Podcast
Conspiracy Theories, Cults, & Crimes
Hosted by Crime House · EN
Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes is a true crime and conspiracy theories podcast about the people who take belief too far and the deadly consequences that follow.
Hosted by Vanessa Richardson, two weekly episodes unpack real stories of murderous cults, criminal cover-ups, mass manipulation, and twisted conspiracies. From Jonestown and Heaven’s Gate to CIA mind control experiments, presidential assassinations, and the Octopus Murders. This is true crime at the intersection of faith, fear and manipulation.
Follow now for new episodes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. This is a Crime House Original, powered by PAVE Studios.
113episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
CONSPIRACY THEORY: Thomas Jefferson's Secret Family
3w ago00:43:44Summary readyIn 1802, a journalist reported that President Thomas Jefferson was keeping an enslaved woman named Sally Hemings as a concubine and had fathered her children. Jefferson said nothing. His family denied it. America's most prominent historians dismissed the story for nearly two hundred years.But Hemings' own descendants told a different story, one passed down through generations of oral history that the white historical establishment refused to take seriously. Did the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence have a secret family with a woman he enslaved? And if he did, why did it take the country so long to admit it? In this episode of Conspiracy Theories, Cults, & Crimes, Vanessa Richardson revisits one of the most contested questions in American history, and the family that refused to let it go.Head over to our YouTube channel to WATCH our video episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@crimehousestudios If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes to never miss a case! To hear episodes ad-free and released a day early, subscribe to Crime House+. Join at crimehouseplus.com or if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page. Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios.🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of…, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Crime House 24/7, Murder True Crime Stories and more wherever you get your podcasts!Follow me on SocialInstagram: @CrimehouseTikTok: @CrimehouseFacebook: @crimehousestudiosX: @crimehousemediaYouTube: @crimehousestudios
SummaryDeadly Destinations: Into the Wild
3w ago00:32:51Summary readyThree people sought refuge in remote wilderness — and never made it home safely. A young American woman vanished without a trace in Nepal's Himalayas, a serial killer preyed on hitchhikers along an Australian highway, and two men were murdered deep in the Amazon for exposing illegal activity. This is episode 3 of Deadly Destinations, a special four-part series on Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes hosted by Vanessa Richardson. Four exotic locations that should have been a dream vacation, but ended in a nightmare. New episodes drop every Sunday, and all four are available now, ad-free, on Crime House Plus. Join at crimehouseplus.com or if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page.🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of…, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Crime House 24/7, Murder True Crime Stories and more wherever you get your podcasts!Follow me on SocialInstagram: @CrimehouseTikTok: @CrimehouseFacebook: @crimehousestudiosX: @crimehousemediaYouTube: @crimehousestudios
SummaryCRIME: The Donner Party
3w ago00:46:42Summary readyIn the spring of 1846, a group of nearly ninety American pioneers set out from Springfield, Illinois, bound for California. They were farmers, merchants, and families with young children, led by a 60-year-old man named George Donner. They expected to reach the West Coast by autumn.They never made it. After taking an unproven shortcut called the Hastings Cutoff, the party fell weeks behind schedule and was trapped by an early snowstorm high in the Sierra Nevada. By the time the first rescuers reached them in February 1847, nearly half were dead, and stories of what the survivors had done to stay alive would haunt American history for the next century and a half. In this episode of Conspiracy Theories, Cults, & Crimes, Vanessa Richardson revisits the Donner Party, the choices made in the snow, and the fights over what really happened that still haven't been settled.Head over to our Conspiracy Theories, Cults, & Crimes YouTube channel to WATCH our video episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@ConspiracytheoriescultscrimesIf you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes to never miss a case! To hear episodes ad-free and released a day early, subscribe to Crime House+. Join at crimehouseplus.com or if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page. Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios.🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of…, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Crime House 24/7, Murder True Crime Stories and more wherever you get your podcasts!Follow me on SocialInstagram: @CrimehouseTikTok: @CrimehouseFacebook: @crimehousestudiosX: @crimehousemediaYouTube: @crimehousestudios
Summary
Introducing: Government That Doesn’t Suck
4w ago00:48:09Summary readyThe government gets a bad rap. But the roads under your feet, the forecast on your phone, and the letter in your mailbox are all government too. Hosted by Professors Greg Jackson and Lindsey Cormack, Government That Doesn't Suck brings together the sharpest thinkers to reveal the real-world impact of American government, one episode at a time. Follow Government That Doesn’t Suck for a new episode every other Monday. Government That Doesn’t Suck is a Rewind Studios original powered by PAVE Studios.
SummaryCULT: Free Love, Total Control: The Oneida Community
4w ago00:42:02Summary readyIn 1848, a preacher named John Humphrey Noyes founded a religious community in upstate New York built around an idea most Americans found unthinkable. At Oneida, traditional marriage was abolished in favor of what Noyes called "complex marriage," a system in which exclusive pairings were forbidden and sexual relationships were governed by the community's leadership. Children were raised collectively. Reproduction was controlled through a program of selective breeding Noyes called stirpiculture. For more than thirty years, the Oneida Community grew, prospered, and held itself out as proof that human beings could live without sin. Then it collapsed. In this episode of Conspiracy Theories, Cults, & Crimes, Vanessa Richardson explores how one of the most ambitious utopian experiments in American history became one of the strangest, the doctrine of perfection that justified it, and what was really happening inside the community walls.Head over to our Conspiracy Theories, Cults, & Crimes YouTube channel to WATCH our video episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@ConspiracytheoriescultscrimesIf you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes to never miss a case! To hear episodes ad-free and released a day early, subscribe to Crime House+. Join at crimehouseplus.com or if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page. Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios.🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of…, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Crime House 24/7, Murder True Crime Stories and more wherever you get your podcasts!Follow me on SocialInstagram: @CrimehouseTikTok: @CrimehouseFacebook: @crimehousestudiosX: @crimehousemediaYouTube: @crimehousestudios
SummaryCONSPIRACY THEORY: The MLK Assassination
4w ago00:45:44Summary readyOn April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was 39 years old. The killing triggered unrest in more than a hundred American cities and altered the course of the civil rights movement. Two months later, a small-time criminal named James Earl Ray was arrested in London and charged with the murder. He pleaded guilty, then almost immediately recanted, claiming he had been part of a larger conspiracy. King's own family eventually came to believe him. In this episode of Conspiracy Theories, Cults, & Crimes, Vanessa Richardson revisits the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the questions that have never gone away.Head over to our Conspiracy Theories, Cults, & Crimes YouTube channel to WATCH our video episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@ConspiracytheoriescultscrimesIf you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes to never miss a case! To hear episodes ad-free and released a day early, subscribe to Crime House+. Join at crimehouseplus.com or if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page. Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios.🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of…, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Crime House 24/7, Murder True Crime Stories and more wherever you get your podcasts!Follow me on SocialInstagram: @CrimehouseTikTok: @CrimehouseFacebook: @crimehousestudiosX: @crimehousemediaYouTube: @crimehousestudios
SummaryDeadly Destinations: Death on the High Seas
4w ago00:35:10Summary readyThree separate journeys onto the water ended in death, disappearance, and unanswered questions. NBA champion Bison Dele vanished from his own sailboat in the South Pacific in 2002; cruise passenger Merrian Carver disappeared aboard a Celebrity Cruises ship bound for Alaska in 2004 while the cruise line stayed silent; and Australian mother Dianne Brimble died within hours of boarding a Sydney cruise in 2002 in a case that took nearly a decade to reach a courtroom. This is episode 2 of Deadly Destinations, a special four-part series on Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes hosted by Vanessa Richardson. Four exotic locations that should have been a dream vacation, but ended in a nightmare. New episodes drop every Sunday, and all four are available now, ad-free, on Crime House Plus. Join at crimehouseplus.com or if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page.🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of…, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Crime House 24/7, Murder True Crime Stories and more wherever you get your podcasts!Follow me on SocialInstagram: @CrimehouseTikTok: @CrimehouseFacebook: @crimehousestudiosX: @crimehousemediaYouTube: @crimehousestudios
SummaryCRIME: The FBI's War on Black America: COINTELPRO
Jul 1700:45:13Summary readyBetween 1956 and 1971, the FBI ran a secret program called COINTELPRO, short for Counter Intelligence Program. Its targets included civil rights leaders, Black liberation groups, anti-war activists, and feminist organizers. Its methods included surveillance, infiltration, disinformation, and tactics designed to, in the FBI's own words, "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" them. For years, the program ran entirely in the shadows. Then in March 1971, a group of activists broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, stole the files, and sent them to the press. What they revealed changed how Americans saw their own government. In this episode of Conspiracy Theories, Cults, & Crimes, Vanessa Richardson tells the story of COINTELPRO, the people it targeted, the people who exposed it, and what the declassified files still tell us about the line between national security and political repression.Head over to our Conspiracy Theories, Cults, & Crimes YouTube channel to WATCH our video episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@ConspiracytheoriescultscrimesIf you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes to never miss a case! To hear episodes ad-free and released a day early, subscribe to Crime House+. Join at crimehouseplus.com or if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page. Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios.🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of…, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Crime House 24/7, Murder True Crime Stories and more wherever you get your podcasts!Follow me on SocialInstagram: @CrimehouseTikTok: @CrimehouseFacebook: @crimehousestudiosX: @crimehousemediaYouTube: @crimehousestudios
SummaryCULT: Warren Jeffs & the FLDS
Jul 1500:46:35Summary readyThe Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, better known as the FLDS, was a polygamist offshoot of mainstream Mormonism that operated for decades along the Utah-Arizona border. By the early 2000s, its prophet was a man named Warren Jeffs. Under Jeffs, the FLDS tightened into something closer to total control. He assigned wives, expelled men, and arranged marriages between adult followers and underage girls. In 2006, the FBI placed him on its Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. Two years later, Texas authorities raided the Yearning for Zion Ranch. In this episode of Conspiracy Theories, Cults, & Crimes, Vanessa Richardson traces how a fringe religious community became one of the most abusive cults in modern American history.Head over to our Conspiracy Theories, Cults, & Crimes YouTube channel to WATCH our video episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@ConspiracytheoriescultscrimesIf you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes to never miss a case! To hear episodes ad-free and released a day early, subscribe to Crime House+. Join at crimehouseplus.com or if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page. Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios.🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of…, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Crime House 24/7, Murder True Crime Stories and more wherever you get your podcasts!Follow me on SocialInstagram: @CrimehouseTikTok: @CrimehouseFacebook: @crimehousestudiosX: @crimehousemediaYouTube: @crimehousestudios
SummaryCONSPIRACY THEORY: The Happiest Place You Can't Leave: The Disney Machine
Jul 1300:43:00Summary readyWalt Disney didn't just build a theme park. He built a system of total control, and convinced the world to call it magic. Employees aren't staff, they're "cast members." Uniforms are "costumes." Guests who step out of line are escorted by plainclothes security to unmarked holding rooms. Beneath the park, a nine-acre tunnel network houses a command center monitoring over 70,000 functions per second. For 56 years, Disney ran its own government in Florida, with its own fire department, building codes, and laws, after promising the state a utopian city of 20,000 residents living under permanent corporate rule with no voting rights. That city was never built. The theme park was. Walt himself was a documented FBI informant. And then there are the myths: a frozen body beneath Pirates of the Caribbean, secret Masonic geometry, the truth about Club 33. In this episode of Conspiracy Theories, Cults, & Crimes, Vanessa Richardson separates the myths from the documented conspiracies, and asks why the most controlled environment in America keeps generating stories that sound like fiction but aren't.Head over to our Conspiracy Theories, Cults, & Crimes YouTube channel to WATCH our video episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@ConspiracytheoriescultscrimesIf you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes to never miss a case! To hear episodes ad-free and released a day early, subscribe to Crime House+. Join at crimehouseplus.com or if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page. Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios.🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of…, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Crime House 24/7, Murder True Crime Stories and more wherever you get your podcasts!Follow me on SocialInstagram: @CrimehouseTikTok: @CrimehouseFacebook: @crimehousestudiosX: @crimehousemediaYouTube: @crimehousestudios
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