Published by Ray William Johnson
The Official Podcast of Ray William Johnson, storyteller and comedian. Tune in for the best stories of True Crime and Pop Culture.
Listen on Apple Podcasts8 min
Brad Lee Davis is an Oklahoma man who gained national attention when he was convicted of killing his 58-year-old stepfather, Denver Lee St. Clair, during a drunken physical altercation in December 2013. Davis, a former U.S. Marine, claimed the fight began after St. Clair insulted Davis's mother. After knocking St. Clair unconscious, Davis pulled his stepfather's underwear waistband up over his back, head, and tightly around his neck in a severe variation of the prank known as an atomic wedgie.
8 min
Haleigh Morgan Knight is a Henderson, Nevada influencer and mother who defrauded close friends and family out of nearly 20 grand. Between June 2023 and April 2024, Knight posed as a luxury trip adviser for the Four Seasons hotel chain, collecting expensive trip "deposits" for fake vacations. When her victims began asking questions about the repeatedly canceled trips, Knight fabricated a terminal pancreatic cancer diagnosis to deflect suspicion and evoke sympathy.
8 min
Walter Moody was an American man who carried out a deadly mail-bomb campaign in December 1989, killing federal appeals court Judge Robert S. Vance and civil rights attorney Robert E. Robinson. Driven by a decades-long grudge against the legal system after a 1972 bomb conviction he desperately sought to overturn, Moody mailed explosive packages to targets.
8 min
Natalie Cochran , a former West Virginia pharmacist, is serving life in prison without the possibility of parole after being convicted of first-degree murder . Between 2017 and 2019, Cochran operated a $2.5 million Ponzi scheme through her family's defense contracting company
8 min
Anthony Curcio pulled off one of the most elaborately planned armored car heists in American history in 2008 by using Craigslist to orchestrate his getaway. Months before the robbery, the former college football star placed a fake advertisement on the website offering high-paying landscaping work, instructing applicants to wear a specific uniform consisting of a blue shirt, yellow vest, safety goggles, and a respirator mask. On the day of the heist in Monroe, Washington, Curcio dressed in the exact same outfit, pepper-sprayed a Brink's armored car guard, and fled with over $400,000.
8 min
Christopher "Cool C" Roney was a rising Philadelphia rapper in the late 1980s known for his hit song "Glamorous Life". His music career faded, and on January 2, 1996, he joined fellow rapper Steady B in a botched bank robbery. During the heist, Cool C shot and killed Philadelphia Police Officer Lauretha Vaird
8 min
Nathan Gale was a 25-year-old former U.S. Marine who suffered from severe mental illness and fatally shot legendary guitarist "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott along with three other people.
8 min
Ashley McArthur, a former Florida crime scene technician, was convicted of first-degree premeditated murder in 2019 for the 2017 slaying of her close friend, Taylor Wright.
8 min
Stephen Jackley is a British former geography student who became known as a "modern-day Robin Hood" after executing a series of armed bank robberies in the UK between 2007 and 2008.
8 min
Wisconsin kayaker who faked his death and fled overseas says plan was a 'crazy, emotional dream' Ryan Borgwardt left his family behind in an attempt to meet a Ukrainian woman he had secretly been courting online in the country of Georgia.
8 min
Jonathan Toebbe was a U.S. Navy nuclear engineer who conspired with his wife, Diana, to sell highly restricted military secrets regarding Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines to a foreign government.
8 min
Isabelle Valdez is a student from Altamonte Springs, Florida, who was arrested in January 2026 for plotting to murder a classmate at Lake Brantley along with her accomplis Lois Lippert.
8 min
In 2004, Britney Spears impulsively married her childhood friend, Jason Alexander, in Las Vegas while heavily intoxicated. Though they were not in love, the pair tied the knot at 3:30 a.m. at A Little White Chapel. The spontaneous union was annulled just 55 hours later. Years later, Alexander re-entered the spotlight by attempting to crash her 2022 wedding to Sam Asghari.
8 min
Dana Ewell masterminded the 1992 ambush murders of his parents, Dale and Glee, and his sister, Tiffany, inside their Fresno, California home to inherit an estimated $8 million family fortune. Driven by greed, the 21-year-old college student hired his roommate, Joel Radovcich, to carry out the executions on Easter Sunday.
8 min
Dolly Oesterreich orchestrated one of the most bizarre secrets in true-crime history by hiding her secret lover Otto Sanhuber in her attic for over a decade and helping cover up her husband Fred's murder.
8 min
1976, three kidnappers hijacked a school bus in Chowchilla, California. They buried the hostages in a ventilated moving van inside a Livermore rock quarry for a 5 million dollar ransom. After 16 hours, the group successfully dug their way out, leading to the captors' swift capture and conviction.
8 min
David Carl Kinney fatally shot his best friend and secret romantic partner, Brad McGarry, twice inside McGarry’s West Bellaire, Ohio home. To conceal their long-term homosexual affair.
8 min
1996, during a midnight dinner break on the Halifax, Nova Scotia set, an unknown culprit spiked the cast and crew's clam chowder with some substance. Director James Cameron was among the roughly 80 people hospitalized.
8 min
19-year-old Texas Tech University student Hollis Daniels III was taken into custody by campus police following a routine student welfare check. While being processed and left temporarily un-handcuffed at the campus police headquarters, Daniels drew a stolen handgun he had hidden in his pants and fatally shot Texas Tech Police Officer Floyd East Jr.
8 min
In 2007, prominent Utah doctor and former LDS bishop Dr. Martin MacNeill pressured his wife of nearly 30 years, Michele MacNeill, into getting a facelift. Just days after the procedure, he intentionally overmedicated her with a lethal cocktail of prescription drugs and left her to drown in their bathtub so that he could freely pursue a relationship with his mistress, Gypsy Willis.