers of this case have been sitting with. Investigators are now canvassing neighbors about footage from specific dates — January 11th and January 24th — suggesting they may be building a pre-abduction surveillance timeline on a suspect they haven't yet publicly identified. The sheriff has said he believes the home was targeted and that he thinks he knows the motive — but won't say what it is. Multiple ransom notes were sent to media outlets with deadlines that passed without consequence. And a damaged utility box near her home may have disrupted the neighborhood's Wi-Fi the night she disappeared. Robin and Tony work through what the evidence pattern says about who did this — and whether the investigation is closing in or running cold.

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Kouri Richins was convicted of murdering her husband Eric with fentanyl and is heading to prison for life. It is one of the most documented, most debated poisoning cases in recent true crime history — and the conviction closes the legal chapter while leaving the human one wide open. In this listener Q&A, Tony Brueski and retired FBI Behavioral Analysis Chief Robin Dreeke take on the post-verdict fallout. The immunity deals that let key witnesses walk free. The defense's misconduct claims that didn't move the jury. The grief book written and sold to families while Kouri allegedly concealed what she had done. The four years of sustained deception, and what it means that it ultimately wasn't enough. Robin applies the behavioral framework he built during a career recruiting spies and analyzing dangerous personalities to ask the question nobody wants to answer plainly: does Kouri Richins believe she did anything wrong? And what does the answer to that question tell us about who she actually is? A conviction ends a trial. It doesn't end the story.

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