True Crime Campfire
True Crime Campfire
Roasting Murderers and Marshmallows
- 1 hour 3 minutesFalling Star: The Murder of Greg de Villers
Life, obviously, is easier with money. Without having to scrabble and hustle just to survive, you can be free to pursue whatever interests and fascinations you like. But wealth doesn’t make you immune to the realities of human life. Families still have drama, hearts still get broken, dreams still get crushed into dust. This week’s story is about someone who started life with every possible advantage, but despite all her privilege, still descended into darkness.
Sources:
Deadly American Beauty by John Glatt
https://www.smh.com.au/world/jury-awards-a147-million-in-american-beauty-murder-20060322-gdn7du.html
https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2013/sep/18/feature-arrest-warrant-issued/
Join us live at Wet Hot Bad Magic Summer Camp in Equinunk, PA, September 10-13th! Visit badmagicproductions.com for more info and to buy tickets.
Tickets are on sale now for CrimeWave 2.0! Visit crimewaveatsea.com/CAMPFIRE to get your discount code for $100 off your cabin and a private meet-and-greet with us! The cruise is Feb. 8-12, 2027, from Ft. Lauderdale to the Bahamas.
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3 April 2026, 4:00 am - 42 minutes 19 secondsCross-Country: The Murders of Josh Niles & Amber Washburn
If you’re unlucky, you might have at least one person in your life who just drives you crazy, someone with whom every interaction has an edge of mutual antipathy, that makes you feel like you’re always on the brink of a screaming argument. Sometimes two particular human beings just do not fit together. And because human beings are strange, sometimes a couple like that hook up and stay together for years before finally spinning apart. But that undercurrent of anger can remain, a little toxic flame that doesn’t need much fuel to erupt into an inferno that destroys lives.
Tickets are on sale now for CrimeWave 2.0! Visit crimewaveatsea.com/CAMPFIRE to get your discount code for $100 off your cabin and a private meet-and-greet with us! The cruise is Feb. 8-12, 2027, from Ft. Lauderdale to the Bahamas.
Join us for Wet Hot Bad Magic Summer Camp 2026 in Equinunk, PA! September 10-13. Visit badmagicproductions.com for more info, and to buy tickets.
Sources:
Fatal Vows S7E4, “Hell on Wheels”
Dateline S28E3, “The Plan”
Snapped: Killer Couples, S13E4, “Charlene Childers and Timothy Dean”
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27 March 2026, 4:00 am - 45 minutes 38 secondsAfter Dark: The Route 40 Killer
Every night in the city, there are people out looking for something. Usually it’s just fun and excitement, but there are also those who go out looking to fulfill darker desires, who view the night city as a hunting ground where they will get what they want, no matter what. And sometimes, what they want is a nightmare of pain and suffering that shocks the conscience.
Note: This episode is about a serial killer, and the descriptions of his crimes are more graphic than most. Listener discretion is advised.
Join us for Wet Hot Bad Magic Summer Camp 2026 in September! Visit badmagicproductions.com for tickets and more info.
Registration is now open for CrimeWave 2.0! Visit crimewaveatsea.com/CAMPFIRE to get your discount code for $100 off your cabin and a private meet-and-greet with us! The cruise is Feb. 8-12, 2027. Sources:
Delaware Online:
https://www.delawareonline.com/in-depth/news/2020/12/14/delaware-murder-serial-killer-shirley-tinker-ellis-catherine-dimauro-steven-brian-pennell/5804258002/ https://www.delawareonline.com/in-depth/news/2020/12/15/after-2-murders-detective-knew-we-have-serial-killer-steven-pennell-route-40-killer/5857068002/
Delaware Today:
https://delawaretoday.com/life-style/route-40-delaware-serial-killer/
NY Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/15/us/delaware-carries-out-first-execution-since-46.html
Court papers:
https://law.justia.com/cases/delaware/supreme-court/1992/604-a-2d-1368-5.html
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20 March 2026, 7:00 am - 52 minutes 4 secondsYour Sin Will Find You: The Murder of Sue McFarland
It’s hard to convict someone of murder without a body. Even if it’s plain to everyone with a lick of common sense that the victim is dead and this is the guy who killed her, a prosecutor is wary of going to trial without being able to say with absolute certainty, this person is dead, and we know because we have her body. This week’s story is about a killer whose crime was apparent almost immediately, but who dragged on the crumbling pretense of a normal life for long weeks afterwards, until the horrific results of his actions were uncovered.
Want to join us for grown-up summer camp? Katie and Whitney will be performing live along with the podcasts Scared to Death and Astonishing Legends at Wet Hot Bad Magic Summer Camp 2026, Sept. 10-13. For tickets and more info, go to https://badmagicproductions.com AND...Tickets are on sale now for CrimeWave 2.0! Visit crimewaveatsea.com/CAMPFIRE to get your discount code for $100 off your cabin and a private meet-and-greet with us! The cruise is Feb. 8-12, 2027, from Ft. Lauderdale to the Bahamas.
Sources:
Diane Fanning, Gone Forever
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13 March 2026, 4:00 am - 57 minutes 19 secondsRepeat Offender: The Murders of Elaine and Maryann Boczkowski
Thanks to books and movies, and very occasionally real life, the idea of the genius killer has become pervasive. But most murderers are not dazzlingly creative schemers. If they have a plan at all, it’s usually simple and dumb—but unfortunately, that doesn’t necessarily mean the plan will fail. This week’s story is about a man who got away with one murder, and then tried to repeat the trick almost exactly.
Registration is now open for CrimeWave 2.0! Visit crimewaveatsea.com/CAMPFIRE to get your discount code for $100 off your cabin and a private meet-and-greet with us! The cruise is Feb. 8-12, 2027.
If you want to see TCC live but would rather stay on dry land, come to Wet Hot Bad Magic Summer Camp 2026, 9/10-13th in Equinunk, Pennsylvania. Visit badmagicproductions.com for full info and to buy tickets.
Sources:
Please Don’t Kill Mommy, Weinstein & Schumann
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6 March 2026, 5:00 am - 35 minutes 42 secondsBuried Alive: The Murder of Brandy Stevens-RosineLove is supposed to make you better. Your partner should push lift you up and make you want to improve yourself, improve life for you both. Sometimes, though, there are couples that do nothing but make each other worse. They become jealous, resentful, and cruel. Their relationship is a disgusting mire that sucks in the couple and everyone in their orbit. Everyone knows a couple like that. But today, we’re going to talk about a couple who committed one of the most heinous crimes we ever heard of to satisfy their own jealousy.
Registration is now open for CrimeWave 2.0! Visit crimewaveatsea.com/CAMPFIRE to get your discount code for $100 off your cabin and a private meet-and-greet with us! The cruise is Feb. 8-12, 2027.
Join us for Wet Hot Bad Magic Summer Camp '26, September 10-13. Go to badmagicproductions.com for more details and to buy tickets.
Sources:
How I Caught My Killer, Frenemies, S2E3, “Text, Lies, and Murder”
A Stranger In My Home, “Mean Girls”
HuffPost: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/brandy-stevens-rosine-murder_n_4065921
https://www.brandyrosine.com/blog
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27 February 2026, 8:00 am - 48 minutes 13 secondsIdiot Box: Killer Kids Inspired by TVIn the cases we cover, there are types of relationship that frequently crop up between killer and victim, romantic partners or romantic rivals most of all. Sometimes, though, the relationship that is broken by murder is more shocking: a parent killing a child, or a child killing a parent. And sometimes that killer is still literally a child, someone you would never suspect to be capable of such brutal action. Case 1: The Murder of Jackie Bartlam. Case 2: The Murder of Gina Padilla.
Tickets are on sale now for CrimeWave 2.0! Visit crimewaveatsea.com/CAMPFIRE to book your cabin, plus get $100 off and a private meet-and-greet with us! The cruise is from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida to Nassau, Bahamas, Feb. 8-12, 2027.
Sources:
https://www.nottinghampost.com/news/local-news/coronation-street-obsessed-killer-who-9828273 https://www.nottinghampost.com/news/daniel-bartlam-14-year-old-255698 https://www.nottinghampost.com/news/uk-world-news/chilling-story-coronation-street-obsessed-9289922 https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/apr/02/teenager-daniel-bartlam-jailed-murder
A&E's "Killer Kids" S1E14, “A Scream & Banana Split”
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-jul-23-me-58845-story.html https://www.cbsnews.com/news/2-guilty-of-iscream-i-murder/ https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-jul-02-me-52343-story.html
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20 February 2026, 8:00 am - 44 minutes 41 secondsLions and Tigers and Bears: The Zanesville Exotic Animal MassacreLegendary Conservationist Steve Irwin said, “We don’t own the planet Earth, we belong to it. And we must share it with our wildlife.” It’s such a lovely sentiment. We have a responsibility to protect and care for creatures that can’t protect themselves. It’s something that almost every person on earth would agree with. But what happens when someone loves something so much they throttle the life out of it? What if one man’s selfish wants pushed him to sacrifice over 50 animals that he claimed to love? Heads-up: If you're really sensitive about harm to animals, you might want to skip this one.
Tickets are on sale now for the CrimeWave 2.0 TRUE CRIME CRUISE, Feb. 8-12, 2027! Visit crimewaveatsea.com/CAMPFIRE to get your discount code for $100 off your cabin and a private meet-and-greet with us!
Sources:
https://ohiodnr.gov/discover-and-learn/animals/mammals/coyote
http://esquire.com/news-politics/a12653/zanesville-0312/
https://www.gq.com/story/terry-thompson-ohio-zoo-massacre-chris-heath-gq-february-2012?fbclid=IwY2xjawP13ERleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEe-ekW_BZLa5McRg9DVSSyZ50zqxDkImS9jTLlx2kUqFNq_T7WJKZCyW69A6I_aem_jr-yYesRIf0kgn0-znd8Xg
https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/local/2021/10/18/zanesville-ohio-animal-tragedy-captivates-inspires-change-10-years-later/5823607001/
https://agri.ohio.gov/divisions/animal-health/resources/dangerous-wild-animals https://my.onecause.com/fundraiser/organizations/sf-001C0000016d5QlIAI/fundraisers/fundraiser:29043b3c-9361-435d-8d91-198913babca0/closed https://www.thewilds.org/about-wilds https://vetmedbiosci.colostate.edu/directory/member/?id=barb-wolfe-40668
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13 February 2026, 8:00 am - 4 minutes 29 secondsBIG Announcement!Come join us for CrimeWave 2.0, February 8-12, 2027 on Royal Caribbean's beautiful Oasis of the Seas. We're going to the Bahamas! See Katie and Whitney, plus Casefile, Last Podcast on the Left, True Crime Garage, Crime Time Teatime, Scared to Death, A Paranormal Chicks, No Sleep, Unexplained, Sinisterhood and Crime with Kourt. Live shows, meet and greets, pool parties, game shows, and new friends for life!
Tickets go on sale Friday, February 13th--to get $100 off your cabin and a private meet and greet with us, go to crimewaveatsea.com/CAMPFIRE
Come on vacation with us! You'll be glad you did.
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10 February 2026, 8:00 am - 57 minutes 34 secondsLost: The Story of Salvador AlvarengaIn a lot of ways, the world is smaller now than it ever has been. With a few clicks of the mouse, I can watch a live camera feed of Sydney harbor, or read a newspaper from any country I can think of. Just five hours in an airplane can get you from the US to Europe, and pretty much anyone on the planet can listen to a couple of nerds like us on a podcast. But, obviously, the world is not in fact shrinking. It is still just as vast and potentially perilous as it was in the days when no one knew what lay on the other side of the ocean, and all it takes to bring that home is to lose connection to our world of technology and information. Our story is about a man’s unimaginable journey through the ocean wilderness, driven by nothing but his wits and his will to survive.
*Registration is now open for CrimeWave 2.0! Visit crimewaveatsea.com/CAMPFIRE to get your discount code for $100 off your cabin and a private meet-and-greet with us! The cruise is Feb. 8-12, 2027.
Sources:
Jonathan Franklin, “438 Days”
Time Magazine: https://time.com/4154458/castaway-sued-cannibalism-allegations/
The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/04/castaway-story-backing-from-mexican
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6 February 2026, 8:00 am - 44 minutes 33 secondsWhoopsie-Doodle: A Grab Bag of Epic F**kupsWinston Churchill once said, “Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm.” That’s a nice sentiment—I mean, by and large it’s good to let failure be a learning experience, to not let it discourage you from following your dreams. But…hear me out here: What if you’re just a hot mess? What if every time you go from one failure to the next, you leave a pile of bodies in your wake? Can you be a little TOO good at failure? Should you sometimes maybe acknowledge “Hey, maybe this thing I’m trying to do isn’t one of my strengths”? I think some of the people in this week’s episode would have left the world a better place if they’d thrown in the towel.
Registration is now open for CrimeWave 2.0! Visit crimewaveatsea.com/CAMPFIRE to get your discount code for $100 off your cabin and a private meet-and-greet with us! The cruise is Feb. 8-12, 2027.
Sources:
Jon Ronson, The Psychopath Test
CBC news: https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform/oak-ridge-st-thomas-psychiatric-treatment/
IFL Science: https://www.iflscience.com/canadas-dark-history-of-giving-lsd-to-prisoners-69821
Washington University: https://library.washu.edu/news/bizarre-but-true-happenings-at-the-1904-olympics-in-st-louis/
Wikipedia, "Truth serum": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_serum
CBC's "The Fifth Estate," episode "Psychiatric Treatment or Torture? The Oak Ridge Experiment"
Hidden Persuaders: http://www7.bbk.ac.uk/hiddenpersuaders/blog/happened-oak-ridge-psychiatric-unit/
Lawrence Wright, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief
Smithsonian: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-the-1904-marathon-became-one-of-the-weirdest-olympic-events-of-all-time-14910747/
Follow us, campers!
Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfire
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30 January 2026, 8:00 am - More Episodes? Get the App