In part two, we follow Ronald Cotton from his decision to talk to police through two trials, decades in prison, and his ultimate DNA exoneration after another man, Bobby Poole, was identified as the true perpetrator. We unpack how racial bias, prior records, blocked expert testimony, and juries’ overreliance on confident eyewitnesses fueled Cotton’s wrongful convictions, and how his and Jennifer Thompson’s advocacy, alongside over 600 DNA exonerations nationwide, has driven reforms in interrogation, lineup procedures, and the use of eyewitness evidence.

Edited by Maxwell Holechek

In part one of this two-parter topic, we tell the story of Jennifer Thompson, a 22‑year‑old college student whose courageous attempt to memorize her rapist’s face led to the wrongful conviction of Ronald Cotton. We focus closely on the crime itself and Jennifer’s immediate aftermath experience, from her escape to the hospital exam and early police interviews, to show how trauma and flawed identification procedures shaped her memory and, ultimately, the case.

Edited by Maxwell Holechek

TW: Discussions of sexual assault. 

A rushed arrest, a collapsing case, and a sensational trial that put everyone on display.

Part Two picks up immediately after the arrest of Clifford Hayes, the first man charged in the Hall Mills murders. We break down how police built a case on a coerced confession, why it quickly fell apart, and how Hayes was cleared while Raymond Schneider was convicted of perjury instead. From there, the investigation lurches forward through botched evidence, unreliable witnesses, and a courtroom spectacle that culminates in the infamous 1926 trial of Frances Hall and her family. We unpack the prosecution’s theories, the defense’s brutal dismantling of key testimony, and how the trial ultimately left the case exactly where it started, unresolved, controversial, and haunted by what might have been done differently.

Edited by Maxwell Holechek

A secret relationship. Two bodies under a crabapple tree. A century-old case that begins with a compromised crime scene.

In Part One, we examine the 1922 Hall Mills murders in New Brunswick, New Jersey. A minister and a choir singer are found dead in a known lover’s lane, arranged side by side with their love letters scattered around them. Before authorities can secure the area, reporters and onlookers flood the scene, disturbing crucial evidence and muddying the investigation from the very beginning. We walk through who the victims were, the origins of their relationship, the tensions in their marriages, and the early timeline that shaped the first wave of suspicion. It is one of the most enduring unsolved cases of its era, and this episode sets the stage for everything that followed.

Edited by Max Holechek

Richard Trenton Chase, also known as the “Vampire of Sacramento,” terrorized California in the late 1970s with a spree of murders involving cannibalism and delusional blood rituals. Join us as we unpack his chilling journey from a nightmarish childhood and untreated psychosis to the city-wide panic that erupted after his gruesome crimes, as we also explore how systemic psychiatric failures and missed warning signs led to the tragic descent into violence that would haunt criminal psychology forever.

TW: child abuse, murder, cannibalism.

Edited by Maxwell Holechek

After serving time for his first murders, Arthur Shawcross was released back into society. What followed was a series of killings that left women across Rochester terrified and police desperate for answers.

In Part Two, we follow Arthur Shawcross as he reinvents himself after prison, only to unleash a wave of violence even more chilling than before. Targeting women along the Genesee River, his murders exposed failures in the system, devastated families, and escalated into one of the most notorious serial cases in New York’s history.

Before he became known as the Genesee River Killer, Arthur Shawcross’s violent urges first surfaced in two brutal murders that shocked upstate New York. Long before his killing spree along the Genesee River, Arthur Shawcross’s darkness emerged in 1972, when two young victims vanished under chillingly similar circumstances. In Part One, we trace Shawcross’s early life, the disturbing patterns that began to take shape, and the investigation into his first known murders, crimes that should have been a warning of the horrors yet to come.

Edited by Max Holechek 

In the early ’90s, the bodies of women began turning up around Dallas—murdered, and missing one chilling detail—and soon, the name “The Eyeball Killer” would haunt the headlines.  

When the bodies of several women began turning up in the early ’90s, there was one eerie detail connecting them all—something missing that pointed to a far more sinister obsession. As the police followed the clues, suspicion fell on a seemingly upstanding man with a passion for art, anatomy, and taxidermy. But was Charles Albright the monster behind the murders, or was something even stranger going on beneath the surface? We peel back the layers of a case that’s as unsettling as it is unforgettable.  

Edited by Maxwell Holechek