The Murder of Stacy Stites In the early morning hours of April 23, 1996, 19-year-old Stacy Stites vanished while driving to work in Bastrop, Texas. Hours later, her body was discovered along a rural roadside. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled with a belt. Almost immediately, investigators began searching for her killer. Eventually, DNA…

The Disappearance of Lauren Spierer In the early morning hours of June 3, 2011, 20-year-old Indiana University student Lauren Spierer vanished after a night out with friends in downtown Bloomington, Indiana. Despite surveillance footage, witness statements, and a detailed timeline of her final hours, Lauren has never been found. Lauren Spierer grew up in Scarsdale,…

The Murder of Dorothy Jane Scott: The Stalker Who Wouldn’t Stop Calling In 1980, a quiet young mother living in Orange County, California began receiving disturbing phone calls from a man who claimed he was watching her. At first the calls seemed harmless — awkward flirtation from someone who refused to give his name. But…

Lauren Agee: The Mysterious Death at WakeFest In July 2015, 21-year-old Lauren Agee traveled to Center Hill Lake in Tennessee for a weekend wakeboarding event known as WakeFest. Thousands of young people attended the festival each summer to camp, watch professional wakeboarders, and enjoy time on the lake. What was supposed to be a carefree…

The Oklahoma Peeping Tom Killer: How DNA and Footprint Evidence Solved an 18-Year Cold Case In the quiet town of Edmond, Oklahoma, a brutal home invasion in 1986 left one man dead and his girlfriend traumatized. The attack seemed random, senseless, and terrifying — the kind of crime that makes people wonder whether the killer…

The Robert Roberson Case: Shaken Baby Syndrome, Junk Science, and a Death Row Controversy In 2002, a two-year-old girl named Nikki Curtis was rushed to a hospital in Palestine, Texas. She was unresponsive, struggling to breathe, and quickly went into cardiac arrest. Despite doctors’ efforts to save her, Nikki died later that day. Within months,…

The Murder of Mackenzie Cowell It’s easy to believe that something like this could never happen in a place like Wenatchee, Washington. A quiet town. A tight-knit community. The kind of place where people feel safe raising their families. But in February 2010, that sense of safety was shattered when a teenage girl vanished. Her…

The Murder of Cathy Swartz: How Forensic Genealogy Solved a 34-Year-Old Cold Case In a quiet town like Three Rivers, Michigan, most people don’t expect to hear about a brutal, unsolved murder. With a population of just around 8,000 people, it’s the kind of place where neighbors know each other and crime feels distant. But…

The Murder of Shirley Ramey: How Ballistic Forensics Solved a Random Killing in Rural Idaho On April 4th, 2017, the tiny town of Hope, Idaho was shaken by a crime that seemed impossible to understand. Hope is a quiet community near the Canadian border, home to only about one hundred residents. It’s the kind of…

Stella Nickell and the Excedrin Murders: How Cyanide-Laced Capsules Killed Two Innocent People In the 1980s, Americans were terrified of product tampering. The 1982 Chicago Tylenol murders had shaken public trust in over-the-counter medication. Seven people died after taking cyanide-laced capsules, and the crime was never solved. Tamper-evident packaging became the new standard — but…