When the family of a beloved high school teacher is brutally killed, investigators race to make sense of a chaotic crime scene that defies simple explanation. They find themselves asking: was the whole thing staged? And if so, who staged it and why?

In June 1998, 23-year-old Marcus Rutledge vanishes after taking his daughter to daycare. His disappearance reveals a life filled with secrets...and even after the discovery of his skull, his family is left wondering if they'll ever know what really happened.

In 1928, a 30-year-old woman is found barely alive, burned beyond recognition, in a basement of a small-town local police station… and her chilling last words and the bizarre circumstances of her death are just as mysterious now as they were a century ago.

When 19-year-old Jeannette left the little rented house she shared with her husband Matt in Odessa, Texas on the evening of September 13th, 1982, he had every reason to believe she’d be back in no time. What he couldn’t have known was that a silent countdown started the moment she walked out the door...

For Christy Luna and her friends, weekends were spent roaming the neighborhood and playing outside barefoot. But this storybook community had darkness lurking just under the surface, and it reared its ugly head one May night in 1984.

Back in October of 2023, we were contacted by one of Alice Griego’s son, Frankie, about covering his mother’s case. Our reporting team had already flagged his mother’s case as one we needed to take a closer look at. We are confident someone out there knows the truth.

Since the moment her death was discovered in April of 1993, the family of Valarie Fiorenza has doubted that she got a fair and thorough investigation. Her boyfriend was a cop, their relationship was tumultuous, and Valarie had even made claims of abuse in court, but when her body was found in that boyfriend’s basement, investigators decided that the circumstances could only point to one conclusion, and it wasn’t murder.

For almost three years, the case of Katharina Reitz Brow languished without information or evidence that could bring a true ending to the search for answers. And then when someone was finally arrested, charged, and convicted of her murder, a hard-fought battle by the suspect’s own sister unearthed evidence in a dusty courthouse basement that changed everything about the case nearly two decades later.

From the very beginning of the investigation into the disappearance of Iris Brown, everyone suspected the same person had something to do with it. She left home with the suspect on the night she was last seen alive, the suspect’s behavior in the days following her disappearance raised countless red flags, and forensic evidence pointed to something bad happening inside the suspect’s car, but proving beyond a reasonable doubt exactly what happened wasn’t going to come quick and easy.

When a beloved mother and grandmother working part-time as a gate attendant at a popular Atlanta-area park is gunned down during a late-night robbery, authorities are quick to make an arrest… But somehow, 20 years later, her case remains unsolved.

When a devoted family man and avid hunter disappears while tracking deer in the Sierra National Forest, there are few clues as to what happened to him. Then, when his vehicle surfaces, investigators are faced with even more frustrating questions.

Two young people are found brutally shot to death on a remote Canadian beach in 1972, and one man quickly becomes the center of the investigation. However, he manages to elude capture for nearly 40 years and leaves a wake of devastation and other violent crimes in his path.

A story about a message thread that slowly unravels a devastating lie.

The Group Chat

Written by Marie Boadway and read by Abigail Turner. Sound design & mix by Jessica Jurewicz and produced by David Flowers with production assistance by Anna Kelley & Seth Williams.