Podcast
True Crime Today | Daily True Crime News & Interviews
Hosted by Real Story Media · EN
🔎 Daily True Crime Stories | Unsolved Mysteries | Criminal Investigations | Cold Cases
True Crime Today is your go-to daily true crime podcast, bringing you the latest murder cases, ongoing trials, criminal psychology insights, and shocking unsolved mysteries. Whether it’s breaking crime news, high-profile trials, serial killers, missing persons, or cold cases, we cover it all with expert analysis, investigative storytelling, and real-time updates.
🎙️ Hosted by leading crime analysts, we uncover the psychology of killers, forensic breakthroughs, police investigations, and courtroom drama—giving you the full story behind the headlines. From notorious cases to little-known crimes that deserve attention, we break down what really happened and why.
If you're obsessed with true crime podcasts, criminal psychology, and investigative reporting, subscribe to True Crime Today on Apple Podcasts now! 🎧 New episodes daily.
True Crime Today is your go-to daily true crime podcast, bringing you the latest murder cases, ongoing trials, criminal psychology insights, and shocking unsolved mysteries. Whether it’s breaking crime news, high-profile trials, serial killers, missing persons, or cold cases, we cover it all with expert analysis, investigative storytelling, and real-time updates.
🎙️ Hosted by leading crime analysts, we uncover the psychology of killers, forensic breakthroughs, police investigations, and courtroom drama—giving you the full story behind the headlines. From notorious cases to little-known crimes that deserve attention, we break down what really happened and why.
If you're obsessed with true crime podcasts, criminal psychology, and investigative reporting, subscribe to True Crime Today on Apple Podcasts now! 🎧 New episodes daily.
451episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
The 'Walk the Dog' Letter Tells You Everything About How Kouri Richins' Brain Works
Today00:14:55Tap to summarize"Walk the Dog!!" written across the top of a six-page letter found hidden in Kouri Richins' jail cell. Inside: instructions for coaching her brother's testimony. The defense she should never have scripted.But the letter itself isn't the most revealing piece. The "fictional novel" defense is. Because when Kouri was confronted on a recorded jail call, she didn't pause. She didn't stumble. She produced a complete alternative explanation instantly — fictional novel, Mexican prison setting, Crest Whitestrips smuggled in by her attorney — like an immune system generating antibodies on contact with a pathogen.This episode traces the psychological reflex that drove every post-arrest behavior: the letters, the calls, the fired attorneys, the message to an admirer about "exposing" the prosecution and the judge and the Richins family. Not strategy. Compulsion. A narrative machine that can't be turned off because the narrative IS the self. When story-production stops, the identity collapses. So it runs. From a jail cell. On recorded lines. No matter the cost.Join Our SubStack For AD-FREE ADVANCE EPISODES & EXTRAS!: https://hiddenkillers.substack.com/Want to comment and watch this podcast as a video? Check out our YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8-vxmbhTxxG10sO1izODJg?sub_confirmation=1Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hiddenkillerspod/Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hiddenkillerspod/Tik-Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@hiddenkillerspodX Twitter https://x.com/TrueCrimePodThis publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.#KouriRichins #EricRichins #KouriRichinsTrial #Psychology #TrueCrime #HiddenKillers #FentanylPoisoning #SummitCounty #TrueCrimeCommunity #Justice———
Transcribe →
The Crash: What a Defense Attorney Sees When He Looks at the Mackenzie Shirilla Prosecution
Today00:15:23Tap to summarizeA prosecutor called it a "mission of death." A judge agreed. But a criminal defense attorney who has spent his career on the other side of cases like this says the Mackenzie Shirilla prosecution has vulnerabilities that should have been exposed at trial — and weren't, because the defense never mounted the challenge the evidence demanded.Shirilla was convicted of four counts of murder for the Strongsville, Ohio crash that killed Dominic Russo and Davion Flanagan. The prosecution relied on surveillance footage, black box data, selected text messages, and a prior incident on I-71. The defense accepted a bench trial with one judge and no jury, then failed to meaningfully challenge the prosecution's interpretation of any of it.Bob Motta, criminal defense attorney and host of Defense Diaries, breaks down what he would have done differently at every stage. The surveillance footage shows a car — in cross-examination, you force the detective to admit it doesn't show the driver's face, hands, or consciousness. The black box data is consistent with premeditation, but you bring your own expert to demonstrate it's equally consistent with loss of consciousness. The ninety-three thousand texts were curated for maximum damage — you introduce the mundane final messages to show the jury that the prosecution told half the story. And the I-71 incident that anchored the prior-calculation argument has a competing account that the defense inexplicably left on the table.The prosecution won. The question is whether the charge matched the evidence or whether a compelling story did the work that proof couldn't.Join Our SubStack For AD-FREE ADVANCE EPISODES & EXTRAS!: https://hiddenkillers.substack.com/Want to comment and watch this podcast as a video? Check out our YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8-vxmbhTxxG10sO1izODJg?sub_confirmation=1Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hiddenkillerspod/Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hiddenkillerspod/Tik-Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@hiddenkillerspodX Twitter https://x.com/TrueCrimePodThis publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.#MackenzieShirilla #TheCrash #TheCrashNetflix #DominicRusso #DavionFlanagan #BobMotta #DefenseDiaries #HiddenKillers #TrueCrime #Justice
Transcribe →
The Crash: Every Way Mackenzie Shirilla's Defense Team Let Her Down
Yesterday00:28:38Tap to summarizeThe defense raised a medical condition. Never proved it. Had competing evidence that contradicted the prosecution's key witness. Never introduced it. Filed the post-conviction petition with the one expert who might have changed everything. Filed it one day late. At every critical moment in the Mackenzie Shirilla case, the defense failed — and a seventeen-year-old is serving fifteen years to life because of it.Shirilla was convicted of four counts of murder for the crash in Strongsville, Ohio that killed Dominic Russo and Davion Flanagan. The prosecution built a narrative around surveillance footage, black box data, and threatening text messages. The defense had tools to challenge that narrative — a diagnosed medical condition, a neurologist's expert opinion, text messages that directly contradicted the prosecution's version of a key prior incident. None of it was effectively used.The POTS diagnosis was mentioned at trial but never supported with expert testimony. The post-conviction petition containing a neurologist's conclusion that the evidence was consistent with a medical episode was rejected because it arrived twenty-four hours past Ohio's filing deadline — not because it was wrong. The I-71 incident the prosecution called a rehearsal had a competing account the defense never surfaced.Criminal defense attorney Bob Motta examines every failure in this defense and asks the hardest question: if Mackenzie Shirilla's own legal team had done its job, would she be in prison right now? The answer matters — because ineffective assistance of counsel isn't just a legal term. It's a life sentence imposed by the people who were supposed to prevent one.Join Our SubStack For AD-FREE ADVANCE EPISODES & EXTRAS!: https://hiddenkillers.substack.com/Want to comment and watch this podcast as a video? Check out our YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8-vxmbhTxxG10sO1izODJg?sub_confirmation=1Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hiddenkillerspod/Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hiddenkillerspod/Tik-Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@hiddenkillerspodX Twitter https://x.com/TrueCrimePodThis publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.#MackenzieShirilla #TheCrash #TheCrashNetflix #DominicRusso #DavionFlanagan #BobMotta #DefenseDiaries #HiddenKillers #TrueCrime #Justice
Transcribe →
What Happens Inside Nancy Guthrie's 41 Missing Minutes?
Yesterday00:20:31Tap to summarizeBetween 1:47 a.m. and 2:28 a.m. on the morning of February 1, somebody walked up to an 84-year-old woman's house in the Catalina Foothills of Tucson, got inside, and got her out. Nancy Guthrie's doorbell camera disconnected at 1:47. Her pacemaker app disconnected at 2:28. Forty-one minutes. That is the entire window. Four months later, nobody outside the investigation can fill it in.This True Crime Today episode walks through the full Nancy Guthrie timeline, beginning to now. The blood on her front porch. The medication she left behind. The doorbell camera that was screwed off the wall. The doorbell footage the FBI released on February 10 — the masked man, the Walmart-brand Ozark Trail backpack, the clump of weeds covering the lens.The reward that climbed from $50,000 to $100,000 to $1 million. The FBI's elite Hostage Rescue Team deployed to Tucson and then pulled back to Phoenix. The 30,000-plus tips. The recall campaign against Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos. The Arizona Republic report on the sheriff's resume. The Pima County Board of Supervisors vote compelling testimony under oath. The FBI Director on a national podcast confirming, in his words, that the local sheriff's department did not initially cooperate as expected — and Nanos's public dispute of that characterization. The contaminated gloves. The mixed DNA still under analysis.And the 41 minutes at the center of all of it — that nobody, not the family, not the agencies, not the millions of people who have watched this case from the moment Nancy's name first hit the news, can yet account for. The full timeline. Every piece. Beginning to now.SOCIAL LINKS:Join Our SubStack For AD-FREE ADVANCE EPISODES & EXTRAS!: https://hiddenkillers.substack.com/ Want to comment and watch this podcast as a video? Check out our YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8-vxmbhTxxG10sO1izODJg?sub_confirmation=1 Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hiddenkillerspod/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hiddenkillerspod/ Tik-Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@hiddenkillerspod X Twitter https://x.com/TrueCrimePodLEGAL DISCLAIMER:This publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.HASHTAGS: #NancyGuthrie #SavannahGuthrie #TrueCrimeToday #TrueCrime #MissingPerson #PimaCounty #Tucson #FBI #ColdCase #FindNancyGuthrie
Transcribe →
The Crash: Is the Mackenzie Shirilla Case Really as Clear as Everyone Thinks?
Yesterday01:01:40Tap to summarizeEveryone who watches Netflix's The Crash picks a side. Guilty or railroaded. Monster or misunderstood teenager. Premeditated killer or reckless kid in over her head. The documentary gives you enough to feel certain either way — and that's exactly the problem, because the evidence doesn't support certainty in either direction.Mackenzie Shirilla was convicted of four counts of murder for driving her car into a building in Strongsville, Ohio at nearly a hundred miles per hour, killing her boyfriend Dominic Russo and their friend Davion Flanagan. She was seventeen. The prosecution argued intent. The defense argued medical emergency. A judge with no jury agreed with the prosecution. And the one expert who might have complicated that decision was never heard because of a missed deadline.Robin Dreeke, former head of the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Program, sits down for a three-part conversation that covers the full scope of this case. He examines Mackenzie's documented behavior and asks whether personality constitutes evidence of murder. He picks apart the investigation and asks whether the methodology supports the charge. And he confronts the human layer — the memory claims, the grief-driven certainty, the competing narratives, and the confirmation bias that may have shaped how every decision in this case was made.The evidence exists. The footage is real. The data is real. The texts are real. But evidence and proof are different things, and a conviction for premeditated murder requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt. This conversation asks whether that standard was actually met — or whether a powerful story about a difficult girl made everyone feel like it was.Join Our SubStack For AD-FREE ADVANCE EPISODES & EXTRAS!: https://hiddenkillers.substack.com/Want to comment and watch this podcast as a video? Check out our YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8-vxmbhTxxG10sO1izODJg?sub_confirmation=1Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hiddenkillerspod/Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hiddenkillerspod/Tik-Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@hiddenkillerspodX Twitter https://x.com/TrueCrimePodThis publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.#MackenzieShirilla #TheCrash #TheCrashNetflix #DominicRusso #DavionFlanagan #RobinDreeke #HiddenKillers #TrueCrime #Netflix #Justice
Transcribe →
Why Wasn't Murdaugh's Housekeeper Asked About Everything She Saw That Morning?
Yesterday00:24:52Tap to summarizeYou want to know what went wrong in the first Murdaugh trial? Forget the jury tampering for a second. Forget Becky Hill. Look at the allocation of time. The state spent twelve and a half hours on financial crimes. They gave Blanca Simpson three hours.Blanca is the person who knew that household's daily patterns better than anyone. She knew how Maggie left her things. She knew where the towels went. She knew what the morning routine looked like and what it didn't look like. When she walked into that house the morning after the murders, her eyes caught things that a crime scene unit would have no frame of reference for. Not forensic anomalies. Domestic ones. The kind of details that only land when someone says: that's not how she did it.The Supreme Court's guidance for the retrial essentially forces prosecutors to rebalance the case. Less financial testimony. Which means more weight falls on the physical evidence, the timeline, and the behavioral details. And that's Blanca's territory.In this interview, Blanca goes past her trial testimony for the first time. She talks about what prosecutors didn't ask. What she noticed that morning that she's been carrying for five years without anyone in the legal system asking about it. She explains the moment Alex tried to rewrite the shirt story and what his approach to that conversation told her about how he operated. And she confronts what happens when the most important crime scene in South Carolina true crime history no longer exists.Part 2 of a three-part True Crime Today exclusive.Join Our SubStack For AD-FREE ADVANCE EPISODES & EXTRAS!: https://hiddenkillers.substack.com/Want to comment and watch this podcast as a video? Check out our YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8-vxmbhTxxG10sO1izODJg?sub_confirmation=1Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hiddenkillerspod/Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hiddenkillerspod/Tik-Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@hiddenkillerspodX Twitter https://x.com/TrueCrimePodThis publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.#AlexMurdaugh #BlancaSimpson #MurdaughRetrial #MurdaughEvidence #MaggieMurdaugh #Moselle #MurdaughTrial #PaulMurdaugh #SouthCarolina #HiddenKillers
Transcribe →
The Crash: Did Grief Decide What Happened to Mackenzie Shirilla?
Yesterday00:19:08Tap to summarizeThe judge who convicted Mackenzie Shirilla of four counts of murder also denied her post-conviction petition — the one containing a neurologist's expert opinion that the crash may have been caused by a medical episode. Same judge. Same defendant. Same case. The petition was denied on procedural grounds — filed one day late — not on the merits. But the question lingers: when the same person makes every consequential decision about your fate, does confirmation bias become unavoidable?That question sits alongside a bigger one in Netflix's The Crash. Everyone involved in the Shirilla case has arrived at a conclusion — and none of them appear willing to consider the alternative. The families believe she's a monster because that's the version that gives their grief a target. The prosecution believes the footage proves intent because that's the version that justifies the charge. Mackenzie believes she doesn't remember because that's the version that lets her survive prison. And a fellow inmate says none of what Mackenzie presents publicly is real.The Strongsville, Ohio crash killed Dominic Russo, twenty, and Davion Flanagan, nineteen. Shirilla was seventeen. She's now serving fifteen years to life. The evidence is real — the footage, the data, the texts. But the interpretations of that evidence are shaped by need, not neutrality. Every person in this story is filtering the facts through what they need to believe.Robin Dreeke, who spent over two decades at the FBI studying how people construct and protect their version of truth, examines the behavioral dynamics driving every side of this case — and asks whether justice can function when the people inside the system are as invested in a specific outcome as the people outside it.Join Our SubStack For AD-FREE ADVANCE EPISODES & EXTRAS!: https://hiddenkillers.substack.com/Want to comment and watch this podcast as a video? Check out our YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8-vxmbhTxxG10sO1izODJg?sub_confirmation=1Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hiddenkillerspod/Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hiddenkillerspod/Tik-Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@hiddenkillerspodX Twitter https://x.com/TrueCrimePodThis publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.#MackenzieShirilla #TheCrash #TheCrashNetflix #DominicRusso #DavionFlanagan #RobinDreeke #HiddenKillers #TrueCrime #Netflix #Justice
Transcribe →
Why Did It Take Nineteen Months for Three States to Realize They Were Hunting Ted Bundy?
Yesterday00:20:07Tap to summarizeThe investigation into Ted Bundy's second year of killing began with a traffic stop nobody planned. Sergeant Bob Hayward, a twenty-two-year veteran of the Utah Highway Patrol, was sitting in his cruiser outside his own home in Granger, Utah, at 2:30 in the morning when a tan VW Beetle passed with its headlights off. He chased it. He searched it. What he found inside — a ski mask, a pantyhose mask with eyeholes cut by hand, a crowbar, an ice pick, rope, and handcuffs — was a kit assembled by someone who had thought about what he was going to use it for.The driver was Ted Bundy. He had no record. He was released on his own recognizance.Two days later, Salt Lake County Detective Jerry Thompson read the arrest report and connected the name to Carol DaRonch — the eighteen-year-old who had fought her way out of a Volkswagen nine months earlier after a man posing as Officer Roseland tried to handcuff her at a mall. Thompson called Mike Fisher in Colorado, who had the Caryn Campbell case. He called Bob Keppel in King County, who had eight names and a stack of tip cards.For the first time, three states realized they had been working the same case for nineteen months without knowing it.The women between those states — Nancy Wilcox, Melissa Smith, Laura Aime, Debby Kent, Caryn Campbell, Julie Cunningham, Denise Oliverson, Lynette Culver, Susan Curtis — crossed jurisdictions nobody had connected. Five states. Five agencies. No shared file.This is the second of five conversations in Ted Bundy: History's Hidden Killers. The investigative thread that finally tied the cases together — and the survivor and the accident that made it possible.Join Our SubStack For AD-FREE ADVANCE EPISODES & EXTRAS!: https://hiddenkillers.substack.com/ Want to comment and watch this podcast as a video? Check out our YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8-vxmbhTxxG10sO1izODJg?sub_confirmation=1 Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hiddenkillerspod/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hiddenkillerspod/ Tik-Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@hiddenkillerspod X Twitter https://x.com/TrueCrimePodThis publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.#TedBundy #TrueCrime #HiddenKillers #Utah #Colorado #CarolDaRonch #Survivor #SerialKiller #TrueCrimePodcast #ColdCase
Transcribe →
Was Kouri Richins Lying on Television or Living Inside Her Own Story?
Yesterday00:16:18Tap to summarizeFourteen months between Eric Richins' death and Kouri's arrest. During that window, she closed a real estate deal the day after finding him dead, hosted a gathering at the home where EMTs had pronounced him, Googled luxury prisons and insurance timelines, published a children's grief book, and went on television to promote it.Most analysis focuses on whether the grief was real or performed. This episode argues the answer is both — simultaneously — in different compartments of a psychology that doesn't process deception the way most people understand it. The lie isn't a mask held in place with effort. It's a migration. The person moves into the new version of events and inhabits it. And in that version, the grief is genuine.The second installment of a five-part psychological series examining every phase of Kouri Richins' decision-making. The 911 call, the Google searches, the book, the TV tour — and a brain that can produce sincere tenderness for children it orphaned.Join Our SubStack For AD-FREE ADVANCE EPISODES & EXTRAS!: https://hiddenkillers.substack.com/Want to comment and watch this podcast as a video? Check out our YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8-vxmbhTxxG10sO1izODJg?sub_confirmation=1Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hiddenkillerspod/Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hiddenkillerspod/Tik-Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@hiddenkillerspodX Twitter https://x.com/TrueCrimePodThis publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.#KouriRichins #EricRichins #KouriRichinsTrial #Psychology #TrueCrime #HiddenKillers #FentanylPoisoning #SummitCounty #TrueCrimeCommunity #Justice
Transcribe →
The Crash: Did the Narrative Against Mackenzie Shirilla Get Ahead of the Evidence?
Yesterday00:21:03Tap to summarizeNo confession. No manifesto. No search history about staging a crash. No suicide note. No witnesses to intent. The prosecution's case against Mackenzie Shirilla was built on surveillance footage, black box data, text messages, and a prior threat — and then charged as four counts of premeditated murder. In most cases with that charge, there's a trail. In this one, there wasn't.Shirilla was seventeen when the crash in Strongsville, Ohio killed Dominic Russo and Davion Flanagan. The footage shows the car accelerating to nearly a hundred miles per hour before hitting a building. The data shows full throttle and no braking. That evidence is real. But the prosecution's theory required a leap — from "the car did this" to "she planned this" — and the bridge between those two conclusions was built on her personality, her texts, and a prior threat she made and didn't follow through on.The defense had a possible answer: a diagnosed medical condition called POTS that can cause sudden loss of consciousness. But Shirilla's own attorney failed to bring in an expert witness at trial. After the conviction, a neurologist reviewed her medical records and concluded the evidence was consistent with a medical episode. His opinion was submitted to the court and rejected — not because it was wrong, but because the paperwork arrived one day past Ohio's filing deadline.Robin Dreeke, former head of the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Program, looks at how this case was constructed from the ground up — the evidence that was presented, the evidence that was missed, the charging decision that raised the bar to a level the proof may not reach, and what it means when a narrative becomes so compelling that nobody stops to ask whether the evidence actually supports it.Join Our SubStack For AD-FREE ADVANCE EPISODES & EXTRAS!: https://hiddenkillers.substack.com/Want to comment and watch this podcast as a video? Check out our YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8-vxmbhTxxG10sO1izODJg?sub_confirmation=1Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hiddenkillerspod/Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hiddenkillerspod/Tik-Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@hiddenkillerspodX Twitter https://x.com/TrueCrimePodThis publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.#MackenzieShirilla #TheCrash #TheCrashNetflix #DominicRusso #DavionFlanagan #RobinDreeke #HiddenKillers #TrueCrime #Netflix #Justice
Transcribe →