Episode 358

In Delray Beach, Florida, a routine traffic stop led police to a young man covered in blood. By the next morning, a body had been discovered. What followed was a tense interrogation — and a motive that felt disturbingly small compared to the violence it produced.Get instant access to all episodes, including premium unreleased episodes, commercial-free at swordandscale.com

13-year-old Madeline Soto vanishes on what should have been an ordinary school morning in Kissimmee, Florida. She’s dropped off just a block away, and nothing about it feels unusual. She walks off, heading toward school… and disappears. By the afternoon, panic sets in. Calls to 911 reveal a family scrambling for answers: rechecking routes, calling friends, waiting for help that isn’t coming fast enough. She never made it to class. No one saw her arrive. Beneath the family’s lies, it’s a race against the clock to find Maddie.Get instant access to all episodes, including premium unreleased episodes, commercial-free at swordandscale.com

When 25-year-old biomedical engineer Jonathan Amerault disappeared, it felt like another one of his hiking trips had gone horribly wrong. But the scene in the woods, and the female co-worker found beside his brutalized body, told a much more sinister story of love and blind rage.Get instant access to all episodes, including premium unreleased episodes, commercial-free at swordandscale.com

On a cold April afternoon in Milwaukee, two men walking along the Lake Michigan shoreline make a gruesome discovery: a human leg tangled in the weeds below a bluff. Within days, more body parts start surfacing across the city, and even across state lines. The remains belong to 19-year-old college student Sade Robinson, a young woman with a promising future - cut short. Piece by piece, investigators put together the puzzle of Sade’s grisly demise and learn that not everyone is redeemable.Get instant access to all episodes, including premium unreleased episodes, commercial-free at swordandscale.com

In 2008, University of Wisconsin–Madison student Brittany Zimmermann was murdered in her apartment in the middle of the day, and then the trail went cold. An unlikely informant leads the police to search for two mystery men, a theory that would steer the investigation for years. As time passed and leads fell apart, the case slowly faded from view. Twelve years later, detectives discovered the truth wasn’t buried; it had been right in front of them all along.Get instant access to all episodes, including premium unreleased episodes, commercial-free at swordandscale.com

When Virgil and Shirley Best were found dead in their home, investigators expected a familiar explanation. What followed instead was an investigation defined by uncertainty and a motive that challenged the idea that violence always comes from clear intent.Get instant access to all episodes, including premium unreleased episodes, commercial-free at swordandscale.com

In 2022, when 57-year-old Harold Allen was found dead in his Indiana home, the case was ruled natural. Nearly a year later, a brazen burglary and a string of buried messages bring detectives back to the same address and to Marsha Allen, the woman who said she loved him. What starts as a property crime becomes a chilling reexamination of Harold’s final days, as small-town routines, late-night deliveries, and a quiet house of secrets point to something far darker. No one is ready for where the evidence leads or what it costs.Get instant access to all episodes, including premium unreleased episodes, commercial-free at swordandscale.com

Beloved father and prominent attorney, Gary Farris, should have been safe on his own land. But in July 2018, he vanished from his family’s rural dream property, and a smoldering burn pile would unravel everything they thought they knew about their home, their marriage, and each other.Get instant access to all episodes, including premium unreleased episodes, commercial-free at swordandscale.com

In 2016, 22-year-old Cati Blauvelt was found stabbed to death in the basement of an abandoned house. The search for her killer would uncover a story of control, deception, and betrayal — and reveal how one man turned trust into a weapon.Get instant access to all episodes, including premium unreleased episodes, commercial-free at swordandscale.com

When 43-year-old Diane Holik was found dead inside her Austin home, homicide investigators were left with more questions than answers. Diane had no enemies. There was no apparent reason for anyone to want her dead. But as detectives dug deeper, they uncovered a web of obsession, deceit, and darkness that defied understanding and revealed a killer hiding in plain sight.Get instant access to all episodes, including premium unreleased episodes, commercial-free at swordandscale.com