True Murder: The Most Shocking Killers

Dan Zupansky

Every week host Dan Zupansky will interview the true crime authors that have written about the most shocking killers of all time.

  • 48 minutes 5 seconds
    THE BLOOD COUNTESS—Shelley Puhak
    From the author of the national bestseller The Dark Queens, an incandescent work of true crime and feminist history about Elizabeth Bathory, the woman alleged to be the world's most prolific female serial killer.
    There have long been whispers, coming from the castle; from the village square; from the dark woods. The great lady-a countess, from one of Europe's oldest families-is a vicious killer. Some even say she bathes in the blood of her victims. When the king's men force their way into her manor house, she has blood on her hands, caught in the act of murdering yet another of her maids. She is walled up in a tower and never seen again, except in the uppermost barred window, where she broods over the countryside, cursing all those who dared speak up against her.
    Told and retold in many languages, the legend of the Blood Countess has consumed cultural imaginations around the world. But despite claims that Elizabeth Bathory tortured and killed as many as 650 girls, some have wondered if the Countess was herself a victim-of one of the most successful disinformation campaigns known to history. So, was Elizabeth Bathory a monster, a victim, or a bit of both? With the breathlessness of a whodunit, drawing upon new archival evidence and questioning old assumptions, Shelley Puhak traces the Countess's downfall, bringing to life an assertive woman leader in a world sliding into anti-scientific, reactionary darkness-a world where nothing is ever as it seems. In this exhilarating narrative, Puhak renders a vivid portrait of history's most dangerous woman and her tumultuous time, revealing just how far we will go to destroy a woman in power. THE BLOOD COUNTESS: Murder, Betrayal, and the Making of a Monster—Shelley Puhak

    9 March 2026, 5:06 am
  • 1 hour 12 minutes
    THE TYLENOL MURDERS—Joseph Cibelli
    Chicago, 1982. Seven people swallowed Tylenol capsules meant to heal, then they died within minutes. America changed overnight, then the killer vanished into darkness, and that darkness lived in my home.
    I was eleven, and my father was The Tylenol Killer that terrorized a nation.
    He created chaos, and confessed with his last breath. I uncovered the truth, and the rot behind his badge. He built lies, and I built a case. I tore the mask from the madness and discovered that each clue led deeper into a labyrinth of deceit.
    I stripped his name from mine, and I stripped his power too. He found me, and threatened my life, but I did not run. Instead, I shined a light into his darkness.
    From the son who would not stay silent, THE TYLENOL MURDERS: A Father’s Confession to His Son reveals a confession buried under four decades of fear, complicity, and blue-walled denial. The truth is not a eulogy. It is an indictment. And it bears my name. THE TYLENOL MURDERS: A Father's Confession to His Son—Joseph Cibelli
    2 March 2026, 11:44 am
  • 58 minutes 24 seconds
    1926—MURDER IN AMERICA—David Kulczyk
    Homicide historian David Kulczyk releases 1926—Murder in America—New and Expanded Edition for the 100th anniversary of the deadliest year in American history.
    While researching his seven true crime books, Kulczyk noticed that there was an extraordinary number of oddball murders during the year 1926. The 1920's was a time of massive cultural and technological changes. The death and destruction of World War l dope -slapped the collective mindset of the youth of America and 1926 was the year that Americans all over the country said screw it. And screw it they did.......Mixing too much bootleg booze, marijuana, cocaine, and heroin, with fast cars, sex, and jazz music can only lead to trouble. The number of allegedly normal people committing ghastly murders in 1926 is astounding. It is like a switch got turned on and some people went mad unlike any other time in American history. 
    Originally released in 2019, Kulczyk discovered even more murders that occurred in 1926, hence this anniversary edition of the most insane year in American history. 1926—MURDER IN AMERICA—David Kulczyk
    23 February 2026, 9:43 am
  • 1 hour 10 minutes
    KILLER IN THE HOUSE—Kathryn Canavan
    A meticulously researched page-turner about one of the Philadelphia suburbs’ most shocking 20th-century crimes. A gunman broke into Jack and Peggy Abt’s house moments after the last family member left for the day. He took a seat next to the upright piano in the living room and waited silently for 11 hours. He didn’t eat. He didn’t sleep. He didn’t watch television.
    People expect things to go bump in the night, but, in 1976, most adults never fretted a stranger would invade the sanctity of their home in the middle of the day. Six people walked through the kitchen door one by one that afternoon, all expecting nothing more than a Friday night fish fry. The killer leaped out from behind the living room wall over and over and over and over and over and over again. He fired at them at a distance of less than 18 inches, the width of a dining room chair. After each murder, he dragged the body to the basement. Then, to maintain the element of surprise, he sped back upstairs to tidy up for his next unsuspecting victim.
    This first-person story from a news reporter who was on the scene 90 minutes after the killer slipped away is built from autopsy reports, prison records, IQ tests, trial transcripts, the killer’s own eidetic confession, interviews with witnesses in 1976 and in the 2020s, and the author’s experiences covering the case from the first night to the stunning courtroom moment when the announcement of six death penalties was met with loud cheers.
    With that research, it was possible to reconstruct the six murders, minute by minute. Tension builds as the six innocent victims turn the kitchen doorknob at 3:30, 4:15, 4:40, 5:15, 6:10 and at 6:30. Readers know their fates, but they didn’t. KILLER IN THE HOUSE: Ten Days of Terror in a Pennsylvania Suburb—Kathryn Canavan
    16 February 2026, 12:44 pm
  • 39 minutes 14 seconds
    FEAR AND FURY—Heather Ann Thompson
    On December 22, 1984, in a graffiti-covered New York City subway car, passengers looked on in horror as a white loner named Bernhard Goetz shot four Black teens, Darrell Cabey, Barry Allen, Troy Canty, and James Ramseur, at point-blank range. He then disappeared into a dark tunnel. After an intense manhunt, and his eventual surrender in New Hampshire, the man the tabloid media had dubbed the “Death Wish Vigilante” would become a celebrity and a hero to countless ordinary Americans who had been frustrated with the economic fallout of the Reagan 80s. Overnight, Goetz’s young victims would become villains.
    Out of this dramatic moment would emerge an angry nation, in which Rupert Murdoch's New York Post and later Fox News Network stoked the fear and the fury of a stunning number of Americans.
    Drawing from never-before-seen archival materials, legal files, and more, Heather Ann Thompson narrates the Bernie Goetz Subway shootings and their decades-long reverberations, while deftly recovering the lives of the boys whom too many decided didn't matter. Fear and Fury is the remarkable account and a searing indictment of a crucial turning point in American history. FEAR AND FURY: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage—Heather Ann Thompson
    9 February 2026, 11:18 am
  • 1 hour 12 minutes
    IN PUBLIC RECORD—Michael Kelly
    September 1990. In Shaker Heights, Ohio, teenage honors student Lisa Lee Pruett vanishes into the night. A boy calls 911 when she does not arrive for a secret late-night meet-up. Police soon find her nearby, stabbed to death and left exposed.
    Lisa had just passed an important test and earned her driver’s license. She was a Girl Scout, athlete, musician, and lover of poetry. Then her life was cut short.
    Investigators quickly focused on a troubled young man who lived a few blocks away. His name leaked, the media swarmed, and the case became a spectacle. Two years later, he was indicted on controversial testimony, tried under national attention, and ultimately acquitted. His life never recovered.
    Decades later, the murder remains unsolved.
    Now a former police officer, Michael Kelly, reopens the trail, determined to separate rumor from evidence and find the truth, if it is still there to be found. IN PUBLIC RECORD: A Journey to the Truth of a Murder and Trial—Michael Kelly
    2 February 2026, 11:11 am
  • 1 hour 25 minutes
    THE THAMES TORSO MURDERS— Suzanne Huntington
    The latter part of the Victorian era bore witness to a series of unexplained female dismemberment cases that plagued London for a period of thirty years. All the cases remain unsolved and only two women were ever identified. Today, the circumstances surrounding these deaths have largely become a footnote in history, dwarfed in attention by their much larger cousin, Jack the Ripper.
    In this, Suzanne Huntington’s groundbreaking exploration of the subject, we see the first in-depth analysis into all the cases, where 150 years of assumption and misinformation is stripped back and the evidence re-examined, allowing the reader to comprehend not only the complexity of the cases themselves but also the background and context of the investigations. THE THAMES TORSO MURDERS: Fact or Fiction—Suzanne Huntington
    26 January 2026, 11:14 am
  • 55 minutes 44 seconds
    WHERE MURDER LIES—Burl Barer and Frank C. Girardot Jr.
    The murder of a retired Los Angeles schoolteacher in 2004 never made the evening news, yet within hours arrests were made, charges filed, and a speedy conviction sent to prison Jimmy Kitlas, an incredibly shy, special needs teenager with no criminal history whatsoever.
    20 years after the murder, a woman named Kelley Leigh asked Burl Barer and Frank C. Girardot to investigate. She believed that the case’s rapid resolution concealed a deeper, more troubling narrative—one marked by deception, manipulation, dishonesty, and a profound disregard for truth and justice.
    She was right. Of the last three people to see the victim alive, only one had both the motive and the opportunity to strangle him to death, and it wasn’t Jimmy Kitlas.
    What begins with a dead body on the bed leads to a bizarre scheme to steal a fortune in gold, a plot to smuggle MDMA, and an incredible joint effort by the American Mafia and the Russian Mob to defraud the United States Government out of billions of dollars. WHERE MURDER LIES: Death and Deception in West Hollywood—Burl Barer and Frank C. Giradot Jr.

    19 January 2026, 8:00 am
  • 42 minutes 33 seconds
    JOHN HINCKLEY JR.—WHO I REALLY AM
    As shots rang out on March 30, 1981 outside the Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C., President Ronald Reagan and three others lie seriously wounded. Just two months after Reagan was sworn in as the 40th president, John Hinckley Jr. shocked the world because of his movie star obsession.
    What followed was chaos. America learned of the deep psychosis that led to Hinckley’s obsession with actress Jodie Foster, and how, in his mind, he did it all for her. His trial gripped the nation. Many expected a guilty verdict, but his acquittal on grounds of insanity sparked outrage and forever changed how the law viewed mental illness.
    Now, for the first time, Hinckley tells his own story. He takes us through an early life of unfulfilled dreams, a music career and college degree that slipped away, and the descent into a mind overcome by delusion. He recounts the years spent in confinement at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, the slow climb toward recovery, and the people who helped him find his way back.
    A life defined by a single, horrific act becomes something more: a story of mental illness, redemption, and the long road to understanding the man behind one of America’s most infamous moments. JOHN HINCKLEY JR—WHO I REALLY AM
    12 January 2026, 10:57 am
  • 52 minutes 18 seconds
    MURDER IN THE GRAVEYARD—Frank Stanfield
    THE 911 CALL THAT OPENED HELL'S DOOR. ONE CONFESSION. A LIFETIME OF TERROR.
    The 911 call was harrowing.
    "I accidentally killed someone. Please!" the man said, his voice rising.
    "Who?"
    "My stepmom. My name is Ian Anselmo. Sue-Ellen Anselmo, she's in the car with me. My dad is going to kill me. I guess I strangled her. I don't remember doing it. I remember the argument."
    The call disintegrated quickly, with the 20-year-old howling and sobbing so pitifully that the dispatcher could not understand what he was saying, except that he was calling from a cemetery.
    The graveyard had its own lurid past as the site of a murderous teen vampire cult initiation 20 years earlier, now it was a bloody crime scene, and would later become the site of the pregnant woman's burial, more family violence, and the removal of her body.
    The call was just the beginning. Investigators would discover a family cult stained with allegations of sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse, brain-washing, and total patriarchal control.
    It would end in an insanity defense, with Ian's lawyer calling the family atmosphere "crazy," and pitting psychiatrists and psychologists against each other, revealing questionable practices, motives and techniques by those experts.
    Frank Stanfield, a 50-year newspaperman, covered the incredible case from the very beginning. MURDER IN THE GRAVEYARD: A Family Cult Tragedy—Frank Stanfield 







































    5 January 2026, 10:35 am
  • 1 hour 4 minutes
    KILLING TIME WITH JOHN WAYNE GACY-Karen Conti
    John Wayne Gacy raped, tortured, and murdered 33 boys and young men, burying most of them in the crawlspace under his Chicago home. Karen Conti was in high school at the time watching the bodies being removed on the television news.
    Fourteen years pass. Through a twist of fate, Conti, now a young and inexperienced attorney, is called upon to handle Gacy’s final death row appeals. The serial killer soon becomes her most famous, difficult, and haunting client.
    Thirty years after Gacy’s execution, Conti looks back through the eyes of a seasoned professional on the legal and media circus that ensued—and her countless hours of detailed conversation with the killer clown. We hear for the first time about Gacy’s gruesome “Body Book.” Were there more victims? Conspirators involved in the murders? What secrets were buried with him?
    If one were to ask Conti, “How could you represent such a monster?” she would respond, “What you really want to know is, ‘What was he like?’” This book answers that question. KILLING TIME WITH JOHN WAYNE GACY: Defending America's Most Evil Serial Killer on Death Row-Karen Conti
    29 December 2025, 11:53 am
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