American Dread: Three Minutes Underwater, the Lisa Cutler Story
A mother. A bathtub. A death ruled suspicious.In 2012, Lisa Cutler was found drowned in her Mount Zion, Illinois home while her children slept upstairs.At first, it looked like an accident.But more than 20 bruises… a failing marriage… and over a million dollars in life insurance ...Show more
Eulogy For Big Jim Colosimo
John Torrio was ready when the new Prohibition law went into effect, but he seemed to be the only one. He was waiting impatiently for everyone else to catch up. He’d been predicting Prohibition to his friends and business associates for months and knew it would be how organized c ...Show more
Episode 15: "The King of America"
The strange and sometimes sinister world of America’s homegrown religions, faith movements, and cults is filled with bizarre characters. There are many that most listeners have undoubtedly heard of, but what about the cult leader who actually became a king?In 1847, the only man e ...Show more
American Dread: The Girl Who Never Reached the Door
She was only a few feet from safety.On a freezing December night in 1975, Carol Ann Rofstad never made it inside her sorority house. Instead, she was found beaten and dying beside the building the next morning.Her murder shocked the Illinois State University campus — and may have ...Show more
Episode 14: "The Holy Rollers' Sex Cult"
The date when a shaft of divine light came down from the heavens and transformed Franz Edmund Creffield from an obscure, backwater evangelist into Prophet Joshua the Second remains a mystery. We also don’t know the exact spot where the spiritual ordination occurred but – we do kn ...Show more