There is no shortage of scam artists, catfishers, and grifters in true crime.

Usually, they’re looking for money, sex, or fame.

But Kaitlyn Braun was a different kind of con artist all together.

Over the course of two years, Braun tricked more than 50 birthworkers into thinking she was pregnant. She’d take them on wild, unpredictable rides through traumatic pregnancies (and births) that turned out to be completely fabricated.

In The Con: Kaitlyn’s Baby, journalist Sarah Treleaven (Madness of Two, Unrestorable) tries to figure out what could possibly lead someone to do something like this. 

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Amy, a seasoned doula, is bedridden due to illness when she receives a call from fellow doula Katie to assist a client, Kaitlyn, over the phone. Kaitlyn is pregnant as a result of sexual assault and has just learned her baby will be stillborn. Over the next 10 days, Amy and Katie are swept into Kaitlyn's escalating crises — bleeding disorders, a hysterectomy, cancer, and seemingly predatory doctors — while supporting her emotionally, over the phone. Despite exhaustion and their own trauma, they unquestioningly focus on Kaitlyn's needs. However, when Amy’s girlfriend points out strange details in Kaitlyn's story, alarm bells ring. A dog barks during a call where Kaitlyn claims she’s in the hospital, and photos Kaitlyn sent of her stillborn are traced back to Wikipedia. Something isn't right. More episodes of The Con: Kaitlyn's Baby are available at: https://link.mgln.ai/yPZ95Z

Content warning: This episode contains references to medical emergencies, including baby loss. We also deal with sexual assault and there is some strong language. 

Subscribers of CBC True Crime Premium can binge all episodes of The Con: Kaitlyn's Baby right now.

How should we deal with women who kill their abusers? In the Globe and Mail’s first longform podcast In Her Defence, reporter Jana Pruden tells the story of Helen Naslund, who shot and killed her husband after enduring 30 years of abuse. It’s a story about a long fight for freedom and a justice system stuck in the past.

Feedback for us? You can email us directly at [email protected].

This episode's transcript can be found here.

Crime Story will be back in the new year with brand new episodes. To keep you company over the holidays, we're bringing you episode one of Bad Results.

They needed certainty. They got chaos. For over a decade, countless people from at least five different countries put their trust in a company offering prenatal paternity tests. It promised clients “99.9% accuracy” — but then routinely, for over a decade, identified the wrong biological fathers.

Investigative journalists Jorge Barrera and Rachel Houlihan track down the people whose lives were torn apart by these bad results, the shattered families and acrimonious court cases that followed, and the story behind the company that continues to stand by its testing and is still operating today.

More episodes of Bad Results are available here.

Crime Story will be back in the new year with brand new episodes. To keep you company over the holidays, we're bringing you episode one of Lords of Death, a podcast from Tenderfoot TV. 

While digging through an old memory box, host Thrasher Banks discovers forgotten VHS tapes, police reports, and faded letters regarding a 1995 murder in Dayton, Ohio. Drawn to the connection between this murder and the other seemingly innocuous contents of the box, Thrasher begins investigating. 

Could the 1995 murder be connected to other unsolved cases? Join Thrasher as he unpacks this box and searches for answers about the “Lords of Death.” 

Listen now or subscribe to Tenderfoot+ to binge the show ad-free! More episodes are available at: https://lnk.to/lordsofdeath

For more than three decades, Peter Walaschek has been on the run. In the late 1980’s, during the Iran-Iraq war, Walaschek admitted to selling illegal chemicals used to make mustard gas to the Iranian regime. But he wasn’t a professional weapons dealer or a career criminal. He was a pharmacist who happened to really hate his office job. 

Reporter Chloe Hadjimatheou joins Crime Story to explain what it was like sitting across from the international fugitive, and how, Walaschek says, he went from working in a pharmacy in Germany to visiting the battlefields of Iran. 

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In 2012, Edmonton police released audio of Amber Tuccaro, a young woman from Mikisew Cree First Nation who went missing a year and a half earlier. On the tape, you hear Amber speaking to someone as they drive. And even more eerie, you hear the voice of the man that most people believe murdered her. 

Reporter Jana Pruden joins Crime Story to discuss why hearing that haunting tape drove her to investigate Amber’s story. 

If you enjoyed this episode, check out Crime Story’s first conversation with Jana Pruden, titled 'In Her Defence: When the accused is also a victim.'

Feedback for us? You can email us directly at [email protected].

In the winter of 2002, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency received an anonymous tip: somebody had seen bones on a property in Noble, Georgia, and they thought they might be human. 

Eventually, a police investigation would unearth the remains of more than 300 people.

In a different kind of story, this property might belong to America’s most prolific serial killer. But none of these people were murdered – they had been sent there to be cremated. 

In his podcast Noble, Shaun Raviv tries to understand what happened more than two decades ago at Tri State Crematory and wrestles with the question: what do the living owe the dead?

For early, ad-free access to Crime Story, become a subscriber of CBC True Crime Premium on Apple Podcasts.

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Carl Miller had spent most of his career at a think tank in London, writing reports and giving lectures – the stuff most academics do.

Then, a few years ago, Carl got a call that would change his life forever. The caller, an old colleague, had stumbled upon something that scared him: an online marketplace where you could hire a hitman. 

Suddenly, Carl was looking at a list of hundreds of names. A list of people that somebody, somewhere wanted dead.

So Carl started calling them.

For early, ad-free access to Crime Story, become a subscriber of CBC True Crime Premium on Apple Podcasts.

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Ruby Franke rose to online fame by vlogging the lives of her six children and her husband, Kevin. Millions of people tuned in to the 8 Passengers YouTube channel every day for a snapshot of domestic bliss. But then, viewers began noticing something seemed off about the Utah family's idyllic life. Their suspicions lead to a shocking truth. 

Note: This episode contains details of child abuse. 

Feedback for us? You can email us directly at [email protected].

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Between 1973 and 1986, entire neighbourhoods in California often went to bed thinking about one man. His crimes earned him many names: the Cordova Cat Burglar, the East Area Rapist and of course, the Golden State Killer. For years, he broke into hundreds of homes, sexually assaulting more than 45 women and murdering 13 people, before disappearing into the night. 

This week on Crime Story, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Paige St. John reveals why it took more than 40 years for victims of the Golden State Killer to learn his true identity.

Note: This episode contains details of sexual violence.

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Feedback for us? You can email us directly at [email protected].