Unseen

“Where should I bury a body?”

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On June 28, 2007, single mom Paige Birgfeld goes on a date with her high school sweetheart, but when she doesn’t return home that night, her father, Frank, drops everything to find her, launching a massive search across Grand Junction, Colorado. 3 days later, investigators find Paige’s car on fire in an abandoned parking lot, but the missing mom is still nowhere to be found. However, investigators uncover something sinister in the ashes: a double life Paige had kept secret for years, and as things come to light, many suspects emerge, but Frank refuses to give up, even when everyone else does. What he uncovers will haunt the small town, revealing a terrifying killer hidden in plain sight, and set the stage for long-awaited justice.

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Credits

Written, directed & edited by Alexandre Gendron

Research by Bianca Yzabelle Tan

Voiceover by William Akana

Produced by Alexandra Salois & Salim Sader

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Sources

Getty Images

48 Hours: The Secret Life of Paige Birgfeld, CBS Interactive, 2017. 

20/20: If I Can’t Have You, ABC, ABC Entertainment, 2021.

Mom with secret double life as escort murdered, True Crime News, Telepictures Productions, 2024.

Dateline: Double Lives, NBC, NBCUniversal Media, 2017. 

The Killer in My Family: Lester Jones, Woodcut Media, 2023.

World's Most Evil Killers: Lester Jones, Woodcut Media, 2023.

Disappeared: A Mother's Secret, Investigation Discovery, Discovery Communications, 2010. 

Activists for Sex Workers’ rights protest the killing of one of them, KTN News Kenya, Kenya Television Network, 2014.

Former St. Louis resident looking for justice in mother's cold case, other sex worker crimes, KMOV St. Louis, 2021.

This women's month has seen rise in murders of sex workers, SABC News, 2014.

Jules Kim: "Sex workers' rights are human rights", UNAIDS Official, 2024.

Court dismisses sex workers’ law challenge, CTV Your Morning, 2023. 

Sex work decriminalization efforts leave workers, advocates and survivors divided, NBC News, 2023.

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"He used bleach to do what?"

July 4th 2011, arriving on the scene of a burned down house, the Fort Collins Colorado police are shocked by what they are seeing: the fire is so hot that all of the metal handles are melted down but even so, a strong smell of bleach remains. The Bleach Monster has reappeared, but this time, she survived: Lydia Tillman jumped from the second floor and is now in a coma, but nobody expected her to be the one who would solve the case, and find the one responsible for the unsolved murder of Kenia Monge.Learn more about Kenia's foundation: https://keniamonge.wordpress.com/

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“I was thinking, is this how I’m gonna die?”

On the night of November 2nd, 2014, security cameras capture a disturbing sequence of events after 22 year-old Carlesha Freeland-Gaither misses her bus following a birthday party in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A strange man approaches, asking for directions– but what Carlesha doesn’t know is that this man, Delvin Barnes, is a dangerous kidnapper, rapist and killer from Virginia evading police. However, Carlesha is far smarter than Delvin anticipated, and as he continues his crimes on the run and now with her as hostage, from Germantown to Jessup, Maryland, she will leave a trail of clues for the cops to be able to finally put an end to his reign of terror.

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Credits:

Directed, written and edited by Justin Chalifoux

Researched by Tiffany Loxton

Voiceover by William Akana

Produced by Alexandra Salois & Salim Sader

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Sources:

See No Evil - Captured on Camera (Investigation Discovery)

Caught on Camera: The Untold Stories (Discovery Plus)

Finding Carlesha (NBC 10)Crimes Gone Viral (Lion Television)

Abducted off the Street: The Carlesha Gaither Story (Lifetime)

ABC-7CBS Philadelphia

NBC 10 Philadelphia

WBAL TV-11 Baltimore

28/22 News

Dwayne Fletcher (Instagram)

Top 4 Wildest High-Speed Police Chases with Suspects on the Run.mp4 (Law & Crime Network)

Philadelphia Police Department

Getty Images

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“My grandparents were lying in bed, melted”

At 9:15AM on March 23, 2007, a 4-year-old arrives at his church daycare alone, wearing his pajamas and out of breath. Following his next words, his teacher immediately calls 911. Something terrible has just happened in the rural community of Bradford, and Dameon Huffman, the 4-year-old boy, is the only witness to the horrors.Little do police know that what little Dameon saw was actually one of the most twisted cases of home invasion gone wrong that the state of Ohio has ever known.

Credits

Written, directed & edited by Matthew Rice

Researched by Manon Lafosse

Voiceover by William Akana

Produced by Alexandra Salois & Salim Sader

Sources:

“The Green Monster”, American Monster, Discovery+, 2017 (Arrow Media)“

A Dragon in the Farmhouse”, In Ice Cold Blood, Oxygen Network, 2021. (Asylum Entertainment & Final Level Entertainment)

“The Green Dragon”, On the Case with Paula Zahn: Discovery+, 2014. (Investigation Discovery & Scott Sternberg Productions, Inc.)

“The Green Dragon”, Solved: Investigation Discovery, 2009 (Digital Ranch)

“In the Bag”, Forensic Files: Film Rise & Tru TV, 2008, (Medstar Television)

“Greg Must Choose Life In Prison or Death”, Red Tree Stories: Youtube, 2023 (Youtube)

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“I may be 5ft1 and blonde, but I’m a barracuda”

At 1:13 AM on the morning of October 5th, 2005, Christie Wilson is captured on a casino parking lot CCTV, walking next to a mysterious figure. The rotating camera takes 3 minutes and 40 seconds to complete its next turn, but in those minutes something terrible happens hidden in the dark, and Christie disappears. It's up to her parents, Debbie and Pat Boyd, to bring their daughter home, and do whatever it takes to catch this dangerous man, and finally put an end to his killing spree.

Credits

Directed, written & edited by Alexandre Gendron

Curated by Tanvi Rajvanshi

Researched by Manon Lafosse

Voiceover by William Akana

Produced by Alexandra Salois & Salim Sader

Sources  

CBS 

Oxygen True Crime

Anatomy of Murder

Medstar Television

Arrow International Media.

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"When you cross the line, you pay for it"

Brook Weber is just 18 years old in August of 1996 when she and her boyfriend Jeffrey Wolfe find themselves in the most disturbing home in all of Mississippi. Gary Carl Simmons, a local butcher in Moss Pointe, has been waiting for someone like Brook to fall into his clutches after his ex-wife Lori Simmons fled with their children in fear of her life. In fact, Gary has a perfect human-sized box hidden in his house, waiting to make his fantasies come to life. Little does Gary know that the Butcher’s Box is no match for Brook, and with a little luck and a lot of skill, not only will she escape, but she’ll make him pay for his crimes.

Credits

Directed, written, & edited by Justin Chalifoux

Curated by Tianyi Zhang

Research by Tiffany Loxton

Voiceover by William Akana

Produced by Alexandra Salois & Salim Sader

Sources

Shattered: The Box (Red Marble Media)

Evil Lives Here: Butcher and the Box (Red Marble Media)

The Horrific Crimes of Gary Simmons (Vocal Media)

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“There’s something evil about the captain”

The Duperraults are a happy family from Wisconsin. Their father has a dream of bringing the family on a boat trip to the Bahamas and in November of 1961, the Duperraults rent a sailing boat called the Bluebelle along with a friend of the family and his wife. 4 days later, only two of them made it back. What happened on the Bluebelle ship?

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“His entire world revolved around her”

When cops break into the Groene home on May 16th 2005 after receiving a call from a concerned neighbor, no one is prepared to find the family murdered, and as they identify everyone, they notice that the younger children, Dylan, 9, and Shasta, 8, are missing. As the authorities race against time to find the missing kids, Shasta is trapped in the woods with her family’s killer, nearly 100 miles away, and starts to plan her own escape.

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“Only a monster can do this kind of evil thing” 

On the morning of July 12, 2009, in the Rye Brook Hilton Hotel, May Abad receives a frantic call from hotel security, urging her to rush to her parents’ suite. As she races down the hallway, her mother, Narcy Novack’s, screams cut through the silence—her father, Ben Novack Jr., millionaire and heir to Miami’s famous Fontainebleau hotel, has been brutally murdered. Now, May is on a desperate hunt for the truth. But what she doesn’t realize is that the killer is much closer than she ever imagined.

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Credits

Directed & edited by Matthew Rice

Writing & research by Bianca Yzabelle Tan

Revisions by Kat Gardilcic

Produced by Alexandra Salois & Salim Sader

Voiceover by William Akana

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Sources

Dateline NBC, “Family Affair” 

CNBC, Deadly Rich, “Bound for Murder” 

48 Hours, “Crazy Love”

Dying to Belong, “Narcy Novack”

The Criminal Mind Unveiled, “My Dirty Little Secret”

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“There’s a monster out there”

It’s 1981 in the sleepy town of River Oaks, Texas, and someone is hunting cheerleaders. A 16-year-old teenager, Susan Brown, is brutally attacked in her own home. What she, the cops, and the rest of the town don’t know is that she’s just the first victim in a rampage that will change this Texas suburb forever.One by one, members of the Castleberry High School cheer squad are targeted, but things escalate when Rona Stratton’s sister is found dead in her bedroom. Rona decides to team up with her friend Lisa Ticknor, who also survived an attack, along with the other cheerleaders in the squad, to start a decades-long fight to take down the Cheerleader Slayer, and make sure he would never hurt anyone else.

Credits:

Directed, written & edited by Alexandre Gendron

Research by Manon Lafosse

Voiceover by William Akana

Produced by Alexandra Salois & Salim Sader

Sources:

Discovery + - Warner Bros

CBS News

The portal to Texas History

Channel 5 Action News

KXAS-TV

The Digital Library

Channel 5 Action News

British Pathé

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