True Crime with Elli Mac

When David Cass arrived to collect his daughters, Ellie, three, and Isobelle, just 14 months old, it seemed like a normal custody visit. Kerrie Hughes kissed them goodbye, never imagining it would be the last time she saw them alive.

The following day, he called Kerrie, out of breath, and said: “They’re sleeping.” When she asked what he meant, he replied: “They’re sleeping forever.” Moments later, he hung up.

Locked in a bitter split and custody fight, David had made a devastating choice — to ensure his daughters would never return to their mother.

This family photograph, taken just days before Christmas, appears ordinary at first. A father stands among his children.

A mother holds her baby. Everyone dressed up, wearing new dresses, and all arranged perfectly for the camera. Nothing seems out of place.

On the day the picture was taken, no one except Charlie Lawson knew why he had suddenly spent money he could barely afford.

Just days later, on Christmas Day, 1929, Charlie Lawson murdered his wife and six of his seven children before taking his own life—nearly erasing his entire family to protect a scandalous secret.

For decades, people studied that photograph, searching for answers. For some sign of what drove him to kill. It would take sixty years before the truth emerged—when a dark family secret finally came to light.

This is the story of the Lawson family murders, on Christmas Day.

Christmas in rural Oklahoma had always been a magical time for Jack and Elaine. Their little home on Iron Post Road glowed with decorations, and a small wooden manger stood proudly in the yard.

Inside, on December 23rd, 2007, Elaine spent the day doing what she loved most: cooking. Fresh loaves of her holiday bread cooled on the counter, and batches of her famous peanut brittle waited to be gifted to neighbors.

The couple were excited. Their daughter Sarah, her husband, and their three children were coming in just a few days to celebrate Christmas.

But when that day finally came… everything was wrong.

When Sarah and her family stepped through the door, they didn’t find the laughter or hugs they were expecting. Instead, they found Jack and Elaine—shot to death in their dining room. No signs of forced entry. No DNA. No fingerprints. No motive. Nothing.

The case baffled investigators. And for ten long years, it would go cold.

Until one witness came forward… and changed everything.

In December 1997, police arrived at the Daniels family home on Dasher Street, in the tiny Christmas-themed town of Santa Claus, Georgia.

The front door was ajar. Inside, the house was pitch dark and eerily silent. Deputies called out, but no one answered.

When they reached the master bedroom, the deputies froze. Forty-three-year-old Danny Daniels lay sprawled beside his thirty-three-year-old wife, Kim. Both were drenched in blood. Kim had been shot in the face; Danny in the head.

Down the hallway, they found sixteen-year-old Jessica Daniels, lifeless, near the doorway of her parents’ room. In an adjoining bedroom, eight-year-old Bryant lay in bed, clutching his teddy bear — shot point-blank as he slept.

Each victim had been killed execution-style with a single blast to the head. Scattered throughout the home were spent Remington 1100 shotgun shells.In a nearby closet, officers discovered two small children — four-year-old Corey and ten-month-old Gabe — huddled together, trembling but miraculously alive.

But three of the children — Amber, Brooke, and Amanda — were missing.

Where had the girls gone? Were they still alive?

And who could have carried out such a brutal crime in this quiet, close-knit community — a place known for joy, goodwill, and Christmas spirit?

This is The Santa Claus Murders.

On the morning of December 21st, 2015 — just four days before Christmas — neighbours in the quiet village of Rupperswil, a small community in the Swiss canton of Aargau, noticed smoke rising from a single-family home on Hintergasse. At first, people assumed it was just a kitchen fire or some kind of accident.

But when firefighters forced their way inside, what they found shocked even the most seasoned emergency responders.

Inside the home were four bodies. Bound. Stacked. Murdered. It was immediately clear: this was no accident — this was a crime scene.

The victims were 48-year-old Carla Schauer-Freiburghaus, her sons Davin (13) and Dion (19), and Dion’s girlfriend Simona Fäs (21).

Just hours earlier, a terrified Carla had been captured on CCTV withdrawing money from two different ATMs, her fear unmistakable on camera.

So what had happened inside that house? What terror had this family endured? This peaceful village of 5,000 was about to become the center of one of the worst crimes in Swiss history…

On Christmas Eve 2001, in the quiet suburb of Pleasant Grove, Texas, Kevin Butler was getting ready to meet a friend for dinner. But he never arrived.

When his friend went to his home to check on him, he walked into a nightmare—Kevin had been bound, beaten, stabbed, and brutally murdered.

When police arrived, it was immediately clear that a violent struggle had taken place.

Feathers were scattered across the floor. Droplets of blood marked areas they shouldn’t have. And in the kitchen lay Larry Bird, Kevin’s beloved white-crested cockatoo, dead on the tile with one leg severed.

What had happened to Kevin…and to his fiercely loyal pet? This is the story of how a slain cockatoo became an unexpected witness—and ultimately helped solve his owner’s murder.

On November 3rd, 2003, a 911 call came from Mark Center in Defiance County, Ohio. The caller was 10-year-old Corey Breininger.

Corey was hysterical and told the dispatcher that his father had been shot in the head after a gun went off accidentally. He said he didn’t know there was a bullet in the chamber.

Corey then confirmed that his stepmother, Judith, wasn’t home and that he hadn’t contacted her yet. It was just him and his father in the house. The dispatcher then walked him through CPR.

When police arrived around 4:00 PM, they found 34-year-old Robert Breininger dead in his bed from a single gunshot wound to the head.

Officers spoke with Corey, who they described as broken and crying. Corey pleaded with the officers, saying, “Save my dad, he’s my best friend.”

Corey explained that he and his father had been talking about hunting and gun safety. 

As his father was showing him how to use the gun, Corey was handing the weapon to his dad. Corey said that his finger was on the trigger and the safety was off. He claimed his father then pulled the trigger and set the gun off.

But what had truly happened that day? And was Robert Breininger’s death genuinely an accident?

It was December 2020 — deep in the middle of France’s COVID lockdown — when 33-year-old Delphine Jubillar vanished from her home in the small town of Cagnac-les-Mines.

Her husband, Cédric, said she had simply disappeared in the night. But investigators quickly began to suspect otherwise.

But there was no body. No blood. No confession. No witness. Just a husband who insisted he was innocent.

By October 2025, five years later, with still no body or trace of Delphine, Cédric Jubillar finally stood trial for his wife’s murder.

But even then, with no physical evidence and no sign of Delphine ever found, two questions remained:

Where was Delphine Jubillar? And how do you convict someone of murder… when there’s no proof a murder ever happened?

When a parcel was fished from the River Thames in the spring of 1896, no one expected what was inside.

Wrapped in brown paper, tied with white tape, and weighted with a brick… was the tiny body of a baby girl.

The discovery would set detectives on the trail of a woman once known as kind, gentle — even motherly.

A trained nurse and midwife who dedicated her life to caring for others. Her name was Amelia Dyer.

But when detectives finally stepped inside her home, they came face to face with an overpowering stench of decay. They also stumbled upon piles of baby clothes, adoption letters, and white tape. It was clear something unspeakable had happened there.

Who was Amelia Dyer — a troubled woman lost to madness… or one of the most prolific murderers in British history?

When 32-year-old Joanne Hill finished her day at work in Chester, England, her mind was already set on what she was going to do.After leaving the office, she collected her four-year-old daughter, Naomi, from the childminder in Connah’s Quay and drove them home.

Once inside, she poured herself a glass of wine and drank it.A few minutes later, Joanne ran her daughter a bath while little Naomi sat in front of the television — completely unaware of the danger she was in.

What happened next was unimaginable.

That night, Joanne Hill did the unthinkable.