Today, catch the first episode of The Poet, a new six-part true crime series from The Binge. 

Hosted by journalist Rachel Browne, The Poet is an investigation that drops you into Wichita, Kansas in 1977, where a woman named Ruth Finley is receiving threatening, obsessive poems from an unknown stalker – at the exact same time police are trying to track down the notorious serial killer known as BTK. 

Is Ruth’s stalker the same person? You’ll have to listen to find out. 

To keep listening, here’s Episode 2: Where’s Ruth?

For The Binge’s free true crime newsletter on Patreon, head to GetTheBinge.com. 

Watching slaves being ritually hacked to pieces may not seem like many people’s idea of a great day out. But 2,000 years ago, Romans turned up in their thousands to watch exactly that. So, with Gladiator back on our screens, we set out to find the truth behind the spectacle – and it’s even bloodier than the movies could ever allow.

So what exactly happened in the gladiatorial games? Were there really lions, elephants, bears – and even full-scale naval battles in water-filled arenas? And did Maximus Decimus Meridius really have his vengeance? Find out in this week’s ShortHand.

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Joseph James DeAngelo is a burglar, a killer, and a rapist. A vile man with a proclivity for terrorising and sexually violating women. But that wasn’t everyone’s perception of the elderly man who was arrested in the yard of his suburban Sacramento home. To his daughters he was a loving father, to his employers he’d been a reliable worker, and to the wider community he was just another sleepy old man living out his retirement. 

So who is Joseph James DeAngelo and how did he co-exist as a “regular Jo” and the Golden Stake Killer?

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What could drive a person to eat another human being? Well, as it turns out, humankind has actually been surprisingly open to a little cannibalistic carpaccio.

From funeral traditions where families gather to gobble up their loved one as a mark of respect; to a European craze for drinking liquefied, mummified human brains (plus a surprising number of societies who just really liked the taste) – here is ShortHand’s history of inter-personal dining.

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For almost as long as we’ve made films, we’ve made horror films – but what happens when the terror isn’t just on screen? Movie-making lore is riddled with stories of bizarre accidents on set, creepy coincidences and even murders, all of which can give rise to cult followings and, in some cases, rumours of a curse over the whole production. 

From Indian ghosts to demonic hauntings, we run through a ShortHanded historical horror archive and investigate whether these sinister events were the result of supernatural curses, coincidence or just bloody good PR.

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To find the most prolific and violent serial rapist and killer the state of California had ever seen, took over fifty years, and some ethically questionable methods. Public DNA databases were trawled without their users consent, samples were entered under false pretences, and hundreds if not thousands of people had their rights violated. 

But, they did eventually catch their man, and walk him up the garden path, leaving a roast to overcook in the oven. 

Join us in part 3 of our now 4 part series on the Golden State Killer as we discuss how Joseph James DeAngelo was finally caught.

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For decades, the Soviet Union’s top-secret testing site Kapustin Yar didn’t appear on any maps. It was so top-secret, the government relocated an entire town just to make sure none of its residents ever discovered it.

But in the aftermath of the Cold War, stories began to emerge about what the Soviets had really been up to in that remote, arid stretch of land in southern Russia…

From rumours of crashed UFOs to underground labs conducting bonkers alien autopsies, this is the highly-classified ShortHand. 

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Bryan Kohberger is now claiming his innocence in the Idaho Student Murders. 
And he wants a trial to prove it. 

A year after admitting to the horrific murders of University of Idaho students Kaylee Gonçalves, Maddie Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin back in November 2019, Bryan Kohberger has done yet another U-turn by seeking to withdraw his guilty plea. 

In a petition claiming his lawyers failed to disclose “exculpatory evidence” and pushed him to make a false confession, Kohberger stated that “actual innocence is my truth”...

But does Kohberger have a valid argument? Or is he just playing another sick game?

Hannah and Suruthi break down the latest bizarre twist in the case in this mini-episode. 

And for our full coverage of the Idaho Murders case, make sure to listen to Episode 280 in our RedHanded catalogue. 

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When 90 men, 17 women, and 11 children disappeared without a trace – leaving behind nothing but a single cryptic word carved into a tree – it began a mystery that’s lasted centuries.

From bloody battles with Native American tribes to Elizabeth I’s private pirates – we get to the bottom of the disappearing colonists of Roanoke Island.

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Michelle Eileen McNamara dedicated her life to closing the net on the man she called “The Golden State Killer’. A man whose prolific spree of violent home invasions, rapes, and murders was so large and covered such a vast geographical area several law enforcement agencies failed to realise it was all one man.

Join us in part 2 of our 3 part series on The Golden State Killer, as we discuss how Michelle McNamara gave her life to catching a man she wouldn’t live to see behind bars.

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What happens when a group of fame-obsessed teens with a passion for fashion go for a shopping spree in their favourite stars’ wardrobes?

You get the Bling Ring: the unlikely architects behind a string of burglaries in the Hollywood Hills in the mid-2000s, targeting celebs from Paris Hilton to Orlando Bloom…

Until those Ugg-booted cat burglars finally ran out of lives. 

Behind the TMZ headlines lay a tangled web of teenage angst and codependent friendships – and we’re unravelling it all in this week's designer-label ShortHand. 

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