Wicked Words - A True Crime Talk Show with Kate Winkler Dawson

My next guest has done something extraordinary: she traveled across America collecting stories of criminalized survival. Shocked to find how many women were convicted for protecting themselves against abuse. Author Justine van der Leun tells me the stories in her book Unreasonable Women: Three Stories of Self-Defense, Wrongful Imprisonment, and Extraordinary Survival. 

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If you followed the so-called Black Swan murder case, you probably saw a teenage girl, trying to get justice for her father. In 2020, Ashley Benefield shot and killed her estranged husband, Doug, in Florida. Eva Benefield had already gone through so much trauma in her life and then she had to watch her stepmother go on trial for murdering her father. Eva tells me the story from her memoir: Ghost Girl: Surviving the Black Swan Murder. 

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Author Emily Winslow is a fabulous crime novelist and she’s also a sexual assault survivor. In 1992, she was a young drama student at an elite conservatory in Pittsburgh.  One January night, she was brutally raped by a stranger. More than 20 years later, Emily found out that the attacker had finally been arrested. In her memoir, Jane Doe January, Emily digs into her own case to find out what went wrong. 

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Journalist Pam Colloff is one of my favorite people. She’s an outstanding criminal justice reporter who is now publishing her first book. And it’s a doozy.  It’s about a serial criminal, a so-called informant who conned the courts and the DAs. He sent dozens of people to prison who were wrongly convicted. But did he get away with it? Pam tells me the story at the center of her book: Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast.

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A man was convicted of capital murder in Texas in 1999 and much of the case depends on eyewitness testimony. But there’s a twist: one of the witnesses was hypnotized. Should Charles Flores still be on death row? Michelle Pitcher from the Texas Observer tells me the story from season five of The Unforgiven podcast. It’s called Riding Shotgun. 

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Millions of us have had our identities stolen—the thief can be a stranger, or someone very close to you. Author Axton Betz-Hamilton grew up in fear in rural Indiana because her family was being targeted. Her father even had to sell his family’s farm. As an adult, Axton became an expert in identity theft. And then she found out who had almost destroyed their lives. She tells me the story from her book The Less People Know About Us.

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In 1998, FBI agent Robert Hilland was at a dead end with a cold case, until he got a huge break… from a famous psychic, John Edward. Hilland was a skeptic, but not anymore. He spent twenty-five years solving crimes with Edward. Robert Hilland tells me the story at the center of his book, Chasing Evil: Shocking Crimes, Supernatural Forces, and an FBI Agent’s Search for Hope and Justice. 

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For decades, scores of Indigenous women and girls have vanished from an isolated stretch of highway in northwestern British Columbia called The Highway of Tears. Journalist Jessica McDiarmid is from that area, and she decided to investigate why so many cases were either ignored or dismissed.  She interviewed family members and friends of some of the victims for answers. She tells me about her book: Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference, and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. 

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We’re back talking to filmmaker Liam Le Guillou about his documentary An Unknown Compelling Force: The Dyatlov Pass Incident. We learn more about the victims, and we hear about many conspiracy theories. 

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Filmmaker Liam Le Guillou was fascinated with the mystery surrounding the deaths of nine experienced Russian hikers in the Ural Mountains in 1959. Paul Holes and I talked about this case on Buried Bones, but Liam really, really dug into the mystery. He has his own opinion and he shares it in his documentary, An Unknown Compelling Force: The Dyatlov Pass Incident. We rarely do this, but we had to make this interview a two-parter.   

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Support this podcast by shopping our latest sponsor deals and promotions at this link: https://bit.ly/4gF2K18 

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Follow me on social: @tenfoldmore (Twitter) / @wickedwordspod (Facebook) / @tenfoldmorewicked (Instagram) 

2026 All Rights Reserved 

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