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Eric Richins grew up on a cattle ranch in Kamas, Utah and was close with his family. When he was in his early 20s, he started a masonry business with a friend and became quite successful. Becuase of his business, he had to go to the Home Depot quite frequently, and that is where he met a cashier named Kouri. Kouri was working her way through college and the two soon started dating and eventually married and had three sons together. But their marriage was struggling by the time their oldest son was 9 years old and their youngest was 5. Kouri Richins had started a house flipping business and was being sued by at least two of her homeowners. She also owed lenders more than $1 million and had forged Eric's signature on documents that showed she had taken out a home equity line of credit on their house to the tune of $250,000. Eric soon realized that his wife was not who he thought she was, and left all of his money in a trust to be overseen by his sister and then given to his sons when they became adults, in case something happened to him. And something did happen to him. On March 4th, 2022, Eric was found deceased in the early morning hours while sleeping in bed. Later, his cause of death was found to be an extreme overdose of street-grade fentanyl. Eric Richins did not use drugs. As the investigation would conclude, someone very close to him had taken his life, and in the most tragic of ways. Show Notes: https://www.nbcnews.com/dateline/in-the-news/dateline-full-episode-book-of-lies-rcna342477

Nesreen Ursan and her siblings grew up in Conro, Texas, a small rural town just north of Houston and were raised by their father, Ali, and their stepmother, Shmu. Ali was a devout and strict Muslim and did barely allowed his two daughters, Nesreen and Nadia out of the house. Until Ali had a heart attack and Nesreen convinced him to allow her and Nadia to attend college so they could be doctors and take care of him. Ali agreed, and Nesreen and Nadia were off to the north campus of Lone Star College in the fall of 2009. There at Lone Star College, Nesreen met Cody Beavers and fell in love. She started to Westernize herself, wore her hair down and experimented with makeup. Nadia had a crush on Cody's twin brother, Corey, but that crush was unrequited. Soon, Ali found out that Nesreen had a boyfriend and tried to shut Nesreen in her room, chained to her bed. But Nesreen escaped and eloped with Cody. They then rented their own apartment and Nesreen became close friends with a woman named Gelareh Bagherizadeh. Until both Cody and Gelareh were shot dead. Nesreen had to find their killer or killers, because she knew that if they weren't brought to justice, she would be next. Show Notes: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11096284/

Alex Campbell is the kind of High School Sociology teacher that students actually listen to. Alex has been the sociology teacher at Elizabethton High School in Elizabethton, Tennessee for the past 18 years. And, in 2018, Alex Campbell got an idea for a lesson plan. He wanted his class to look into The Redhead Murders, a series of unsolved Jane Doe cases whose victims were young, redheaded sex workers. The killer, or killers had left the women on the side of busy highways in states like Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The kids took to the lesson plan like a fish to water, and made great headway with the aid of local and state police departments, and even the FBI. When they were finished, no one could have predicted that a small High School class in Elizabethton, Tennessee, could have solved a series of murders and brought justice to their families. Show Notes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/murder-101/id1724019923 https://www.imdb.com/news/ni65926261/

Darlene VanderGiesen was born in July 1963 in Osborn, Kansas. She and her sister were born completely deaf to hearing parents. Darlene went to the prestigious School for the Deaf in Council Bluffs, Iowa and then on to community college. After graduating, she moved to Sioux Falls, South Dakota where there was a huge hearing impaired community. Darlene made friends easily, and found a community in Sioux Falls. She befriended a woman named Sally Collins who was also deaf, and who was in an on-again-off-again relationship with another hearing impaired woman named Daphne Wright. Daphne was extremely jealous of Darlene and Sally's friendship, even though Darlene was straight and dating a man at the time. On February 1st, 2006, Darlene VanderGeiesen disappeared. Her car was found parked at a local resetaurant, but no one had seen her since that evening. When police started to investigate, they found a horrific murder on their hands: one that involved two deaf women in an unprecedented True Crime case. Show Notes: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/darlene-vandergiesen-asl-and-the-legal-system/id1112004494?i=1000548828173

Samantha Josephson, who everyone called Sami, was a senior at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, South Carolina and was looking forward to attending Drexel University for law school in the fall. But on March 28th, 2019, with only one month until graduation, she and some friends decided to go to the Five Points area of Columbia to go bar hopping. Five Points was a crowded area with many bars and restaurants, frequented by students. At 2 am, Sami called an Uber to come pick her up because she was ready to go back to her apartment. She saw what she thought was her ride: a black Chevy Impala. She got into that car and that was the last time she was ever seen alive again.  The Uber was not actually an Uber: in fact, it was a regular car driven by Nathaniel Roland, a 24-year-old opportunistic criminal. When Sami was found the next day by turkey hunters in a rural, wooded area, she was dead. She had been murdered and had 50 stab wounds all over her body. This case would rock the world of ride share companies and riders alike. Because of Sami's misfortune, safety laws would need to be amended throughout the US so that something like this could never happen again. Show Notes:  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt24517326/

On Friday, July 21st, 2006, 35-year-old Shawn O'Brien left his roofing job in Cranston, Rhode Island and went to meet his ex-girlfriend Amy, and their 13-year-old daughter Natalia to give Amy some child support money. The three made plans to meet up later that afternoon to attend the St. Mary's Feast festival. But by 6 pm, Natalia had a headache so the three planned to take a rain check and meet at the festival the next day. Amy and Natalia dropped Shawn off at Billy's Frosted Mug, a local bar, at around 7 pm that evening. That was the last time they would see Shawn alive. By the next day, when Shawn had no answered any calls or shown up to the festival, friends and family got worried. They went to the basement apartment that he rented from his landlord, Armand, and his girlfriend, Lynn. Armand told Shawn's friends and family that Shawn had been seizing for hours. Shawn had a seizure disorder that was attributed to his heavy drug and alcohol use. But after Shawn got to the hospital and died there two days later, everyone who knew Shawn started to become suspicious that Shawn had not died because of an accident, but that he had been murdered in cold blood. Show Notes: https://www.murdershetold.com/episodes/shawn-obrien

On January 26th, 2011, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania experienced a huge blizzard in the early afternoon hours. That is why Ellen Greenberg, an elementary school teacher at Juniata Park Academy, was sent home early to the Venice Lofts apartment that she shared with her fiance Sam Goldberg in the Manayunk area of Philadelphia.  She and Sam had been engaged for about six months, but it seemed as if Ellen was not quite yet in the bridal state of mind. She had been having depression issues, and had been super stressed out with work. She had recently been to see a psychiatrist who prescribed a cocktail of medications for Ellen to help ease her anxiety and depression.  But on that day, when Sam got home from work at around 4 pm, he decided to go to the gym in their building at around 4:50. By the time he got back up to their apartment, he was locked out and started to get concerned about Ellen. When he finally made it into the apartment, he saw Ellen slumped against the dishwasher with a knife through her heart. Sam was convinced she had committed suicide but her family and friends thought otherwise. What followed were court cases for years to solve the mystery: Was Ellen Greenberg murdered or did she die by her own hand? Show Notes: https://www.hulu.com/series/death-in-apartment-603-what-happened-to-ellen-greenberg-b0338377-2cf8-43c4-98b7-5f907e9d51d1

On the night of June 25th, 2001, Eric Tamiyasu, a 41-year-old third generation fruit farmer from Hood River, Oregon, had his friend Diane Anderson over to his house on a rural plot of land, for a date. Eric and Diane had been friends for years and were exploring the possibility of growing their relationship. At around 11 pm, the two heard strange tappings on the windows and also heard the doorbell ring. Seeing no one outside, Diane soon left Eric's house around 11:30 pm. Four days later, after Eric's friends and family had not heard from him, a man named Don Dixon entered Tamiyasu's house with a spare key. He found Eric dead in his bed, naked, with two gunshot wounds to the head.  What followed was a mystery and a cold case that Hood River Oregon's police department could not solve. There were many suspects including Don Dixon, a former business partner, Diane Anderson's ex and even the Sherriff of Hood River himself. But no one could solve the case and no one could fathom who would have wanted mild-mannered Eric Tamiyasu dead? Show Notes: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt35004933/ https://lastseenalivepodcast.com/2021/09/16/unsolvedhomicide-eric-tamiyasu/

On Sunday, July 7th, 17-year-old Molly Miller wanted to go to a house party in Wilson, Oklahoma to see her new crush, 21-year-old Colt Haynes. Molly had started to fall in with the wrong crowd and had begun experimenting with drugs. Also at the house party was a man named James Con Nipp who went by the nickname Con. Somehow, Molly Miller and Colt Haynes ended up in Con's car driving around.  When they got to a convenience store, Con spotted a cop and wanted to mess with him so he started a high speed chase that ended in a crash by a fence. All three of the vehicle's occupants fled the scene but only Con ended up walking home. What would transpire next was one of the most bizarre nights with Molly and Colt wandering the woods, lost, calling dozens of friends to come pick them up and even dialing 911 before both their phones went dead at exactly 10 am. No one could find them for years. What had happened to Molly Miller and Colt Haynes? Show Notes: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11224866/ https://getpodcast.com/es/podcast/the-generation-why-podcast/the-disappearance-of-molly-miller-and-colt-haynes-619_ebb70e7614

On Sunday March 24th, 2013, 53-year-old Aliza Sherman told her son Jeremy that she had some errands to run and needed to stop by her divorce attorney's office, but that she would be home later with pizza. When 7:45 rolled around, Jeremy got concerned and called his sister who lived a few miles away. But when his sister got to their house, they were met by a police officer who told them the devastating news: their mother had been killed only a few hours earlier, stabbed to death in downtown Cleveland.  Aliza had been there to meet with her lawyer about her impending divorce trial from her estranged husband, Sanford. Sanford had been stealing money from the family and had been threatening Aliza. But when police looked into the case of who would have wanted to kill a seemingly upstanding, innocent woman the answer was even more bizarre than anyone could have imagined. Show Notes: https://lastseenalivepodcast.com/2021/08/23/unsolved-homicide-aliza-sherman/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14255922/

The case of Nikki Entzel is discussed. Show Notes: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26421694/

Zebb Quinn was a 17-year-old senior in High School who lived in Asheville North Carolina. He was a proud member of ROTC and worked a full-time job at Wal-Mart. On the evening of January 2nd, 2000, Zebb wanted to buy a new car and Robert Jason Owens, who went by Jason, a fellow employee at the Wal-Mart, offered to show Zebb a used Mitsubishi. Zebb followed Jason in his car toward the dealership until he received a page on his pager. He soon rushed off to make a phone call. When he returned, Zebb was flustered and hit Jason's car with his own. He then told Jason that he would have to look at the car another time; he needed to leave for some sort of emergency. Zebb Quinn drove off that night and was never seen again. Cristie Shoen and JT Codd had met in Venice Beach, California, while working in the entertainment industry; Cristie as a caterer for Hollywood movie sets, JT as a key grip. The two soon fell in love and got married and moved just outside of Asheville, North Carolina to raise their growing family. By mid-March of 2015, Cristie was pregnant with their first child. But on March 15th, alarms were raised when friends and family could not get ahold of either Cristie or JT. Cristie's father asked a neighbor to check on them and she saw a disturbing sight: their wallets and personal belongings were in the house and their precious dogs had not been fed for days. As police searched for clues as to where JT and Cristie could be, their suspicions fell on one man, their friend, neighbor and handyman, Robert Jason Owens. Show Notes: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2321168/ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/horrorwood-true-crime-in-tinseltown/id1635143133

On Sunday, June 26th, 2004, a 17-year-old rising High School senior named Craig Frear left his friend's house and went home and grabbed his shirt for his shift at the Price Chopper, a local grocery store in Glenville, New York. Craig had been working at the Price Chopper for two years and had recently been promoted from bagger to working at the dairy counter. But when Craig's mom stopped in to say hello to Craig that afternoon, she was told Craig was not there. When Craig's dad stopped in an hour later, he was told that Craig had been fired five weeks prior because he had not been showing up for work. Craig's dad tracked him down to a girlfriends' apartment complex and saw his car was in the parking lot. But right as his dad arrived to talk to Craig, Craig had set out on foot along a walking path that ran along some train tracks that also led him directly to his backyard, about a mile or a mile and a half away. He had told his mother that he was coming home to explain about the Price Chopper situation. But Craig never made it home that day and has never been seen since. He simply vanished. During the more than two decade search for him, some strange things would come to light in the days before Craig's disappearance. What had happened to this popular, smart and well-liked young man? What happened to Craig Frear? Show Notes: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/11683771-59b0-406f-ab5b-25f994ce82b0/wicked-deeds Craig Frear tips: NY State Police: 518-457-6811 or 518-630-1700 or [email protected]

The cases of Sarah Beard and Tara Calico are discussed Show Notes: https://podcasts.apple.com/cr/podcast/unresolved-sarah-beard/id1484748807?i=1000538808554 https://unsolvedmysteries.fandom.com/wiki/Tara_Calico https://www.amazon.com/Cold-Case-Detective/dp/B09RJTPKMC

On May 5th, 2004, a fisherman named Chris Henkle and his buddy Don took their kids out of school for the day to go fishing on Chesapeake Bay by the Bay Bridge Tunnel, an 18-mile long bridge that connects Eastern Virginia to Virginia Beach. In the water, they spotted a Kenneth Cole suitcase floating by. Opening the case, they found a set of human male legs cut off from the knee wrapped in a black trash bag. Over the next few days, on Virginia Beach, the man's torso and pelvis washed up, preserved in the same set of Kenneth Cole luggage. The man was Bill McGuire and he and his wife Melanie lived in Woodbridge, New Jersey with their two young children. Over the next few months, police would investigate Bill's wife Melanie and uncover a life of lies, deception, affairs and most tragically of all...murder.  Show Notes: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12425806/