Threads of Truth

In 1922, six people were murdered at Hinterkaifeck, an isolated farmstead in Bavaria. The crime was never solved, and the surviving investigation record leaves us with a haunting question: how much can documents tell us about a case when they cannot tell us who committed the crime?This episode of Threads of Truth follows the paper trail: police reports, witness statements, investigative notes, official correspondence, and later accounts connected to the Hinterkaifeck murders. We examine the warnings reported before the killings, the circumstances surrounding the discovery, the direction of the investigation, and the many theories that grew around the case.

One café in Jakarta. One glass of Vietnamese iced coffee. One sudden collapse and a murder trial that became a national spectacle.On 6 January 2016, Wayan Mirna Salihin met friends at Olivier Café in Jakarta's Grand Indonesia shopping mall. After drinking her iced coffee, Mirna became seriously ill and later died. Her friend Jessica Kumala Wongso was accused of placing cyanide in the drink and was ultimately convicted of premeditated murder, receiving a 20-year prison sentence.But the case was far from straightforward. No eyewitness testified to seeing Jessica put poison into Mirna's coffee. Prosecutors relied on CCTV footage, circumstantial evidence, witness testimony and forensic interpretations. Defence experts challenged aspects of the toxicology evidence, while disputes over the interpretation and enhancement of surveillance footage added another layer of controversy.

In the early hours of 11 May 2012, a fire tore through a council house on Victory Road in Allenton, Derby.Six children were inside.Jade, Duwayne, John, Jack, Jesse and Jayden died as the fire engulfed the house while they slept. Their father, Mick Philpott, his wife Mairead and family friend Paul Mosley would eventually be convicted of six counts of manslaughter.But the case began with a very different story.

Was this the same killer who had terrorized Mumbai?Or was Kolkata witnessing a copycat or an entirely separate series of murders?Police never proved the connection. No definitive offender was identified. No conviction established who was responsible for the Kolkata killings, and the Mumbai series likewise remained unresolved.In this episode of Threads of Truth, we examine the two waves of killings, the victims who were largely invisible to the cities around them, the investigative difficulties facing police, the theories surrounding the identity of the killer, and the question that has never been conclusively answered:Was there really one Stoneman or did the name hide several different killers?

Fourteen years after Bobby, Sherilynn and Madyson Jamison vanished in the Oklahoma wilderness, the case remains surrounded by unanswered questions.Their truck was found abandoned.Their belongings remained inside.Years later, their remains were discovered.But what happened during those missing years?In Episode 214, Threads of Truth returns to the Jamison family case and examines the landscape from a new perspective including drone footage and the question of whether important evidence was missed, overlooked or misunderstood.Three people walked into the wilderness. Their final story may still be hidden in the landscape.

On a wet December night in Dublin in 2000, 22-year-old bank employee Trevor Deely went to his work Christmas party, spent part of the night at a nightclub, and then disappeared.What makes the case particularly haunting is that much of Trevor's final journey was captured on CCTV.After leaving Buck Whaley's nightclub in the early hours of December 8, Trevor went to his workplace to collect an umbrella because of the extremely wet weather. At approximately 3:35 a.m., CCTV showed an unidentified man speaking with him at the rear entrance of Bank of Ireland Asset Management.At 4:14 a.m., Trevor was recorded again on CCTV passing an ATM on Haddington Road.Thirty-four seconds later, another man was captured walking in the same direction.Gardaí have continued to investigate the identity of the unidentified man and, as of their 25th-anniversary appeal in December 2025, were still seeking information that could help explain what happened to Trevor.This episode reconstructs Trevor's final known movements, examines the CCTV timeline, considers the significance of the unidentified man, explores the early investigation and later cold-case review, and separates established evidence from theories that have developed around the disappearance.

Robert Pickton became one of Canada's most notorious convicted serial killers after six counts of second-degree murder led to a life sentence in 2007.But the case was never simply about one man or one farm.For years, women were disappearing from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, many of them vulnerable women whose disappearances generated repeated concern from families, friends and communities. Pickton's Port Coquitlam property eventually became the centre of an enormous investigation, producing thousands of pieces of evidence and exposing serious questions about how missing women's cases had been investigated.The Missing Women Commission of Inquiry later examined the police response to the disappearances and the decision to stay earlier charges against Pickton. Its report identified major investigative failures and produced 63 recommendations for policing and missing-person investigations.Pickton was convicted of six murders. Twenty additional first-degree murder charges were stayed in 2010. He died in prison in 2024 following an assault by another inmate.

Between 1963 and 1965, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley murdered five young people in and around Greater Manchester.Three of the victims were children.The crimes became known as the Moors Murders, and the bleak landscape of Saddleworth Moor became inseparable from their story.In 1966, Brady and Hindley were convicted of three murders. Years later, they admitted responsibility for two additional victims: Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett. Reade's remains were eventually recovered, but Keith Bennett's have never been found.For decades, the case has raised questions that go beyond the murders themselves.How did Brady and Hindley become involved in the killings?What role did each of them play?Why did Hindley spend years maintaining that her involvement was less extensive than prosecutors claimed?And why has the search for Keith Bennett continued long after both killers died?The case also became a landmark in the history of British true crime not only because of the brutality of the murders, but because of the way the media, the courts and the public responded to them.

In Rajasthan, India, surrounded by the Aravalli hills, lies the ruins of Bhangarh Fort a place that has become almost synonymous with curses, ghosts and forbidden places.According to legend, Bhangarh's destruction began with a mysterious ascetic known as Balu Nath, who supposedly allowed the city to be built on one condition: its buildings could never cast a shadow over his home.Another legend tells of Princess Ratnavati, a woman whose beauty supposedly captivated a tantric who attempted to use magic to make her fall in love with him.

In the rural community of Biddulph Township, Ontario, the Donnelly family had become infamous.For decades, disputes over land, religion, crime, family rivalries and accusations of violence had poisoned relations between the Donnellys and their neighbours.Then, on the night of 4 February 1880, an armed group descended on the Donnelly homestead.