Could A Judge Hand Nick Reiner $1.5M Without A Hearing?
There's a procedural detail in the Nick Reiner trust fund battle that almost nobody is talking about — and it could end this fight before it starts. According to one legal expert, if no one formally opposes Nick's probate petition, a judge could grant it without ever holding a hearing. No arguments. No testimony. More than $1.5 million, released to a man awaiting trial for his parents' killings...
16m Jun 12
16m
Jesse Ridgway Is Never Going to Stop and the Audience Is the Reason Why
Every view validates the behavior. Every click fuels the compulsion. Every headline — including the outraged ones, including the ones calling him a fraud — gives Jesse Ridgway’s brain exactly what it’s looking for. He has spent twenty years fabricating crises for attention and every year the stunts get darker because the brain builds a tolerance. Staged family violence. A failed platform. Now a...
49m Jun 11
49m
Christine Marie Confesses What Taking Down Samuel Bateman Cost
The complete three-part conversation, all in one extended sit-down. Christine Marie — the cult psychologist who walked into Samuel Bateman's FLDS world with a camera and a hidden agenda — sits down with me to tell the whole story from start to finish. Christine and her husband Tolga moved to Short Creek in 2016 with a completely different project in mind. Then Samuel Bateman rose out of the po...
59m Jun 11
59m
Are the People Clicking on Jesse Ridgway Part of the Reason He Won’t Stop?
Every click validates the behavior. Every comment fuels the next stunt. Every share tells Jesse Ridgway’s brain that what he’s doing is working. Seventeen million people saw his pregnancy announcement. If Jesse is sick, the audience is the IV drip. Research shows that expressing outrage online fires the same dopamine reward pathways as direct social validation — and like any drug, you build a t...
19m Jun 11
19m
Jesse Ridgway’s Stunts Keep Getting Darker and Nobody Can Stop Him
Staged family violence. A failed platform. Now a pregnancy crisis involving a Down syndrome baby. Each stunt Jesse Ridgway pulls pushes further into territory the last one didn’t reach. That’s how tolerance works — the brain needs a bigger dose to feel the same thing. And with 4.3 million subscribers validating every escalation, the feedback loop has no off switch. Psychotherapist Shavaun Scot...
13m Jun 11
13m
What Does a Psychotherapist Hear When Jesse Ridgway Says “I’m Normal”?
On a livestream, Jesse Ridgway said, “I’m glad my dad didn’t terminate me, but I’m normal.” That sentence — delivered in the middle of a firestorm about his unborn child — tells a psychotherapist something very specific. Jesse Ridgway has staged events for attention his entire career. Four years of fake family violence. A platform that burned through a million users. And now a pregnancy announc...
18m Jun 11
18m
What’s Really Behind the ‘Coverup’ Ruling That Ended Aaron Spencer’s Murder Case?
“Appearance of a coverup.” “So egregious.” Those are a judge’s words in a signed order. And they didn’t just end a murder case. They cracked open questions about an entire county’s law enforcement apparatus. This three-part conversation with an outside legal analyst covers the ruling, the sheriff’s race, and the institutional pattern that made this case inevitable. Judge Wilson’s 19-page orde...
55m Jun 10
55m
Christine Marie Says Samuel Bateman Still Runs His Cult From Prison
He's locked up. He's still calling. And his wives are still picking up. In this third and final part of a three-part interview, Christine Marie walks me through the part of the Samuel Bateman story that doesn't fit on a true crime documentary's ending card. The arrest didn't free those women. The fifty-year sentence didn't free them. The conviction didn't free them. A number of the people Chri...
14m Jun 10
14m
Who in Lonoke County Is Trying to Escape Accountability After Aaron Spencer’s Case?
The detective got fired. The sheriff issued a statement. The prosecutor’s office went quiet. And the question hanging over all of it is whether any of these people will face real consequences for what a judge described as “egregious” conduct. Judge Wilson’s ruling focused on one detective and one piece of evidence. But the Lonoke County Sheriff’s Office’s problems with evidence didn’t start wi...
24m Jun 10
24m
How Does Aaron Spencer Run the Agency That Lost the Evidence in His Own Murder Case?
Aaron Spencer is about to become the sheriff of Lonoke County. The same county that charged him with murder. The same department whose detective lost the evidence that got the case thrown out. That’s not a hypothetical. That’s the trajectory. Spencer won the Republican primary with 53.5 percent of the vote in a three-way race, beating the thirteen-year incumbent whose office investigated him. ...
13m Jun 10
13m
Why Did a Judge Call Evidence Handling ‘So Egregious’ in the Aaron Spencer Case?
A circuit court judge just called law enforcement’s conduct “so egregious” that he threw out the murder case against an Arkansas father. That language doesn’t show up in rulings often. When it does, it means something went profoundly wrong. Judge Ralph Wilson’s 19-page order found that Detective Robbie McCain — the lead investigator on the Aaron Spencer case — committed eleven separate violati...
19m Jun 10
19m
How Did the Elijah Vue Investigation Go From a Missing Child Report to a Homicide Case?
On February 20, 2024, Jesse Vang called 911 and reported that three-year-old Elijah Vue had walked away from his Two Rivers, Wisconsin apartment. What started as a missing child case became a homicide investigation that uncovered surveillance footage, deleted photographs, coordinated text messages, DNA evidence inside a donated suitcase, and forensic findings of injuries that had been happening...
54m Jun 09
54m
What Christine Recorded That Locked Up Samuel Bateman
Late 2021. Christine Marie's camera was rolling. Samuel Bateman started talking. And what he said in his own voice on that recording finally became the thing the FBI couldn't ignore. In this second part of our three-part interview, Christine tells the story of building a case against a man the local police would not touch. Short Creek — the FLDS community on the Utah-Arizona border where Batem...
30m Jun 09
30m
What Did the Fractures on Three-Year-Old Elijah Vue’s Skull Tell Investigators?
When three-year-old Elijah Vue’s remains were found in a wooded area three miles from Jesse Vang’s Two Rivers, Wisconsin apartment, investigators noted something about the material found near the remains. Sand and gravel recovered at the site reportedly matched sand and gravel found in buckets near Vang’s home. The defense is now challenging that evidence — and a hearing is pending that could d...
20m Jun 09
20m
Why Did Hundreds of Strangers Search for Three-Year-Old Elijah Vue for Seven Months?
For seven months, the city of Two Rivers, Wisconsin searched for a three-year-old boy named Elijah Vue. The FBI came. The Wisconsin Department of Justice came. Hundreds of community volunteers showed up with flashlights and search dogs. They combed through landfills, dove into storm drains and the West Twin River, and searched private property across Manitowoc County. Volunteers even searched t...
18m Jun 09
18m
Why Was Elijah Vue Sent to a ‘Boot Camp’ Run by a Convicted Felon While Still in Diapers?
When investigators interviewed Katrina Baur about the adults in her son’s life, she used a word that stopped them: “structure.” She described Elijah’s biological father, Jimmy Vue, as “the alpha” over Jesse Vang. Jimmy Vue was incarcerated at the time. Vang was the man Baur placed her three-year-old with — a convicted felon still on federal supervised release. And Baur had once told police that...
17m Jun 09
17m
Is the Culture That Failed Sandra Birchmore Still Running These Departments?
Sean Goode resigned from the Canton Police Department amid an internal affairs investigation. Michael Proctor was fired from the Massachusetts State Police. Four officers connected to the Sandra Birchmore case have been decertified or permanently barred from law enforcement. And a lawsuit alleges that the documented record of misconduct between Proctor and Goode stretches back more than ten yea...
16m Jun 09
16m
How Would the FBI Evaluate Three Investigations Where the Evidence Broke Down?
Three active cases. Three different kinds of evidence failures. And the same underlying question: when investigators lose evidence, fail to collect it, or mishandle it, what are the real consequences — for the cases and for the system? In the Aaron Spencer case, a dashcam SD card was handled inconsistently with every other piece of evidence at the scene, in violation of department policy, and ...
50m Jun 08
50m
Christine Marie Tells Us If Samuel Bateman Knew HE Was A Fraud!
Christine Marie watched Samuel Bateman every single day for years. She sat at his table. She filmed his sermons. She listened to his wives recite their devotion to him. And she has an answer to the question true crime listeners keep asking about him — was he a true believer, or did he know, deep down, that he was a fraud? She's the one outsider who got close enough to actually know. Christine...
21m Jun 08
21m
What Does It Mean When the FBI Can't Account for Critical Evidence in Anna Kepner's Case?
From a forensic investigation standpoint, the Anna Kepner case has one of the strongest statistical DNA matches in recent federal prosecution — 120 sextillion to one, pointing to stepbrother Timothy Hudson. The injuries Anna sustained during the alleged attack ruptured both eardrums. The surveillance timeline aboard the Carnival Horizon places Hudson in the stateroom during the window when Anna...
22m Jun 08
22m
Did Lonoke County Bury Evidence to Protect Someone Beyond Aaron Spencer?
The Aaron Spencer murder case is over. A judge killed it. And the language in his order reads like the opening chapter of a federal investigation that hasn't started yet. Judge Ralph Wilson Jr. found that law enforcement's handling of evidence showed "a pattern of policy and procedure violations" and gave "the appearance of a coverup." Conduct so egregious that dismissal — the most extreme reme...
20m Jun 08
20m
How Do You Prove a Car Crash Was Murder When Mackenzie Shirilla Never Said a Word?
Building a double murder case without a confession, without testimony, and without a single statement from the defendant requires investigators to let the evidence speak for itself. In Mackenzie Shirilla's case, the evidence was devastating. A car's data recorder showed the accelerator pushed to full capacity with zero braking, approaching a hundred miles per hour aimed at a building. Surveill...
13m Jun 08
13m
How Would the FBI Evaluate What Happened to the Evidence in Aaron Spencer's Case?
When a sitting judge writes that law enforcement conduct gave "the appearance of a coverup" and was "so egregious" that a murder prosecution must be dismissed — how does that language register at the federal level? Aaron Spencer's second-degree murder charge was thrown out after the court found investigators mishandled the one piece of evidence that mattered most: a dashcam SD card from Michae...
16m Jun 08
16m
How Does A Case With This Much Evidence On Nancy Guthrie Still Freeze Solid?
The doorbell camera captured a masked, armed figure at the front door. The FBI recovered the footage. Blood confirmed as Nancy's was on the porch. A pacemaker signal went silent at 2:28 a.m. Her phone, wallet, and daily medication were left inside the house. Discarded gloves were found two miles away. Drones went up. Dogs went out. More than a hundred investigators eventually worked the case. T...
43m Jun 08
43m
Why Can't Kouri Richins Stop Producing Stories Even When They're Destroying Her?
The behavioral pattern is the case. Every time Kouri Richins faced a new threat, she generated a new story. Not a calculated lie — an automatic response. A narrative reflex that fires before conscious thought arrives, the way your body flinches before your brain decides to flinch. A six-page letter scripting her brother's testimony. Hidden in an LSAT prep book in her jail cell. Found by deputi...
33m Jun 07
33m
Can Trauma Actually Erase Mackenzie Shirilla's Memory Of The Crash?
Mackenzie Shirilla says she blacked out and has no memory of the crash that killed two people. The families say she's lying. A fellow inmate says the Mackenzie in the Netflix documentary is an act. The public picked a side before the first episode ended. But Shavaun Scott has spent more than thirty years in trauma work, forensic mental health, and domestic violence — and the clinical answer is ...
38m Jun 07
38m
Is Mackenzie Shirilla A Narcissist Or A Teenager Whose Brain Wasn't Finished?
The prosecution presented Mackenzie Shirilla's texts and threats as proof of a cold, calculating killer. A judge called her "hell on wheels." The public sees a narcissist. But Shavaun Scott has spent three decades in forensic mental health treating people who do terrible things, and the clinical picture she identifies doesn't match any of those labels cleanly. Scott — licensed psychotherapist,...
37m Jun 07
37m
Does Blanca Simpson's Theory Explain Why Alex Murdaugh Allegedly Didn't Act Alone?
Blanca Turrubiate-Simpson spent twenty years watching Alex Murdaugh operate. She saw how he moved money through other people's hands. How he used relationships as infrastructure. How Curtis Eddie Smith cashed four hundred thirty-seven checks totaling roughly $2.4 million. How a network of enablers kept the machine running for years. Alex Murdaugh never did anything alone. Blanca's question is s...
44m Jun 07
44m
Is The Netflix Version Of Mackenzie Shirilla The Real One?
Mackenzie Shirilla appears in Netflix's The Crash speaking from prison for the first time — soft-spoken, remorseful, insisting she has no memory of the crash that killed Dominic Russo and Davion Flanagan. An inmate who spent six months with her describes a completely different person — someone doing her makeup, working the prison social hierarchy, nothing like the woman on camera. The families ...
48m Jun 07
48m
If Alex Murdaugh Didn't Kill Maggie And Paul — Who Did?
Jennifer Coffindaffer built and broke cases like this for a career at the FBI. She's doing something she rarely does with the Murdaugh case: a clean-slate thought experiment. Strip the name off the file. Forget the financial crimes. Forget the public persona. Look at the scene. Two people shot at the dog kennels on a remote hunting property. Two different firearms — a shotgun and a rifle. Neit...
35m Jun 06
35m
Was Kouri Richins Faking Grief Or Actually Living Inside It?
She wrote a children's book about grief. Went on television to promote it. Talked about helping her boys cope with their dad's "unexpected" death. Fourteen months of a constructed identity that fooled every friend who testified at trial. The whole time, she was the reason those children were grieving. The behavioral question isn't whether Kouri Richins was faking. It's whether she was faking a...
37m Jun 06
37m
What Does A Former FBI Agent Think About Anna Kepner's Accused Killer Walking Free?
Jennifer Coffindaffer spent a career handing cases to prosecutors. She knows what the evidence file looks like when a case is strong. Security footage tracking the defendant's movements. A smashed phone in a trash bin. DNA pointing in one direction. A body concealed beneath a bed on a cruise ship. When the file looks like that and the suspect walks out of the courthouse — she has a reaction. A...
34m Jun 06
34m
How Did Donna Adelson Allegedly Convince Herself She Was Protecting Her Family?
The behavioral question at the center of the Dan Markel case isn't how a murder-for-hire gets organized. It's how a grandmother, a former schoolteacher, a woman who spent decades projecting devotion to her family allegedly convinced herself that orchestrating the killing of her grandchildren's father was the right thing to do. The psychological framework is narcissistic at its core. Donna Adel...
41m Jun 06
41m
Did Mackenzie Shirilla's Family Just Build the Case Against Her?
Natalie Shirilla called the Russo family "evil people" on a monitored prison call. Steve Shirilla lost his teaching job after appearing on a Netflix documentary defending his convicted daughter. Mackenzie has thirty-six conduct violations, refuses rehabilitation, and told her mother she wants to be a life coach. Defense attorney Eric Faddis asks the question the audience is already asking: is t...
56m Jun 05
56m
How Strong Is the Case in the Anna Kepner Cruise Ship Trial?
A federal judge said he would not call the prosecution's case in the Anna Kepner cruise ship death strong — used the words "a much closer call" with "various defenses." The DNA match odds are 120 sextillion to one. An FBI agent testified he cannot connect that DNA to cause of death. Defense attorney Eric Faddis evaluates what the prosecution actually has heading into a September trial. Anna Ke...
18m Jun 05
18m
Could Mackenzie Shirilla's Mother Face Her Own Legal Exposure?
Natalie Shirilla used a private coded language on recorded prison calls to communicate with her convicted daughter. Prosecutors decoded those calls and presented them as evidence at trial. In one exchange, Mackenzie allegedly asked if they could tell police she had a seizure. On a separate call, Natalie called the Russo family — the family of the man Mackenzie was convicted of killing — "evil p...
18m Jun 05
18m
Can Mackenzie Shirilla's Prison Behavior Keep Her Locked Up Longer?
Mackenzie Shirilla's conduct file at the Ohio Reformatory for Women has thirty-six entries in less than three years — guilty on thirty-two. On recorded prison calls, she refuses rehabilitation, calls herself the third victim, and talks about becoming a life coach. Defense attorney and former prosecutor Eric Faddis breaks down what the parole board does with a record like this. Shirilla was con...
21m Jun 05
21m
The Crash: The Full Psychological Breakdown of the Mackenzie Shirilla Case
The courtroom saw a cold-blooded killer. Netflix saw a documentary. The public saw a debate. Psychotherapist Shavaun Scott sees a clinical case that was never properly examined — and a system that convicted a teenager of premeditated murder without ever asking the questions a clinician would have started with. Scott has spent more than thirty years in forensic mental health, domestic violence ...
59m Jun 04
59m
The Crash: Is Mackenzie Shirilla's Memory Loss Real — And What About Everyone Else's Certainty?
A fellow inmate says the Mackenzie Shirilla in the Netflix documentary — soft-spoken, remorseful, insisting she can't remember — isn't the person she spent six months with in prison. She described someone doing her makeup, playing social games, navigating the hierarchy. The prosecution says she's been performing from day one. The families say she knows exactly what happened and chooses not to s...
23m Jun 04
23m
The Crash: Why the Mackenzie Shirilla Relationship Matters More Than the Video
Everyone's focused on the surveillance footage — the car turning, accelerating, hitting the wall. But psychotherapist Shavaun Scott says the real evidence in the Mackenzie Shirilla case isn't on that video. It's in the relationship. And the prosecution used the relationship as a weapon without ever understanding what it was actually showing them. Shirilla was convicted of four counts of murder...
15m Jun 04
15m
The Crash: What the Prosecution Got Wrong About Mackenzie Shirilla's Psychology
A judge called Mackenzie Shirilla's actions "controlled, methodical, deliberate, intentional, and purposeful." Five adjectives that describe a cold, calculating mind. But what if every one of those words is a misread — what if the behavior that looked like calculation was actually the opposite? Shavaun Scott is a psychotherapist who has spent more than thirty years working with people on both ...
21m Jun 04
21m
The Crash: A Defense Attorney's Full Breakdown of the Mackenzie Shirilla Disaster
The Mackenzie Shirilla case is a catalog of failures. A defense that raised a medical condition and never proved it. A prosecution that charged murder without a confession and won in front of a single judge. A post-conviction system that rejected new evidence over a calendar technicality. And a defendant who agreed to a Netflix documentary that gave her critics more ammunition than her supporte...
59m Jun 03
59m
The Crash: What Should Mackenzie Shirilla Be Doing Right Now to Get Out?
Mackenzie Shirilla's legal options are essentially gone. The conviction stands. The appeals are exhausted. The post-conviction petition was denied. She's serving fifteen years to life and won't see a parole board until 2037. So the question shifts from "can she win legally" to "what does she do now" — and criminal defense attorney Bob Motta says the answer to that question matters more than mos...
16m Jun 03
16m
The Crash: Was Murder the Right Charge for Mackenzie Shirilla?
Murder requires intent. Not recklessness. Not negligence. Not bad judgment. Intent — formed beforehand and carried out deliberately. That's the bar the prosecution set for itself when it charged Mackenzie Shirilla with four counts of murder for the crash in Strongsville, Ohio that killed Dominic Russo and Davion Flanagan. And criminal defense attorney Bob Motta says the evidence doesn't clear i...
15m Jun 03
15m
The Crash: What Should Mackenzie Shirilla's Defense Have Actually Looked Like?
If Mackenzie Shirilla had walked into Bob Motta's office instead of her actual attorney's, the case might look very different right now. That's not speculation — it's a function of what was missed, what was never pursued, and what was fumbled at every critical turn. The POTS defense should have been the centerpiece of the trial. A medical condition that can cause sudden loss of consciousness i...
29m Jun 03
29m
Why Did The Sheriff Stop Talking To Nancy Guthrie's Family?
In mid-May, Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos confirmed in a People magazine interview that his department is no longer communicating directly with Nancy Guthrie's family. The FBI is now the sole liaison between the investigation and the Guthries. The same sheriff who stood at his podium in February and told the family he wasn't giving up is, three months later, not in direct contact with them at...
20m Jun 03
20m
The Crash: How Many Things Went Wrong in the Mackenzie Shirilla Case?
A defense attorney who never called the key medical expert. A post-conviction petition filed one day late. A bench trial where one judge made every decision. A neurologist's opinion that was never weighed on its merits. The Mackenzie Shirilla case isn't just about whether she intended to drive her car into that building — it's about how many things in the process broke along the way. Shirilla ...
1hr 1m Jun 02
1hr 1m
The Crash: Is Mackenzie Shirilla Lying About Her Memory or Is Everyone Else?
A fellow inmate who spent six months with Mackenzie Shirilla says the woman in Netflix's The Crash — the one speaking softly from prison, expressing remorse, insisting she has no memory — isn't the person she lived with behind bars. She described someone doing her makeup, navigating the prison social hierarchy, performing a version of herself. So which Mackenzie is real? The documentary Mackenz...
19m Jun 02
19m
The Crash: How Strong Is the Case Against Mackenzie Shirilla Really?
One judge. No jury. No deliberation room. No twelve people wrestling with reasonable doubt. The Mackenzie Shirilla murder conviction was decided by a single person in a bench trial — and in a case with evidence this ambiguous, that raises a question the system doesn't want to answer. Judge Nancy Margaret Russo heard the surveillance footage evidence, the black box data, the text messages, and ...
21m Jun 02
21m
The Crash: Was Mackenzie Shirilla Convicted for Her Personality?
At her arrest, Mackenzie Shirilla asked the officers to be careful with her bracelets — gifts from Dominic Russo, the boyfriend who'd been killed in her car three months earlier. The prosecution called it evidence of someone cold enough to plan a murder. But is that really what that moment tells you — or is it telling you something else entirely about a seventeen-year-old in shock? That gap — ...
22m Jun 02
22m