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From the Axeman of New Orleans to the Golden State Killer, this gripping true crime history traces notorious serial killers connected to every U.S. state—and the small mistakes, overlooked clues, and new forensic methods that helped expose some of them. Discover cases involving Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, the Boston Strangler, the Green River Killer, and more, alongside unsolved murders that still haunt investigators and families.
Blending crime storytelling with American history, this narrated true crime compilation explores cold cases, criminal investigations, DNA evidence, and the search for justice. For listeners interested in serial killer cases, infamous American criminals, forensic breakthroughs, and long-form true crime stories.
Blending crime storytelling with American history, this narrated true crime compilation explores cold cases, criminal investigations, DNA evidence, and the search for justice. For listeners interested in serial killer cases, infamous American criminals, forensic breakthroughs, and long-form true crime stories.
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00:00From a nurse who allegedly killed hundreds of his own patients to a clown who buried 26 young men
00:06under his own floor. These are the most terrifying serial killers from every U.S. state. And every
00:13single one of them got away with it right up until one tiny mistake. So let's start with the first
00:19serial killers this country ever had. Because in the 1790s, two brothers, Big Harp and Little Harp,
00:25worked the frontier trails of Kentucky and Tennessee. And they killed travelers for their
00:30horses, a few dollars, or sometimes nothing at all. But in August of 1799, they killed a woman and
00:37her baby son. So the husband, Moses Stiegel, rode out with a posse and hunted Big Harp down. And
00:43they cut off his head and nailed it to a tree at a crossroads. And that road is still called
00:49Harp's
00:49Head Road to this day. But it took America almost 100 years to make somebody worse.
00:55Because H.H. Holmes was a con man with a medical degree. And in the 1890s, he built a three
01:01-story
01:02building in Chicago, right as millions of people poured into town for the World's Fair. And the
01:07newspapers later called it the murder castle, with trap doors, hidden rooms, and a vault that locked
01:14from the outside. But a lot of that was hype, because Holmes confessed to 27 murders. But historians
01:20can only really back up about nine. But the real story is so much worse. Because in September
01:27of 1894, Holmes killed his business partner, Benjamin Petzl, in Philadelphia to cash in his
01:33life insurance. And then he took three of Petzl's children on the road with him. So a Philadelphia
01:39detective named Frank Geyer followed the trail across two countries, from Indianapolis to Toronto.
01:45And he found all three children. But none of them had survived. So on May 7th, 1896, Holmes
01:53was hung at Philadelphia's Moyamensing Prison. And North Dakota's didn't get found until
01:58he was already dead. Cuz Eugene Butler was a rich farmer outside Niagara, North Dakota,
02:04who rode his horse at night screaming like a madman. So in 1906, they sent him to the asylum.
02:10Then in 1915, two years after he died, workmen dug a cellar under his old house. And they found
02:17six skeletons. All young men with their skulls caved in. And to this day, nobody knows who they
02:24were. On the flip side, Indianas put an ad in the paper. Cuz Belle Gunness ran a hog farm outside
02:32La Porte, Indiana. And she ran Lonely Hearts ads looking for a husband. Rich men only. So they
02:38came from all over the Midwest. But they never left. Cuz on April 28th, 1908, her farmhouse burned down,
02:46supposedly with her still inside. And when a man named Asel Helgelin showed up looking for his
02:52missing brother, they started digging in the hog pen. And they found more than a dozen bodies in the
02:58dirt. But Louisiana's killer had a thing for music. Cuz from 1918 to 1919, the Axeman of New Orleans broke
03:07into homes at night and killed six people in their beds. Then in March of 1919, the newspapers got a
03:13letter signed from Hell. And it said he'd be back on March 19th. But he'd spare any house where a
03:20jazz
03:20band was playing. So that night, the entire city of New Orleans threw a party with jazz blasting out
03:26of every house. And nobody died that night. And the Axeman was never caught. Louder, boys! Louder!
03:35But Idaho's killer liked to cook. Cuz Lyda Southard lived in Twin Falls. And she boiled the arsenic off
03:43of flypaper. So four husbands, a brother-in-law, and her own little girl all died of stomach trouble.
03:50And every husband conveniently had life insurance. But a chemist got suspicious and police tracked her
03:56to Hawaii, where she'd already married husband number five. And she got up to life. But in 1931,
04:04she escaped and went and married again. But on July 31st, 1932,
04:10her new husband helped police catch her in Topeka, Kansas. And she went right back to prison.
04:16And West Virginias used Lonely Hearts ads too. Cuz during the Great Depression, Harry Powers wrote
04:22to lonely widows all over the country, promising them a good life. So in 1931, a widow named Asta Elcher
04:30said yes. And she and her three kids went to meet him. Then a boy told police he'd dug a
04:35ditch in
04:35Quietdell, West Virginia. And they found Asta, all three children, and another woman who'd answered his
04:42letters, Dorothy Lemke. So Powers was hung in March of 1932. And his story later became the movie
04:50The Night of the Hunter. But Ohio's went up against the legend and won. Cuz from 1935 to 1938, somebody
04:58left a dozen bodies around a Cleveland slum called Kingsbury Run. And they called him the Cleveland
05:04Torso Murderer. And the man hunting him was Elliot Ness, the same guy who took down Al Capone.
05:10So in August of 1938, Ness burned the shantytown to the ground. And the killing stopped. But nobody was
05:18ever charged. But Arkansas's killer never even got a name. Cuz in the spring of 1946, somebody started
05:25attacking young couples in parked cars on weekend nights around Texarkana. So over 10 weeks, five
05:31people died and three survived. And the town locked its doors and stores sold out of guns. They called
05:38him the Phantom Killer. And he was never caught. But Oklahoma's killer was a granny. Cuz Nanny Doss loved
05:45romance magazines. But not her husband's. And four of them died of poison. So did her mother, a sister,
05:52and a grandson. Then in October of 1954, her fifth husband died in Tulsa. But his doctor ordered an
06:00autopsy. And he was full of arsenic. So police brought her in. And she giggled her way through
06:05the whole confession. So America remembers her as the giggling granny. But that giggle came from a woman
06:12who'd poisoned her way through her own family tree. And the killers coming next would have names every
06:18American knew. So we start in Boston. Cuz from 1962 to 1964, 13 women were killed in their own
06:26apartments with no sign of forced entry. So women across the city stopped opening their doors. And the
06:32press called him the Boston Strangler. Then in 1965, a man already locked up for other attacks,
06:39Albert DeSalvo, confessed to all 13. But he was never convicted of a single one. And for 50 years,
06:46a lot of people thought he was lying. On the flip side, in 2013, police tested DNA off a water
06:52bottle
06:52his nephew drank from. And it linked DeSalvo to the last victim, Mary Sullivan. But Michigan's killer
06:59had a cop in the family. Cuz from 1967 to 1969, young women kept disappearing around the college
07:06towns of Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor. And seven of them turned up dead. So police zeroed in on a clean
07:12-cut
07:12college student named John Norman Collins. And his uncle was a state police sergeant.
07:18So detectives searched the uncle's basement and found hair clippings from a family haircut.
07:23And they matched hairs found on the last victim. And in 1970, Collins got life in prison. And
07:30Oregon's got caught by asking out the wrong girl. Cuz in 1968 to 1969, four women disappeared around Salem,
07:38Oregon. And the man taking them was an electrician and a family man named Jerry Brudos.
07:43So in 1969, Brudos started calling the women's dorms at Oregon State looking for dates. But one
07:50student thought something felt off and told police. So they set up the next date and caught him when he
07:55showed up. And at his house, detectives later discovered he kept pieces of his victims as trophies.
08:01But Minnesota's was already supposed to be dead. Cuz back in 1949, Harvey Kierichnen killed a woman in
08:08Alaska and was sentenced to hang. But his confession got thrown out and he walked free. So by the 1970s,
08:15he was placing help-wanted ads and preying on young women in Washington and Minnesota. And when police
08:21caught him in 1974, he said God had ordered him to do it. And he lived to be 95 and
08:27died in prison in 2023.
08:29But things were about to change. Cuz Montana's case taught the FBI how to hunt. Cuz on June 25,
08:371973, seven-year-old Susan Yeager was taken right out of her family's tent at a campsite near Three
08:43Forks, Montana. So the FBI tried something brand new. They built a sketch of the kind of guy who'd do
08:49this.
08:49Local, young, single, and a loner. And it pointed straight at a man named David Meirhofer. Then a year
08:56later, he called Susan's mother, Marietta Yeager, to taunt her. And she kept him talking long enough
09:02to get his voice on tape. So Meirhofer confessed. And he became the first serial killer the FBI ever
09:08hunted with a criminal profile. And they would have caught him even faster if they used my sketch.
09:14But a profile only works if you can catch the guy. And Utah's was the most famous one of all.
09:20Cuz Ted Bundy
09:21was handsome, charming, and in law school. And he killed at least 30 young women across seven states.
09:27But in November of 1974, he pulled up on an 18-year-old named Carol DeRange at a mall in
09:33Utah
09:34pretending to be a cop. And she fought her way out of his car. Then before dawn on August 16,
09:401975,
09:41a Utah Highway Patrol Sergeant named Bob Hayward saw a tan VW Beetle creeping through his neighborhood.
09:47And when he flipped his lights on, it ran. So Hayward pulled it over and found a crowbar,
09:53a ski mask, and handcuffs. And in 1976, Carol DeRange pointed right at Bundy in a Utah courtroom.
10:01But he escaped twice in Colorado. Once threw a hole in his jail cell's ceiling. So he ran to Florida,
10:07where he killed two young women at a Chi Omega sorority house. And a 12-year-old girl named Kimberly
10:13Leach. So on January 24, 1989, Florida put Ted Bundy in the electric chair. And outside the prison,
10:21people cheered. But South Carolinas kept killing from death row. Cuz Donald Peewee Gaskins was barely
10:28over 5 feet tall and claimed he killed over 100 people. And by 1976, he was locked up for good.
10:36But in 1982, somebody paid him to kill a death row inmate named Rudolph Tyner. So Gaskins hit a bomb
10:44inside a radio and got it to Tyner's cell. And when Tyner held it up to his ear, Gaskins set
10:50it off from
10:50his cell. And that's what got him executed in 1991. But the most hunted man in New York got caught
10:58by a
10:58parking ticket. Cuz in 1976 and 1977, a gunman with a .44 walked up on young couples and parked cars
11:06across New York City. He killed six and wrote letters to police calling himself the son of Sam.
11:12So women dyed their hair cuz he seemed to go after brunettes. But on July 31, 1977, right before a
11:20shooting in Brooklyn, the gunman parked his car too close to a fire hydrant. And the cop wrote him a
11:26ticket. So detectives ran every ticket from that night. And it led them to a postal worker named
11:31David Berkowitz. And he told police a demon speaking through his neighbor's dog had ordered him to kill.
11:38Bad doggy! Bad! But the worst man of the 1970s was a guy everybody in the neighborhood loved.
11:45Cuz John Wayne Gacy was a contractor outside Chicago. He threw big summer parties, he did local
11:52politics. And he dressed as a clown to entertain sick kids. But from 1972 to 1978, he lured young men
12:01and teenage boys back to his house and he killed 33 of them. Then on December 11, 1978, a 15
12:08-year-old
12:09named Robert Peast left work at a pharmacy in De Plains to talk to a contractor about a job.
12:14And he never came home. So police searched Gacy's house. And in the trash, they found a photo receipt
12:21from the pharmacy where Robert worked. So they went down into the crawl space. And they found 26 young
12:28men buried under the floor. Three more were elsewhere on the property. And after he ran out of room,
12:34he threw four in the river. So on May 10, 1994, Illinois executed John Wayne Gacy. And believe it or
12:42not, he still wasn't the worst of them. Meanwhile, out west, Wyoming's committed murders from a prison cell.
12:49Cuz in 1977, a bomb killed a lawyer and two of his family over a sewer line dispute. And the
12:56man behind
12:57it was Mark Hopkinson. So in 1979, from a federal prison cell, Hopkinson made 114 phone calls to
13:06arrange the murder of the key witness against him, Jeff Green. And in 1992, he became the first man Wyoming
13:13executed in 27 years. But Nevada's actually asked to be executed. Cuz Carol Cole grew up with a mother
13:21who beat him. And he spent decades killing women who he said reminded him of her. He claimed up to
13:2735
13:27killings across the country. So when he got the death penalty in Nevada, he refused every appeal.
13:34And on December 6, 1985, Nevada gave him exactly what he asked for. But George's case still isn't
13:41settled. Cuz from 1979 to 1981, more than two dozen black children, teenagers, and young men went
13:48missing or turned up dead around Atlanta. Then on May 22, 1981, police staked out a bridge over the
13:56Chattahoochee River and heard a loud splash. So they stopped the only car on the bridge, driven by a 23
14:02-year-old
14:03named Wayne Williams. And he was convicted of killing two adults. Then police closed more than 20 other
14:10cases on him without a trial. But a lot of the victims' families never believed he killed their
14:15children. So in 2019, Atlanta reopened the Atlanta child murders. But in Alaska, a killer turned people
14:23into prey. Cuz Robert Hanson was a quiet baker in Anchorage and a skilled hunter. And for over a decade,
14:30he flew women into the wilderness in his small plane, let them go, and hunted them down.
14:35But on June 13, 1983, a 17-year-old named Cindy Paulson escaped from him in handcuffs and flagged down
14:43a trucker. So police searched his house and found an aviation map covered in little X's. And Hanson
14:50confessed to 17 murders.
14:55And Connecticut's also asked to die. Cuz Michael Ross was an Ivy League grad from Cornell. And he killed
15:02eight women and girls across Connecticut and New York. But on May 13, 2005, he became the first man
15:09executed anywhere in New England in 45 years. On the flip side, even Paradise has got one. Cuz from 1985
15:18to 1986, five women were found strangled around Honolulu, all with their hands tied behind their
15:24backs. So the city formed a serial killer task force and called in the FBI. But the Honolulu
15:31strangler was never caught. But Alabama's was a teacher. Cuz in 1986, a man calling himself Daniel
15:39Spence taught art at the Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind in Talladega. And he killed two of his
15:45students, Sherry Weathers and Linda Jarman, and Sherry's two little boys. But his real name was Daniel
15:52Siebert. And after he got caught, he confessed to killing people across the country, going back to
15:571979. And he died on Alabama's death row in 2008. But in Virginia, science finally caught up to him. Cuz
16:06in
16:071987, women were being strangled in their homes in Richmond and Arlington. So a detective named Joe
16:13Horges zeroed in on a man named Timothy Spencer and sent his blood off for a brand new test called
16:19DNA.
16:20And it was a match. So Spencer became one of the first people in America convicted of murder with DNA.
16:27And on April 27, 1994, the first ever executed because of it. But that DNA did something else too.
16:35Cuz an innocent man named David Vasquez was already in prison for one of Spencer's murders.
16:40And in 1989, the science set him free. But Delaware's got caught by his carpet. Cuz in 1987 and 1988,
16:50women kept turning up dead along Route 40 in Delaware with tiny blue fibers on their bodies.
16:55So a police officer named Renee Tashner went undercover, posing as a woman working that stretch
17:01of road. And when a man in a blue van pulled up, she quietly pulled a few fibers off his
17:07carpet.
17:07He was an electrician named Steven Pennell. And the fibers matched. So Pennell became the first man
17:14Delaware executed in over 40 years in 1992. But Rhode Island started killing at 13. Cuz in 1987,
17:23a 27-year-old named Rebecca Spencer was killed in her home in Warwick, Rhode Island. And two years later,
17:29a mother and her two little girls were killed a few houses away. So police found a 15-year-old
17:35neighbor
17:35named Craig Price. And he confessed to all four. But under state law, a juvenile had to be released
17:42at 21 with a clean record. So Rhode Island changed the law, too late to apply to Price. But he
17:49kept
17:49getting convicted of new crimes behind bars. And he's still locked up today. But Missouris were
17:56senior citizens. Cuz Ray and Faye Copeland ran a farm in rural Missouri. And they hired drifters to buy
18:02cattle with bad checks. And then killed them before anyone could trace it. Then in 1989,
18:08a former farmhand called a tip line. And police dug up five men on their property. Ray was 76.
18:15Faye was 69. And at the time, she became the oldest woman ever sentenced to death in America.
18:22Shouldn't you guys be playing bingo somewhere? And Florida's hunted men on the highway. Cuz from 1989 to
18:291990, men kept turning up shot along Florida's highways. And police were hunting for a woman named
18:35Eileen Wuornos. She killed seven men. And she claimed the first one attacked her. But the jury
18:42didn't buy it. So on October 9, 2002, Florida executed her. But the most disturbing of them all
18:48lived in apartment 213. Cuz Jeffrey Dahmer killed his first victim in Ohio in 1978. And later, he lured
18:57young men back to his place in Milwaukee with the promise of money or a drink. And 17 of them
19:03never
19:03made it home. But in May of 1991, a 14-year-old boy was found in the street, dazed and
19:09bleeding. And
19:11Dahmer made up a story to tell the police. The police believed it and walked the boy right back to
19:16him.
19:17But on July 22, 1991, a man named Tracy Edwards escaped with a handcuff still on one wrist. And he
19:24flagged down two Milwaukee cops. So they walked him back to apartment 213. And inside, they found 74
19:32Polaroid photos of his victims. Then one officer opened the refrigerator and found a human head.
19:39And around the apartment were seven skulls and a 57-gallon drum full of acid. So overnight,
19:46Dahmer became America's most infamous killer. Then in 1994, another inmate killed him in prison.
19:5317 men. Ugh. Just gives me chills.
19:58But Mississippi's lied about almost everything. Cuz in 1991, a drifter named Donald Leroy Evans was
20:05arrested for killing a 10-year-old girl in Gulfport. And then he confessed to more than 60 murders in
20:1120 states. And police spent years chasing them. But most of it was just lies. But not all of it.
20:18Cuz two of
20:19his stories matched unsolved murders in Florida exactly. And in 1985, he really had strangled a
20:26woman there named Ira Jean Smith. So he got the death penalty for the girl. But in 1999, another
20:34inmate killed him before Mississippi could. And Iowa's killed to keep people quiet. Cuz in 1993,
20:40a meth dealer from Mason City named Dustin Honkin killed five people, including two little girls,
20:47to stop witnesses from testifying against him. And Iowa doesn't have the death penalty. So the federal
20:53government took over the case. And in 2020, Honkin was executed. But North Carolina's victims all knew
21:00him. Cuz from 1992 to 1994, Henry Louis Wallace killed young women in Charlotte. And most of them
21:08were his friends, his girlfriend's friends, or co-workers from the fast food places he managed.
21:13He even went to at least one of their funerals. And when he was finally arrested, he confessed to 11
21:20murders. But Colorado sent the police a scoreboard. Cuz in 1991, a 13-year-old named Heather Church was
21:27taken from her home near Colorado Springs. And four years later, a fingerprint search matched a man
21:33named Robert Charles Brown. Then in 2000, from prison, he sent investigators a letter. And it said the
21:40score was, you won, the other team 48. But police had only ever tied him to a handful of killings.
21:47And South Dakotas kept a kit. Cuz from 1994 to 1996, two young women disappeared around Sioux Falls.
21:56And police tied them both to a man named Robert Leroy Anderson, who kept chains and rope in his
22:02bronco. Then DNA sealed it. And he got the death penalty. But in 2003, he took his own life in
22:09his
22:09cell. But Tennessees went after people who were just closing up for the night. Cuz in 1997, Paul Dennis
22:16Reid robbed three fast food restaurants around Nashville. And he killed seven workers, most of them
22:21young after the doors were locked. And he died on death row in 2013. What's up with these fast food
22:29managers? Are they okay? And Maine's already got caught once. Cuz in 1977, James Rodney Hicks' wife
22:38disappeared. And in 1982, so did a woman last seen leaving a bar with him. So he did six years
22:45over his
22:45wife's death. But after he got out, a third woman vanished. Then in 2000, he finally led police to
22:52all three bodies. And his price was getting to serve his time in Maine instead of Texas.
22:57But the killers of the 21st century were about to find out there was nowhere left to hide.
23:03So we start with the man who got convicted of more murders than any other serial killer in American
23:08history. Cuz starting in 1982, young women started turning up in and around the Green River south of
23:16Seattle. And a detective named Dave Reichardt never let the case go. Cuz back in 1987, they'd taken a
23:23saliva sample from a truck painter named Gary Ridgway. But the tech just wasn't there yet. So in 2001,
23:29the lab tested it again. And after 19 years, it matched. So Ridgway pleaded guilty to 49 murders to
23:38avoid the death penalty. And he might have actually killed a lot more. But in Maryland,
23:43the killers didn't hide at all. Cuz in October of 2002, people started getting shot out of nowhere
23:49around Washington, D.C. while pumping gas or mowing grass. And six of the ten people killed were in
23:56Maryland. It was John Allen Muhammad and a 17-year-old named Lee Boyd Malvo shooting through a hole cut
24:03in
24:03the trunk of a blue Chevy Caprice. Then on October 24, 2002, a trucker named Ron Lance spotted that
24:11Caprice at a Maryland rest stop. So he parked his truck across the exit and waited for the cops. And
24:17that was the end of the D.C. Snipers. But New Jersey's hidden plain sight in scrubs. Cuz for 16
24:24years,
24:25a nurse named Charles Cullen moved from hospital to hospital killing patients with overdoses of their
24:31own medicine. But in 2003, his friend and fellow nurse Amy Lauren figured out what he was doing
24:37and helped police build the case. So he confessed to around 40. And some investigators think it could
24:44be hundreds. And her story became the movie The Good Nurse. But Kansas' killer got caught cuz he wanted
24:51the attention. Cuz from 1974 to 1991, a man in Wichita killed ten people and sent letters bragging about it.
24:59And he named himself BTK for Bind, Torture, Kill. And then he stopped. For 13 years, nobody heard a word.
25:08But in 2004, the letter started again. And he asked the police a question. If he sent them a floppy
25:14disk,
25:15could they trace it? So the police put an ad in the paper saying it would be alright. Then in
25:20February of
25:212005, he mailed in the disk. And the hidden data on it said two things. Christ Lutheran Church and a
25:28user named Dennis. And the president of that church council was named Dennis Rader. A husband, a father,
25:36a Cub Scout leader, and the town's dog catcher. And he got 175 years. 30 years of hiding. And he
25:44got ratted
25:44out by a floppy disk. But Arizona's shot at total strangers. Cuz from 2005 to 2006, two roommates in
25:53Phoenix named Dale Hosner and Samuel Dietman rode around at night shooting people, horses, and dogs
26:00from their car. They killed six people and shot dozens more. But Dietman bragged about it to a
26:06friend over drinks. And the friend went straight to the police. And New Mexico's is still out there. Cuz
26:13in 2009, a woman walking her dog on the edge of Albuquerque found a bone sticking out of the dirt.
26:19So police started digging. And they found 11 women, one of them pregnant, buried on the West Mesa.
26:26And to this day, nobody's been charged. But Vermont's flew across the country for his. Cuz in 2009,
26:34a construction worker from Alaska named Israel Keyes buried a kill kit in the woods of Vermont.
26:40Guns, cash, and supplies. Then in June of 2011, he flew back, dug it up, and killed Bill and Lorraine
26:47Courier in Essex, Vermont. He'd never met them before. And he had kits buried all over the country.
26:54But in 2012, he got caught using a dead girl's debit card in Texas. And before he told the FBI
27:01everything, he took his own life and his son. But Nebraska's held a grudge for 12 years. Cuz in 2001,
27:09a doctor named Anthony Garcia got fired from his medical residency at Creighton University in Omaha.
27:15So in 2008, he killed the son and the housekeeper of one of the doctors who fired him. Then five
27:21years
27:21later, he killed another doctor and his wife. And in 2018, he got the death penalty. But in Texas,
27:28a lawman got the worst serial killer in American history to talk. Cuz for 35 years, Samuel Little
27:35drifted across the country killing women he knew nobody was looking for. And their deaths got written
27:41off as overdoses and accidents. Then in 2018, a Texas Ranger named James Holland sat down with him
27:48in a prison interview room. And Little started talking and didn't stop. He confessed to 93 murders.
27:55And the FBI has confirmed about 60, making him the most prolific serial killer in American history.
28:01And the portraits he drew of his victims from memory helped put names back on women
28:06who'd been buried as nobody. 60 confirmed murders. I need a minute.
28:12But in New Hampshire, somebody had to figure out who the killer even was. Cuz in 1985, a hunter in
28:19Bearbrook State Park found a barrel with a woman and a little girl inside. And in 2000, a second barrel
28:25turned up with two more girls. And for decades, nobody knew who they were. Then a genetic genealogist
28:33named Barbara Rae Venter started building family trees from DNA. And she figured out the killer was
28:39a man named Terry Rasmussen, who'd lived under at least four different names. And one by one,
28:45she helped give his victims their names back. But she was also about to help catch the most wanted
28:50man in California. Cuz from 1974 to 1986, one man broke into homes across California at night.
28:59He committed more than 50 assaults and 13 murders. And then he just stopped. So they called him the
29:06Golden State Killer. And for over 40 years, nobody could catch the guy. But a cold case investigator
29:12named Paul Holes never quit. So in 2018, his team uploaded the killer's DNA to a public family tree
29:20website and found his distant cousins. And with Barbara Rae Venter's help, they built his family
29:26tree branch by branch until it pointed at one man, a 72-year-old grandfather in Sacramento named
29:33Joseph D'Angelo. And he used to be a cop. So police grabbed DNA off his car door and it
29:39matched.
29:40And on April 24, 2018, they arrested him in his own driveway. Then in 2020, he pleaded guilty.
29:47And the survivors got to stand up in that courtroom one by one and tell him exactly what he did
29:53to them.
29:53Cuz he outran every detective in California. But he couldn't outrun his own family tree.
29:59But if you think the real monsters were bad, not every monster in America was human.
30:04From a family digging up their own daughter to burn the heart out of her chest. To a giant moth
30:10that
30:10terrorized an entire state. To a ghost that wakes you up in the middle of the night looking for love.
30:15This is every state's darkest urban legend. So click right here. And whatever you do,
30:21don't open that door!
30:23Ah!