True Crime Reporter™

Mexican cartels aided by China are poisoning the United States with deadly fentanyl overdoses. The death toll is the equivalent of a jumbo jet load of passengers crashing every day. What better way to undermine a country without firing a shot?  In this episode, I conduct a wide-ranging discussion about the consequences of the war in Iraq on U.S. security.  This is a timely conversation because March 20th of, 2023, marks the 20th anniversary of the war in Iraq. David Grantham, an intelligence officer for the Tarrant County Sheriff in Fort Worth, Texas, joins me for an interview.  Grantham served as an Air Force intelligence officer in Iraq and is the author of Consequences: An Intelligence Officer’s War.  We discuss the challenges faced by U.S. law enforcement and the communities they are charged with protecting. And we offer some practical personal safety advice stemming from the investigation and arrest of a suspect in the murder of four Idaho college students.  We want to become your favorite true crime podcast. Please leave a review wherever you listen. Join our true crime community and follow us here.  The True Crime Reporter® podcast features stories about serial killers, mass murderers, murder mysteries, homicides, cold cases, prisons, violent criminals, serial rapists, child abductors, child molesters, kidnappers, bank robbers, cyber criminals, and assorted violent criminals. True Crime Reporter® is a @2023 copyrighted and trade-marked production by True Crime Reporter®, LLC, in Dallas, Texas.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jerry and Dava Truett lived well beyond their means in the small central Texas town of Kosse. They owned a lake house and a speed boat. They drove a pair of expensive pickup trucks and numerous recreational vehicles. Townfolk thought they were receiving oil and gas money from their farmland or had an inheritance. The small community of 500 people confronted the cold-blooded truth about the couple's lifestyle when 52-year-old Michael Wells was murdered inside the First State Bank of Kosse. Williams was the bank's president and a beloved community leader. He arrived early one morning before the bank opened to meet with a customer. A 68-year-old business owner wanted to find out why thirty thousand dollars was missing from his account. Before they could meet, Williams was gunned down. The bank's vault was still locked. No money was missing from it. But in the aftermath of this tragedy, an FBI audit discovered that $700,000 was missing from elderly customers' accounts. What happened to all of that money? In this episode of the True Crime Reporter® Podcast investigative reporter Robert Riggs takes you inside the crime scene tape with a case from former federal prosecutor Bill Johnston. It will leave you wondering if you can trust anyone. We want to become your favorite true crime podcast. Please leave a review wherever you listen. Join our true crime community and follow us here.  The True Crime Reporter® podcast features stories about serial killers, mass murderers, murder mysteries, homicides, cold cases, prisons, violent criminals, serial rapists, child abductors, child molesters, kidnappers, bank robbers, cyber criminals, and assorted violent criminals. True Crime Reporter® is a @2023 copyrighted and trade-marked production by True Crime Reporter®, LLC, in Dallas, Texas.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Homicide detectives and even killers categorize the slain four University of Idaho students as “shiny” victims.  They were young, innocent, and attractive.   John Moriarty, the former Inspector General of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, says such cases motivate investigators to go the extra mile to solve the crime. “It’s the ultimate good versus evil,” said Moriarty. Investigators used sophisticated techniques detailed in an arrest warrant affidavit, including DNA, cell phone data, and ubiquitous video surveillance cameras, to charge  28-year-old Bryan Kohberger with murdering four University of Idaho students in their off-campus home on November 13, 2022.  If Kohberer, a Ph.D. criminology student at the University of Washington, is convicted, it will prove the old adage that some criminals return to the scene of the crime. In this episode of True Crime Reporter®, John Moriarty and investigative reporter Robert Riggs walk listeners through details contained in the arrest warrant. Moriarty, the former Inspector General of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, used the same means to hunt down fugitives wanted for murder and violent crimes.  Plus, he wrote countless arrest and search warrant affidavits, and Riggs relied on such affidavits as the factual basis for his crime reporting.  You may recall that Moriarty, a transplanted Irish cop from New York City, is featured in True Crime Reporter®’s series about serial killer Kenneth McDuff and the Telly Award-winning television documentary on Fox Nation streaming titled Freed To Kill. Kohberger made a brief court appearance on January 5th of 2023, with cuts on his face raising questions if the suspect’s alleged victim’s had fought back. Based on the review of the arrest warrant affidavit by Moriarty and Riggs, you will hear their thoughts about a possible motive for the murders. Link to Arrest Warrant Affidavit We want to become your favorite true crime podcast. Please leave a review wherever you listen. Join our true crime community and follow us here.  The True Crime Reporter® podcast features stories about serial killers, mass murderers, murder mysteries, homicides, cold cases, prisons, violent criminals, serial rapists, child abductors, child molesters, kidnappers, bank robbers, cyber criminals, and assorted violent criminals. True Crime Reporter® is a @2023 copyrighted and trade-marked production by True Crime Reporter®, LLC, in Dallas, Texas.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode marks Part 2 of questions posed to investigative reporter Robert Riggs by true crime fan and Texas A&M architecture major Patricia Rocha. Hopefully, listeners can take away advice about staying safe in the wake of an arrest of a suspect in the stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students on November 13, 2022, at their off-campus home in Moscow, Idaho. Two other roommates upstairs slept through the brutal slayings. The mysterious murder struck fear in college students across the country. This is a continuation of our new press conference at the True Crime Reporter® podcast. This episode marks the second part of our press conference in which the fans of the True Crime Reporter® podcast ask investigative reporter Robert Riggs questions. If you want to come on the podcast to ask Robert questions, email Fan@TrueCrimeReporter.com.  Tell him what you want to talk about and why. Here’s today’s True Crime Reporter® press conference. We want to become your favorite true crime podcast. Please leave a review wherever you listen. Join our true crime community and follow us here.  The True Crime Reporter® podcast features stories about serial killers, mass murderers, murder mysteries, homicides, cold cases, prisons, violent criminals, serial rapists, child abductors, child molesters, kidnappers, bank robbers, cyber criminals, and assorted violent criminals. True Crime Reporter® is a @2022 copyrighted and trade-marked production by True Crime Reporter®, LLC, in Dallas, Texas.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In a new press conference-style episode, True Crime Reporter's Robert Riggs takes questions from fans.  True crime fan Patricia Rocha turns the table on Riggs and asks what it is like to go inside the crime scene tape. Riggs recently met Rocha, an architecture student, and her friends at a ceremony for Outstanding Alumni from the College of Architecture at Texas A&M University. Afterward, Rocha and her friends peppered him with questions about true crime cases. Looking on was Bill Peel, an Outstanding Alum and Executive Director of Innovation at Texas A&M’s Mays School of Business. Peel suggested that a press conference-style interview by fans should be a regular feature here. Riggs has covered his share of press conferences at the White House, Capitol Hill, Pentagon, State Department, FBI, and breaking news at crime scenes. But unlike the spokespersons behind those podiums, you will not find Riggs dancing around any questions. If you want to come on the podcast for a press conference send an email to Fan@TrueCrimeReporter.com.   Tell Riggs what you want to talk about and why. Here’s today’s True Crime Reporter® press conference.  We want to become your favorite true crime podcast. Please leave a review wherever you listen. Join our true crime community and follow us here.  The True Crime Reporter® podcast features stories about serial killers, mass murderers, murder mysteries, homicides, cold cases, prisons, violent criminals, serial rapists, child abductors, child molesters, kidnappers, bank robbers, cyber criminals, and assorted violent criminals. True Crime Reporter® is a @2022 copyrighted and trade-marked production by True Crime Reporter®, LLC, in Dallas, Texas. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What goes on inside the minds of women who commit murder and other crimes? In my previous episode on December 13, 2022, titled A Mother’s Pursuit of Justice: The Contract Murder of Dan Markel, I reported that three women are the focus of an eight-year-long murder investigation. Markel, a distinguished law professor at Florida State University was gunned down by hitmen at his Tallahassee home in 2014. Katherine Maguahua (phonetic pronunciation: MAC-BANA-WAH) was the go-between for the contract killing.  In November of 2022, evidence from an FBI sting helped convict Maguahua.  She received a life sentence plus 60 years for hiring her ex-boyfriend, the father of her children, to execute Dan Markel. Allegedly so his ex-wife could move the couple’s two sons to South Florida.  The ex-wife, 35- year old Wendi Adelson, a fellow law professor, and her mother, Donna Adelson, have been named as unindicted conspirators in the alleged plot.  According to criminal trial testimony, Katherine Maguahua hired the hitmen at the request of Wendi Adelson’s brother Charlie Adelson. She was a girlfriend and dental assistant in his office. Charlie Adelson has been charged with the murder and is expected to stand trial in 2023. But back to Katherine Maguahua, was it for love or money? I reached out to Meghan Sacks, a criminologist with a Ph.D. who teaches classes on Women and Crime at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey to explore this true crime subject.  Sacks is also the co-host of the Women and Crime podcast. We discuss possible motivations in the Austin cyclist murder case that I covered on July 11, 2022, A Love Triangle Ends In An Alleged Murderous Fit Of Jealous Rage. You will also hear me discuss interviewing female inmates at Texas prison units. Archive News Report About Female Inmates Con Games Links to resources about the Dan Markel murder case: Full coverage by Paul Caron, Dean of the Pepperdine University  https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2022/10/extreme-punishment-the-chilling-true-story-of-dan-markels-murder.html Link to recent court testimony by Wendi Adelson: https://youtu.be/KIDXVsibEJw We want to become your favorite true crime podcast. Please leave a review wherever you listen. Join our true crime community and follow us here.  The True Crime Reporter® podcast features stories about serial killers, mass murderers, murder mysteries, homicides, cold cases, prisons, violent criminals, serial rapists, child abductors, child molesters, kidnappers, bank robbers, cyber criminals, and assorted violent criminals. True Crime Reporter® is a @2022 copyrighted and trade-marked production by True Crime Reporter®, LLC, in Dallas, Texas.    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Murder is a life sentence for the victim’s family and friends. Closure is a myth perpetuated by the news media.  During three decades of investigative reporting, Robert Riggs has witnessed how the victim’s families often suffer in silence and are left out of the confusing criminal justice process. In this episode of the True Crime Reporter® podcast, Ruth Markel shares a remarkable story of grief, resilience, and hope during an eight-year murder investigation that is not over. Her son, Dan Markel, a Florida law professor, was ambushed in a murder-for-hire conspiracy allegedly masterminded by his ex-wife, Wendi Adelson, and members of her family, according to state prosecutors.  Wendi Adelson has denied those accusations during a police interrogation and under oath in court testimony. The anatomy of the murder has been highly publicized on television crime shows and true crime podcasts. But Robert Riggs is here with the “rest of the story” from behind the crime scene tape. In this interview, Ruth Markel reveals how the victim’s family can become advocates for their lost loved ones. She inspired the Florida State Legislature to pass a grandparent visitation bill titled the “Markel Act.” Before the murders, Markel had published eight books about the advancement of women in the corporate workplace. She never expected to write about such a horrific and powerless situation as the murder of her son. Now Ruth Markel shares her story to help others survive their grief from murders and violent crime in her book titled The Unveiling: A Mothers’ Reflection on Murder, Grief, and Trial Life. Riggs and Markel discuss her fight for justice on behalf of her son and the struggle to be legally reunited with her grandchildren. Riggs starts the episode by recounting the key events of the contact murder, which occurred in 2014. Links to resources mentioned during the podcast: Full coverage by Paul Caron, Dean of the Pepperdine University  https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2022/10/extreme-punishment-the-chilling-true-story-of-dan-markels-murder.html Link to recent court testimony by Wendi Adelson: https://youtu.be/KIDXVsibEJw We want to become your favorite true crime podcast. Please leave a review wherever you listen. Join our true crime community and follow us here.  The True Crime Reporter® podcast features stories about serial killers, mass murderers, murder mysteries, homicides, cold cases, prisons, violent criminals, serial rapists, child abductors, child molesters, kidnappers, bank robbers, cyber criminals, and assorted violent criminals. True Crime Reporter® is a @2022 copyrighted and trade-marked production by True Crime Reporter®, LLC, in Dallas, Texas.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Chris Hansen, the journalist who created the televised series To Catch A Predator, warns that the problem of adults preying on children for sex is growing at an alarming rate.  The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has reported that during the peak of the pandemic, inappropriate contacts between adults and children, predatory contacts, as well as the transmission of inappropriate material between adults and children shot up nearly 900%. Indicative of the problem is the case of the former Virginia police officer accused of “catfishing” a teenage girl and murdering her grandparents and her mother. “Catfishing” is a form of online deception in which someone pretends to be a different person. Firefighters discovered the teen's family inside their burning home in Riverside, California.  28-year-old Austin Edwards, the ex-cop, was killed in a shootout with San Bernadino County Sheriff’s deputies.   The teenage girl was not harmed.  Hansen and investigative reporter Robert Riggs have encountered predators throughout their respective journalism careers.  The journalism community has honored Chris Hansen with 10 Emmys and 5 Edward R. Murrow reporting Awards. Chris has broken stories worldwide and is launching a new series, True Crime Nation, on the TruBlu Streaming Network. His To Catch A Predator series is now called TAKEDOWN.  In this episode of True Crime Reporter®, Riggs and Hansen go inside the crime scene tape to remind parents that predators live online and that they need to have a conversation with their children about how to stay safe online and on social media. We want to become your favorite true crime podcast. Please leave a review wherever you listen. Join our true crime community and follow us here.  The True Crime Reporter® podcast features stories about serial killers, mass murderers, murder mysteries, homicides, cold cases, prisons, violent criminals, serial rapists, child abductors, child molesters, kidnappers, bank robbers, cyber criminals, and assorted violent criminals. True Crime Reporter® is a @2022 copyrighted and trade-marked production by True Crime Reporter®, LLC, in Dallas, Texas.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Cooking oil left over from french fries and fried chicken has become liquid gold.  Organized criminal gangs are emptying storage tanks at restaurants and convenience stores across the United States. Hello. I’m investigative reporter Robert Riggs with an unusual story from inside the crime scene tape.  Did you know a gallon of used cooking oil is now worth more than a gallon of gasoline? The thefts fuel a multimillion-dollar black market. Here to talk about it is Gary Edgington, a 40-year law enforcement veteran. We are going to talk about a wide range of his cases from his career with the  Beverly Hills Police Department, LA County District Attorney…we will touch on the OJ Simpson murder trial. His work on narcotics cases and a member of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in Los Angeles. And later, his role in counter-insurgency operations in Iraq. Now he is the author of, Outside The Wire–A Novel of Murder Love, and War. It’s a fictional thriller inspired by his experience about Iranian operatives bent on destroying America. I have put links to the book and his website in the show notes.  Here’s Robert Riggs' interview with Gary Edgington.  We want to become your favorite true crime podcast. Please leave a review wherever you listen. Join our true crime community and follow us here.  The True Crime Reporter® podcast features stories about serial killers, mass murderers, murder mysteries, homicides, cold cases, prisons, violent criminals, serial rapists, child abductors, child molesters, kidnappers, bank robbers, cyber criminals, and assorted violent criminals. True Crime Reporter® is a @2022 copyrighted and trade-marked production by True Crime Reporter®, LLC, in Dallas, Texas.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sitting in the maternity ward of Dallas Methodist hospital, 30-year-old Nester Oswaldo Hernandez told his girlfriend that “we are both going to die today, and whoever comes in this room is going to die with us.” Hernandez, a violent offender out on early parole in Texas, executed a social worker and a nurse as they entered the room of his girlfriend and newborn baby, according to a Dallas police arrest warrant. Hernandez had just accused his girlfriend of cheating on him. He pistol-whipped her and fatally shot the two healthcare workers before a security officer wounded him.  Hernandez had a long rap sheet. He was on parole for an aggravated robbery. In 2015 Hernandez and a female accomplice attacked a woman who was returning home from work.  They taped the victim's hands together and taped over her eyes.  They broke her nose and fractured her eye during the robbery. Hernandez stole her phone, car, and $3,000 cash from a school fundraiser.  A year before the hospital murder, Hernandez was released early on parole with a special electronic monitoring condition. Hernandez was granted permission to be at the hospital with his girlfriend during and after the baby's delivery.  He was wearing an active ankle monitor. Shortly after the shooting, Dallas police chief Eddie Garcia called the killings "an abhorrent failure of our criminal justice system" and said, “we give violent criminals more chances than our victims.” Investigative reporter Robert Riggs, former U.S. prosecutor Bill Johnston, and the Chief of Police of Prosper, Texas, Doug Kowalski discuss early release policies that are setting off a wave of violence across the United States. We want to become your favorite true crime podcast. Please leave a review wherever you listen. Join our true crime community and follow us here.  The True Crime Reporter® podcast features stories about serial killers, mass murderers, murder mysteries, homicides, cold cases, prisons, violent criminals, serial rapists, child abductors, child molesters, kidnappers, bank robbers, cyber criminals, and assorted violent criminals. True Crime Reporter® is a @2022 copyrighted and trade-marked production by True Crime Reporter®, LLC, in Dallas, Texas.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the previous episode, we showed how homicide detectives solved 50-year-old cold cases. They analyzed old evidence by using new DNA extraction technology pioneered by Othram, a forensic genealogy lab in Texas. Othram provided new leads by finding relatives of suspects on genealogy databases. As revolutionary as that seems, it was just a few years ago that the FBI pioneered the use of mitochondrial DNA in a Texas murder case. Mitochondrial DNA is handed down from mother to child, so it can only tell you about your maternal ancestors. In a landmark case, former U.S. prosecutor Bill Johnston used the mitochondrial DNA from a single hair to send a killer to prison for the rest of his life. Here’s the backstory of how he did it.  We want to become your favorite true crime podcast. Please leave a review wherever you listen. Join our true crime community and follow us here.  The True Crime Reporter® podcast features stories about serial killers, mass murderers, murder mysteries, homicides, cold cases, prisons, violent criminals, serial rapists, child abductors, child molesters, kidnappers, bank robbers, cyber criminals, and assorted violent criminals. True Crime Reporter® is a @2022 copyrighted and trade-marked production by True Crime Reporter®, LLC, in Dallas, Texas.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

14-year Stephanie Anne Isaacson left her father’s apartment in North Las Vegas on the early morning of June 1, 1989. She walked through an empty sandlot, her usual shortcut, to the Eldorado High School. The ninth grader never made it to her 7:30 AM class at Eldorado High School. Later that evening, officers found her body under a piece of discarded carpet in a sandlot that Isaacson used to take a shortcut to school. Stephanie was the victim of a blitz attack. Her black shirt was pulled up, and her jeans pulled down. Her shoes and other belongings were missing.   The freshman with shoulder-length brown hair who had last been pictured with a wide grin in her prom picture had been sexually assaulted, bludgeoned, and strangled to death.  Investigators had little to go on besides a tiny drop of semen found on the dead girl's shirt. They made numerous attempts to test the evidence but could not identify the killer. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police investigators never gave up. In late 2021, they submitted a DNA sample of a mere 15 human cells to Othram, a forensic genealogy lab located in the Woodlands, a suburb of Houston. Othram’s DNA extraction technology found a relative of the alleged killer in a genealogy database that law enforcement has the consent to search. Forensic genealogy led Las Vegas detectives to Darren Marchand, who had never been listed among suspects. But Marchand had committed suicide at the age of 29, six years after the murder. Issacson’s 32-year  case represents the tip of the iceberg of a silent mass disaster–a quarter million cold cases languishing across the United States. But as we say in Texas, there is a new sheriff in town in the form of a DNA lab built to solve cold cases. Investigative Reporter Robert Riggs takes listeners of the True Crime Reporter® podcast inside Othram’s facility near Houston to find out how its trailblazing technology solves cases once thought to be unsolvable.  Link To Carla Walker Podcast: https://www.truecrimereporter.com/episodes/cold-case-justice-how-detective-jeff-bennett-used-genetic-genealogy-to-solve-a-murder/ We want to become your favorite true crime podcast. Please leave a review wherever you listen. Join our true crime community and follow us here.  The True Crime Reporter® podcast features stories about serial killers, mass murderers, murder mysteries, homicides, cold cases, prisons, violent criminals, serial rapists, child abductors, child molesters, kidnappers, bank robbers, cyber criminals, and assorted violent criminals. True Crime Reporter® is a @2022 copyrighted and trade-marked production by True Crime Reporter®, LLC, in Dallas, Texas.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I’m Robert Riggs and in this episode, I take you inside the crime scene tape of the once bank robbery capital of the world. In 1997, I was in the Los Angeles office of the FBI’s bank robbery squad, reporting on an epidemic of violent take-over bank robberies.  Veteran FBI Agent Bill Rehder pointed to a wall plastered with bank surveillance photos. clad head to toe in black body armor and armed with assault rifles.  Rehder focused on two heavily armed gunmen he had dubbed “The Hi Incident Bandits.”  He ominously told me that they were not just dressed for a bank robbery but for a confrontation. Indeed a month later, the pair shot it out with police after robbing a bank in North Hollywood. The running gun battle lasted 44 minutes. The pair were armed with thousands of rounds of ammunition and fully automatic assault rifles. It was a case of life imitating art. Two years earlier, the movie Heat featured a similar paramilitary-style robbery and shootout in LA. Written and directed by Michael Mann, Heat is a classic American crime film. It pits Al Pacino as an LAPD detective against Robert De Niro, who plays a career thief and the gang's leader. Now, Mann has teamed up with award-winning author Meg Gardiner to write a suspenseful novel titled Heat 2. It tells the back story of the character in the years before and after the iconic movie. Meg Gardiner is my guest on this episode of True Crime Reporter®. Links to Robert's Bank Robbery TV News Reports: https://youtu.be/NC6QZKP_F5Q https://youtu.be/M9BcS1DFFXc We want to become your favorite true crime podcast. Please leave a review wherever you listen. Join our true crime community and follow us here.  The True Crime Reporter® podcast features stories about serial killers, mass murderers, murder mysteries, homicides, cold cases, prisons, violent criminals, serial rapists, child abductors, child molesters, kidnappers, bank robbers, cyber criminals, and assorted violent criminals. True Crime Reporter® is a @2022 copyrighted and trade-marked production by True Crime Reporter®, LLC, in Dallas, Texas.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Don Bentley’s career zigzagged from flying an Army helicopter gunship on combat missions in Afghanistan to working counterintelligence for the FBI, to now writing suspense-filled novels based on the knowledge of his previous careers. In my last episode, former FBI agent Don Bentley took us inside the training of Special Agents at the elite FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. After the FBI, Bentley launched a successful writing career. He intimately knows the subject that he writes fiction about. Don Bentley is the New York Times bestselling author of the Matt Drake series spinning out potboilers about terrorism and intelligence operations. He has also written two Tom Clancy Jack Ryan, Jr. novels…the latest on bookshelves everywhere is Zero Hour. In this second episode, we discuss Bentley’s transition to writing and our individual association with the late Tom Clancy.  Clancy, a legendary author, was known for his precise descriptions of everything he wrote about in his best-selling novels about spycraft and military weapon systems.  Clancy turned his books into video games and spellbinding movies starting with Hunt For Red October. Here’s my interview with veteran decorated Army helicopter pilot, former FBI agent, and author Don Bentley. Link To Rober Riggs Story About The Attack Submarine Dallas https://youtu.be/QinO-HRifzo We want to become your favorite true crime podcast. Please leave a review wherever you listen. Join our true crime community and follow us here.  The True Crime Reporter® podcast features stories about serial killers, mass murderers, murder mysteries, homicides, cold cases, prisons, violent criminals, serial rapists, child abductors, child molesters, kidnappers, bank robbers, cybercriminals, and assorted violent criminals. True Crime Reporter® is a @2022 copyrighted and trade-marked production by True Crime Reporter®, LLC, in Dallas, Texas.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There’s a bank in Quantico, Virginia that gets robbed every day. And I am going to take you there. Hello. I’m Robert Riggs.  In this episode of True Crime Reporter®, former FBI Agent Don Bentley takes us inside the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. New Special Agents start their career there in an intensive 20-week long training program. Realistic training scenarios unfold in a mock town called Hogan’s Alley named after a comic strip from the 1890s. I’ve reported there many times on stories ranging from bank robberies to weapons of mass destruction. I’ve posted links to those stories in the show notes. The 10-acre training facility contains a bank, post office, hotel, laundromat, barbershop, theater, homes, and everything you would find in a real urban setting. It’s like a Hollywood set that features actors playing armed criminals. In an homage to the deadly shootout with John Dillinger, there is a mock Biograph Theater where three FBI agents ended the gangster’s reign as “Public Enemy Number One.” My guest, Don Bentley went through all of that training and he was well suited for it. Before the FBI, Bentley served in the U.S. Army as a pilot for ten years and flew an AH-64 Apache helicopter gunship. Bentley received the Bronze Star and Air Medal with V device for Valor. He commanded a Quick Reaction Force in support of Operation Red Wings in Afghanistan. The story of that mission can be heard on Episode 56 of Jack Carr’s podcast, Danger Close. Carr as you may know is a former Navy SEAL and now a New York Times best selling author of The Terminal List. The Terminal List starring Chris Pratt is an acclaimed series on Amazon Prime. Don Bentley is also a New York Times bestselling author of the Matt Drake series spinning out potboilers about terrorism and intelligence operations. In this episode, we discuss the focus of the FBI since 9/11. Here’s my interview with Don Bentley. Links to Robert's TV stories at the FBI Academy: https://bit.ly/RobertRiggsReportsFromFBIAcademyOnWMD https://bit.ly/RobertRiggsReportsFromFBIAcademyOnProfileOfAPsychopath We want to become your favorite true crime podcast. Please leave a review wherever you listen. Join our true crime community and follow us here.  The True Crime Reporter® podcast features stories about serial killers, mass murderers, murder mysteries, homicides, cold cases, prisons, violent criminals, serial rapists, child abductors, child molesters, kidnappers, bank robbers, cyber criminals, and assorted violent criminals. True Crime Reporter® is a @2022 copyrighted and trade-marked production by True Crime Reporter®, LLC, in Dallas, Texas.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the previous episode, Inside Story Of The Deadliest Attack On Police Officers Since 9/11, the negotiator for the Dallas SWAT team revealed the inside story about the mass killer who ambushed Dallas officers during a Black Lives Matter protest five years ago. Members of our True Crime Community have asked to learn more about the purpose of SWAT teams. SWAT stands for Special Weapons and Tactics.  It’s a highly trained elite unit selected from rank and file officers who apply.  In the True Crime Reporter™ podcast episode published on July 18, 2022, about the Uvalde School Shooting, Police Waited To Subdue Killer While Uvalde School Children Lay Dying you heard how a SWAT team from the U.S. Border Patrol finally stepped in and ended the mass shooting. SWAT teams grew out of the mass shooting at the University of Texas Tower in Austin a half-century ago. In 96 minutes, Charles Whitman, an architectural engineering student cut down nearly 50 people with 150 rifle shots from the 30th-floor observation deck on August 1, 1966. From his perch, three hundred feet above the campus, he methodically picked off victims as far as five blocks away.  Police were outgunned and did not have protective gear to make a quick assault.  You can learn more about the incident and how it influenced policing in our March 28, 2022 episode titled,  A Sniper In The Tower--Why Did He Do It? We interviewed Gary Lavergne, the author of A Sniper in the Tower: The Charles Whitman Murders. Here are links to black and white film footage from the shooting and a video of Gary Lavergne following the sniper’s trail to the top of the UT Tower.  If SWAT teams had existed back then, that’s who would have responded.   We asked retired Dallas Police Lt. Bob Owens to explain the role of SWAT teams. Owens is a 40-year veteran of the Dallas Police Department. Here is his interview with Robert Riggs. We want to become your favorite true crime podcast. Please leave a review wherever you listen. Join our true crime community and follow us here.  The True Crime Reporter® podcast features stories about serial killers, mass murderers, murder mysteries, homicides, cold cases, prisons, violent criminals, serial rapists, child abductors, child molesters, kidnappers, bank robbers, cyber criminals, and assorted violent criminals. True Crime Reporter® is a @2022 copyrighted and trade-marked production by True Crime Reporter®, LLC, in Dallas, Texas.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the evening of July 7, 2016, Black Lives Matter protesters marched in downtown Dallas and other cities across the nation. They peacefully gathered in response to the police shootings of two black men, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling. A few blocks from the site of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, an African American man who had left the U.S. Army following disgraceful conduct got out of his SUV ready for combat. The mass murderer arrived with a calculated plan to kill police officers, preferably white officers.  Wearing tactical gear, a bullet-resistant vest, and armed with a high-powered assault rifle he in effect executed five officers and wounded eleven others.  A cell phone video by a witness in a nearby building recorded Johnson shooting an officer for the city’s transit system, DART,  in the back and then standing over the officer to pump eleven more rounds into him at point-blank range. The ambush marked the deadliest and bloodiest day for American law enforcement since 9/11. In a fierce gun battle, officers cornered the shooter inside the downtown campus building of the El Centro Community College. Larry Gordon, a crisis hostage negotiator for the DALLAS SWAT team, spent four hours talking with the gunman who pledged to take his life and the lives of more officers. Gordon and Retired Dallas Police Lt. Bob Owens, a 40-year veteran of DPD who served 20 of those years on SWAT join Robert to reveal the inside story of what happened. We want to become your favorite true crime podcast. Please leave a review wherever you listen. Join our true crime community and follow us here.  The True Crime Reporter® podcast features stories about serial killers, mass murderers, murder mysteries, homicides, cold cases, prisons, violent criminals, serial rapists, child abductors, child molesters, kidnappers, bank robbers, cyber criminals, and assorted violent criminals. True Crime Reporter® is a @2022 copyrighted and trade-marked production by True Crime Reporter®, LLC, in Dallas, Texas.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The True Crime Reporter® Podcast features stories and interviews from the respective careers of investigative reporter Robert Riggs and former U.S. prosecutor Bill Johnston. Listeners have asked how both of them got involved in investigating criminal cases. In response, the podcast featured an episode with Riggs on July 4, 2022, explaining how he first got involved digging for information during the Watergate scandal case while working for Congressman Wright Patman. In this episode, we cover the highlights of Bill Johnston’s distinguished law career. Bill devoted his career as a federal prosecutor to, in effect, protect the sheep from the wolves.  He helped launch the manhunt for notorious serial killer Kenneth Allen McDuff who tortured and murdered countless young women. His role in bringing McDuff to justice and prosecuting the Texas Parole Board Chairman official who released McDuff under a cloud of corruption is featured in the Fox Nation documentary Freed To Kill.  Johnston became the cohost of the True Crime Reporter® podcast with Peabody Award-winning investigative reporter Robert Riggs in 2021.  Johnston had a guilty verdict returned in every federal prosecution in hundreds of jury trials that he undertook during his 14-year career with the U.S. Department of Justice.  A noteworthy criminal case includes the Branch Davidian cult members who murdered four ATF agents during a raid on their heavily armed compound outside Waco.   The Texas Rangers, rather than FBI agents, were Johnston’s go-to investigators for complex murder cases.  He managed a team of Rangers to investigate the crime scene at the Davidian compound after the end of the controversial inferno.  Johnston successfully prosecuted a mail bomber which was the first case tried under the U.S. Violence Against Women Act. Other firsts include the first jury trial in the United States in which mitochondrial DNA (hair without root) was used in evidence against a violent “car-jacking” defendant who caused the death of an elderly man in Texas. He received a mandatory life sentence without parole. Here’s Robert’s interview with Bill.  We want to become your favorite true crime podcast. Please leave a review wherever you listen. Join our true crime community and follow us here.  The True Crime Reporter® podcast features stories about serial killers, mass murderers, murder mysteries, homicides, cold cases, prisons, violent criminals, serial rapists, child abductors, child molesters, kidnappers, bank robbers, cyber criminals, and assorted violent criminals. True Crime Reporter® is a @2022 copyrighted and trade-marked production by True Crime Reporter®, LLC, in Dallas, Texas.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Many U.S. prisons are trade schools for crime. High recidivism rates underscore the failure of the current criminal justice system. Released and rearrested inmates pass through an expensive revolving door.  The Texas prison used to be called the Texas Department of Corrections (TDC), but there was little evidence it was correcting bad behavior.  In Texas, nearly one-fourth of the prisoners released return within three years. Nationally, half of the prisoners released return within three years. But the Prison Entrepreneurship Program (PEP), an independent nonprofit organization in Texas, puts inmates who are within one to three years of parole eligibility on the path to jobs and even running a business.  Less than 7% of its graduates return to prison within three years. 500 participants are chosen yearly out of more than 10,000 eligible inmates. The screening process, which is more selective than prestigious universities, includes a 20-page application, three exams, and an interview with PEP staff members. Death row inmates or those convicted of sex crimes are not eligible. The program exposes them to PEP’s ten driving values: fresh-start outlook, servant-leader mentality, love, innovation, accountability, integrity, execution, fun, excellence, and wise stewardship.  The entrepreneurship program starts with a three-month Leadership Academy that teaches character development and computer skills.  Next, they take a rigorous six-month “mini-MBA” course taught by staff, volunteer business executives, and college students. Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business has been working with PEP since 2007. It awards certificates of Entrepreneurship at the program’s graduation ceremonies. All of the inmates who have graduated get a job within 90-days of walking out of prison. 300 businesses have been launched by more than 1,500 PEP graduates.  Six of those companies generate more than $1 million in annual sales.  Nearly half of the grads own homes within three years of their release. Bryan Kelley, the CEO of PEP, has himself “walked the line” in the prison system. Kelley served 22 years of a life sentence for a drug-related murder. (*note: In this context "walk the line" refers to the white lines painted on the floors of prison cellblocks. Inmates must stay inside the white line and against the wall, as they walk in both directions.) Investigative reporter Robert Riggs spent a decade in every corner of the prison system exposing corruption in the Texas parole system. Riggs interviews Kelley about the life-changing Prison Entrepreneurship Program. We want to become your favorite true crime podcast. Please leave a review wherever you listen. Join our true crime community and follow us here.  The True Crime Reporter® podcast features stories about serial killers, mass murderers, murder mysteries, homicides, cold cases, prisons, violent criminals, serial rapists, child abductors, child molesters, kidnappers, bank robbers, cyber criminals, and assorted violent criminals. True Crime Reporter® is a @2022 copyrighted and trade-marked production by True Crime Reporter®, LLC, in Dallas, Texas.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A growing threat of grievance- shooting is taking center stage across the world.   Recent examples include the assassination of Japan’s popular prime minister to a patient in Tulsa, Oklahoma who gunned down two doctors and two medical personnel because he was angry about ongoing pain following his surgery. Sasha Larkin, the Deputy Chief of the Homeland Security Division at the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, describes this new threat. The 22-year veteran of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department says it was easier to deal with the Osama bin Laden’s of the terrorist world because it was easier to identify them and their motivations. Larkin came up through the ranks reaching Deputy Chief. From her post overseeing the Homeland Security Division, Larkin has a unique perspective on crime trends. In a wide-ranging conversation with investigative reporter Robert Riggs, Larkin discusses the new phenomenon of grievance shootings, her approach to stopping murders that arise out of domestic violence, her path to leadership as a role model to women, and the deadly Route 91 mass shooting on the Las Vegas Strip that occurred on October 1st of 2017. You may recall that a 64-year-old lone, heavily armed rifleman perched in a 32nd-floor suite of the Mandalay Bay Hotel opened fire on a crowd at the Harvest Music Festival below.  He killed 60 people. Wounded 411. Caused chaos that led to the injury of 456 people. It was the deadliest mass shooting committed by an individual in U.S. history.  And the killer’s motive remains a mystery.  In this episode, Robert Riggs takes a look inside the crime scene tape at America’s playground—Las Vegas. We want to become your favorite true crime podcast. Please leave a review wherever you listen. Join our true crime community and follow us here.  The True Crime Reporter® podcast features stories about serial killers, mass murderers, murder mysteries, homicides, cold cases, prisons, violent criminals, serial rapists, child abductors, child molesters, kidnappers, bank robbers, cyber criminals, and assorted violent criminals. True Crime Reporter® is a @2022 copyrighted and trade-marked production by True Crime Reporter®, LLC, in Dallas, Texas.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A 77-page report by a special committee of the Texas House of Representatives concluded that no one was able to stop the gunman from carrying out the deadliest school shooting in Texas history, in part because of “systemic failures and egregious poor decision making” by nearly everyone involved who was in a position of power. 376  law enforcement officers descended on the school in a chaotic, uncoordinated scene devoid of clear leadership and a sense of urgency to take down the gunman, according to the report.  It is the most exhaustive account to date of what happened and was released on Sunday, July 17, 2022. It found that the mass killer had been dubbed "school shooter" on social media a year before the massacre because of his violent threats against others.  The high school dropout and social outcast consumed gore and violent sex online. He sometimes shared videos and images of suicides and beheadings. In real life, he was fired from two fast-food jobs for harassing a female coworker at one and refusing to speak to coworkers at the other. He spent more than $3,000 on two AR-15-style rifles and accessories when he turned 18 years of age, two weeks before he attacked the school.  The massacre was the first time that he had ever handled a firearm. The committee found that the killer took advantage of a culture of complacency about school security.  Doors were routinely left unlocked and propped open. Teachers had become desensitized to false alarms and did not quickly react to a lockdown alert. The report suggests that stopping the gunman sooner could have made a difference.  “Given the information known about victims who survived through the time of the breach and who later died on the way to the hospital,” the committee wrote, “it is plausible that some victims could have survived if they had not had to wait 73 additional minutes for rescue.” The critical report underscores the indecisive and disorganized police response recorded on the school's security cameras. Images of police standing around waiting for more than an hour while twenty-one wounded Uvalde, Texas students, and teachers needed medical aid drew outrage across the United States. All 21 victims, two teachers, and their fourth-grade students died at the hands of an 18-year-old mass killer. Security camera footage from inside the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, records the sound of repeated bursts of gunfire from the killer's assault rifle for two and half minutes. Three officers arrived and advanced down a colorful school hallway toward the classrooms within three minutes. But when the gunman opened fire through the classroom door, the officers frantically retreated. Heavily armed officers with shields congregated at the end of the corridor, where they waited to confront the killer for excruciatingly 77 minutes.  At one point, an officer paused to squirt hand sanitizer into his hands and rubs his palms together. The security camera footage underscores a painfully slow response that contradicts everything the FBI has taught U.S. law enforcement since the Columbine Colorado High School massacre occurred 23 years ago in April 1999. Katherine Schweit, the former FBI agent and executive who established the Bureau's active shooting training program, emphasizes that even if an officer responds alone, they are supposed to go in harm's way to neutralize the gunman to stop the carnage.  After reviewing the security camera footage, Schweit concluded that indecision and a lack of leadership turned a bad situation into a catastrophe. An editorial in the New York Post ran a headline denouncing the slow response, "Video proves Uvalde was the greatest act of cowardice in modern American history."  Investigative Reporter Robert Riggs interviewed Schweit about the shooting video and the legislative report's damning conclusion that the police response by local, state, and federal agencies disregarded its own active shooting training.  Schweit is the author of Stop The Killing: How To End The Mass Shooting Crisis . The former FBI agent says law enforcement agencies around the world need to revaluate the effectiveness of their active shooter training programs. Here's a link if you wish to donate to the victim's fund. Here's a link to the security camera video.  Warning: it is graphic and disturbing.  We want to become your favorite true crime podcast. Please leave a review wherever you listen. Join our true crime community and follow us here.  The True Crime Reporter® podcast features stories about serial killers, mass murderers, murder mysteries, homicides, cold cases, prisons, violent criminals, serial rapists, child abductors, child molesters, kidnappers, bank robbers, cyber criminals, and assorted violent criminals. True Crime Reporter® is a @2022 copyrighted and trade-marked production by True Crime Reporter®, LLC, in Dallas, Texas.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

25-year-old Anna Moriah Wilson, known as “Mo” was an up-and-coming professional cyclist in gravel racing. Friends described her as a beacon and light and energy. But another cyclist allegedly snuffed out that light in a hail of gunfire. Shockwaves from the grievance killing spread from Austin, Texas where the murder occurred to news media around the world. It is a true-crime story that is stranger than fiction.   Two female cyclists vying for the affection of a male cyclist were on a tragic collision course. Investigative Reporter Robert Riggs takes fans inside the crime scene tape with Austin homicide detectives and U.S. Marshals. Listen as the alleged killer becomes an international fugitive. We want to become your favorite true crime podcast. Please leave a review wherever you listen. Join our true crime community and follow us here.  The True Crime Reporter® podcast features stories about serial killers, mass murderers, murder mysteries, homicides, cold cases, prisons, violent criminals, serial rapists, child abductors, child molesters, kidnappers, bank robbers, cyber criminals, and assorted violent criminals. True Crime Reporter® is a @2022 copyrighted and trade-marked production by True Crime Reporter®, LLC, in Dallas, Texas.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Many of you have asked how Robert became an investigative reporter.  After all, most of the stories you hear on this podcast come out of my reporter’s notebook. Riggs' career path has zigged and zagged from when I received a degree in Architecture and Construction from Texas A&M University and upon graduation, he headed off to Capitol Hill. In this episode, my cohost, former prosecutor Bill Johnston takes me back to the Watergate scandal of 50 years ago. Bill has never heard some of these stories and in later episodes, Riggs is going to interview him about his high-profile criminal cases. Riggs shares a muck-raking tale of bribery and international intrigue. Here’s Robert's conversation with Bill.  We want to become your favorite true crime podcast. Please leave a review wherever you listen. Join our true crime community and follow us here.  True Crime Reporter® is a @2022 copyrighted and trade-marked production by True Crime Reporter®, LLC, in Dallas, Texas. The True Crime Reporter® features stories about serial killers, mass murderers, murder mystery, homicides, cold cases, prisons, criminals, serial rapists, child abduction, kidnapping, bank robbery, and violent crime.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Katherine Schweit headed up the FBI’s active shooter program where she authored the bureau’s landmark research about mass shootings and how to best respond to save lives. In the wake of the massacre of children and their teachers in Uvalde, Texas, school safety weighs heavily on the minds of teachers and students’ families.  In this episode of True Crime Reporter®, investigative reporter Robert Riggs and Schweit discuss why the number of mass shootings is spiking to the point that some parents are afraid to send their children to school. Riggs is no stranger to this tragic subject. In October of 1991, he covered the mass shooting at a crowded Luby’s Cafeteria in Kileen, Texas.  A lone gunman crashed his pickup truck through the front door of the restaurant. He proceeded to murder 23 people with two semi-automatic pistols before killing himself when confronted by police. It was the mother of all mass killings in America, marking the start of an epidemic. In September of 1999, Riggs covered the mass shooting at the Wedgewood Baptist Church in Fort Worth and produced a profile of the mass killer with the assistance of retired profilers from the FBI.  Riggs covered so many “critical incidents” in his reporting career that he was asked to serve on a study panel hosted by the Critical Incident Analysis Group at the University of Virginia School of Medicine in 2000. The public university was founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1819.   The panel was assembled to study Threats To Symbols Of American Democracy.  It included the FBI case agent for the Columbine shootings and its high school principal.  The report prophetically predicted the future targets of the 9-11 hijackers. Unfortunately, the report apparently fell on deaf ears at the top echelon of national security.  When it comes to mass killings, Riggs has been there.  He looked mass killer Doug Feldman in the eye during an hour-long interview on Texas Death Row. It’s the episode titled Interview With The Mass Killer Known As The Terminator. None of it made the slightest bit of sense to Riggs. Feldman warned Riggs at the beginning that his motives would not make sense to anybody but himself. The shootings are only getting worse. Especially when children are slaughtered. No one understands this epidemic better than Katharine Schweit who spent 20 years with the FBI as a Special Agent Executive and as a U.S. prosecutor. In the years after the massacre of 20 school children and 6 adults at Sandy Hook Elementary in New Town, Connecticut in December of 2012, the FBI spent more than 30 million dollars teaching police how to persistently pursue efforts to neutralize a shooter even if only one officer is present. Yet, police in Uvalde, Texas waited 78 minutes before confronting the gunman at Robb Elementary School. The Director of the Texas Department of Public Safety called it the “wrong decision, period.” The murders reflect a disturbing pattern. Six of the nine deadliest mass shootings in the United States since 2018 were committed by men who were 21 or younger.  Who is doing this? Why are they doing it? Can we tell when it is going to happen? How do we intervene? Do our children need to go to school in fortresses? Katharine Schweit answers some of those questions in her book, Stop The Killing – How to End the Mass Shooting Crisis. Here’s their conversation. We want to become your favorite true crime podcast. Please leave a review wherever you listen. Join our true crime community and follow us here.  True Crime Reporter® is a @2022 copyrighted and trade-marked production by True Crime Reporter®, LLC, in Dallas, Texas. The True Crime Reporter® features stories about serial killers, mass murderers, murder mystery, homicides, cold cases, prisons, criminals, serial rapists, child abduction, kidnapping, bank robbery, and violent crime. SHOW LINKS Katherine Schweit | Stop the Killing FBI Study of Active Shooter Incidents in the U.S. 2000-2013 Active Shooter Resources Katherine Schweit | Stop the Killing Podcast      See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For many years Texas had a law and order image.  Politicians campaigned for office about getting tough on crime. A gubernatorial candidate’s TV ads featured actors wearing black and white overalls swinging sledgehammers in the prison yard. His voice-over pledged to teach youthful criminals “the joy of busing rocks.” In fact, Texas ran a revolving door prison system.   Lawmakers passed tougher laws but refused to spend money to build prisons to hold more convicted criminals. The public did not know about this until I exposed how serial killer Kenneth McDuff was released on parole with hundreds more violent offenders.  You can learn more about McDuff by listening to our recent episode titled The Broomstick Killer or you can watch our Freed To Kill streaming television documentary on Fox Nation. The episode you are about to hear illustrates how Texas turned loose monsters. And I mean monsters. I warn you it is a graphic story about a mother who dismembered her two boys and later walked out of that revolving door. This episode is another example of how the stories on the True Crime Reporter® Podcast are stranger than fiction. We want to become your favorite true crime podcast. Please leave a review wherever you listen. Join our true crime community and follow us here.  True Crime Reporter® is a @2022 copyrighted and trade-marked production by True Crime Reporter®, LLC, in Dallas, Texas. The True Crime Reporter® features stories about serial killers, mass murderers, murder mystery, homicides, cold cases, prisons, criminals, serial rapists, child abduction, kidnapping, bank robbery, and violent crime.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Was it a case of cloak and dagger among spies? Or was it a plain old case of murder driven by lust and the desire for money? It is a mystery that lives on 50-years after a popular Czech professor vanished from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Was he a double agent or triple agent that crossed his masters in a Cold War game of spy vs. spy? Is he living out his years on a tropical island or do his remains lie at the bottom of an abandoned gold mine? Pulitzer Prize-winning author Eileen Welsome provides long-awaited answers to a baffling case that caused a falling out between the FBI and the CIA. Investigative reporter Robert Riggs interviews Welsome about a mysterious case of deadly cyanide murders as revealed in her book, Cold War Secrets. This episode is another example of how the stories on the True Crime Reporter® Podcast are stranger than fiction. We want to become your favorite true crime podcast. Please leave a review wherever you listen. Join our true crime community and follow us here.  True Crime Reporter® is a @2022 copyrighted and trade-marked production by True Crime Reporter®, LLC, in Dallas, Texas. The True Crime Reporter® features stories about serial killers, mass murderers, murder mystery, homicides, cold cases, prisons, criminals, serial rapists, child abduction, kidnapping, bank robbery, and violent crime.    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Matt Baker, the charismatic Baptist minister who almost got away with murdering his wife is among our most popular episodes. On his way to the pulpit in Waco, Texas, Baker molested young women. An investigation of the Southern Baptist Convention, America’s largest Protestant denomination, revealed that sexual assaults by hundreds of pastors like Matt Bakers were covered up by church leaders for twenty years. A seven-month investigation conducted by Guidepost Solutions released in May of 2022 found that sex abusing pastors were often passed along to other churches with no notice or warnings. Two top officials of the Southern Baptist Convention kept their own private list of abusive pastors for ten years. And the list of 703 abusers may soon become public. We expect Matt Baker to be on that list. Former U.S. prosecutor Bill Johnston, the cohost of the True Crime Reporter® Podcast, unraveled a trail of sex abuse complaints about Matt Baker during his murder investigation. Johnston and investigative reporter Robert Riggs update their original episode titled, The Minister Who Almost Got Away With Murder, published on October 18th of 2021. Johnston reveals how his murder investigation discovered that Matt Baker’slong history of sexual abuse allegations had been swept under the rug for years.  Riggs discusses the mindset of sexual predators based on his experience of reporting from inside the Texas prison system. Link To Southern Baptist Conference Investigation of Sexual Abuse Allegations We want to become your favorite true crime podcast. Please leave a review wherever you listen. Join our true crime community and follow us here.  True Crime Reporter® is a @2022 copyrighted and trade-marked production by True Crime Reporter®, LLC, in Dallas, Texas. The True Crime Reporter® features stories about serial killers, mass murderers, murder mystery, homicides, cold cases, prisons, criminals, serial rapists, child abduction, kidnapping, bank robbery, and violent crime.    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Can you imagine yourself falling in love with a serial killer or murderer to the point you will give up your family, career, and even your life for them? A veteran Alabama jail officer, Vicky White did just that in April of 2022 when she staged a getaway with a capital murder suspect. The 56-year-old White had an unblemished record.  She was on her last day of work before retirement. Her colleagues had just voted her Corrections Employee of the Year for a fifth time before she went on the run. At first, the Lauderdale County Sheriff in Florence, Alabama, thought White had been kidnapped when she disappeared with a 36-year Casey White, no relation. But White had been involved in a two-year-long jailhouse romance with a career violent criminal named Casey White, no relation to her.  He certainly didn’t have fashion model looks.  Casey White, a 300-pound, muscular, burr-headed 6 foot 9 heavily tattooed inmate, was already serving a 75-year prison sentence for murder and other charges from a terrifying rampage.   He had a large image of a Confederate flag tattooed on his back with the words Southern Pride connected by a chain to the image of a pit bulldog.  It signified his membership in a white racist prison gang called the Southern Brotherhood according to the U.S.Marshals Service. The tattooed sleeve covering his right arm featured large SS symbols favored by neo-Nazi gangs Casey White was awaiting trial for stabbing 58-year-old Connie Ridgeway to death in her apartment. It had been a cold case for five years until White suddenly confessed in a letter to investigators.  He later pleaded not guilty by reason of mental disease and was awaiting trial in the Lauderdale County Jail.  But was his confession a ploy to get back to the jail to see Vicky White, its supervisor?  Casey White called the jailer his wife and she visited his son and grandson according to the convicted felon’s mother. Even gave them Christmas presents.  Vicky White gave a phony cover story when she took the capital murder suspect out of jail claiming it was for a mental health examination. A week earlier she sold her house for 95-thousand dollars, far below market value, sold her car, and applied for retirement. She also bought an AR-15 rifle, a shotgun, men’s clothes, and sex toys.  Vicky White had been making dry runs for the escape out of the jail with Casey White handcuffed and wearing a jail-issued jumpsuit in the backseat of her patrol car.  The couple’s getaway came to a deadly end in Indiana when U.S. Marshals rammed their Cadillac during a high-speed chase.  Marshals pulled Vicky White out of the wreckage still gripping the handgun that she used to kill herself.  So what could she have possibly seen in a violent felon to throw her life away? Investigative reporter Robert Riggs searches for answers in this episode of the True Crime Reporter® Podcast. He interviews John Moriarty, the former Inspector General of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. You may recall from our earlier episodes about serial killer Kenneth McDuff that Moriarty was an undercover prison investigator who played a major role in catching McDuff. The tough-talking transplanted Irish cop from New York also tricked McDuff into revealing the location of the body of one of his victims before he was executed. Moriarty is also featured in the opening of the promo about our five-part documentary news series about McDuff titled Freed To Kill on Fox Nation Streaming. The stories of women and men falling in love with killers may sound like pulp fiction but it is all too common inside jails and prisons. We want to become your favorite true crime podcast. Please leave a review wherever you listen. Join our true crime community and follow us here.  True Crime Reporter® is a @2022 copyrighted and trade-marked production by True Crime Reporter®, LLC, in Dallas, Texas. The True Crime Reporter® features stories about serial killers, mass murderers, murder mystery, homicides, cold cases, prisons, criminals, serial rapists, child abduction, kidnapping, bank robbery, and violent crime.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this vintage photo from 1993, Peabody Award-Winning Investigative Reporter Robert Riggs stands on a guard tower overlooking Texas Death Row. Poking up behind him to the right of the large spotlight is the steeple of the prison chapel where seven condemned prisoners made their daring break for freedom five years later.  29-year Martin Gurule, a cold-blooded killer from Corpus Christi in South Texas made it over the prison’s fence on a foggy Thanksgiving night under a hail of rifle fire from guard towers. The last time condemned killers had broken out of prison in Texas was in 1934 when two members of the notorious Bonnie and Clyde gang made a daring escape. Prison guards were killed by machine gunfire. That set off a manhunt led by legendary Texas Ranger Frank Hammer that ended in the deadly ambush of Bonnie and Clyde. Sixty-four years later, hundreds of officers scoured thousands of acres looking for Martin Gurule around the Ellis Prison Unit near Huntsville, Texas. Robert Riggs was there until the very end. In this episode of the True Crime Reporter® Podcast, Riggs dusts off an old reporter’s notebook about this sensational escape from Texas Death Row. It’s an example of how we take you inside the crime scene tape. Apple link to the episode about serial Killer Kenneth McDuff CBS News Anchor Bob Schieffer Shocked By Broomstick Killer’s Brutality Links To Television Show About McDuff How was a dangerous sexually sadistic killer set free on parole? Riggs delivers the answers. CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE PROMO CLICK HERE TO WATCH ON FOX NATION STREAMING Follow Robert Riggs on the True Crime Reporter™ Podcast to hear more real-life crime stories.  Click Here To See The List Of Crimes That Constitute Capital Murder in TexasSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Frivolous lawsuits filed by convicted criminals flooded the federal court system in Texas. A prison inmate who regarded himself as the "Perry Mason" of the Texas prison sued for millions of dollars because his Thanksgiving Turkey was served cold. Another sued because his Rice Krispies Cereal did not Snap, Crackle, Pop as advertised. This underscores why the True Crime Reporter® podcast features true crime stories that are stranger than fiction. Investigative reporter Robert Riggs dusted off his reporter's notebook to tell the story "Convicts Court." We want to become your favorite true crime podcast. Please leave a review wherever you listen. Join our true crime community and follow us here.  True Crime Reporter™ is a @2022 copyrighted and trade-marked production by True Crime Reporter, LLC, in Dallas, Texas.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.