Episode 269

In April of 2015, two young women in Indiana went missing. They lived nearly 200 miles away from each other and seemed to have no connection at all. The only similarity they shared was that one was expecting to have a baby and the other had recently given birth. Tragically, after family members frantically searched for both women, their respective stories ended with only one of them being found alive.

Nancy Lewton evacuated her Florida home ahead of Hurricane Ian but a different storm was on her horizon. Not being able to contact her son Travis for days sent her all the way to Toledo, OH to check on him. When days passed and family members hadn’t heard from her or her son they called the police. What the police would find was one of the more bizarre cases they had ever investigated.

When 25-year-old Whitney Hostler went missing and left her two-year-old daughter behind, everyone knew something was wrong. But they never expected that the person responsible would be one who claimed to care for her so deeply.

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Isabella Tagliarini was in bed with her new boyfriend, Nicholas Wilcox, when her former boyfriend, Eric Robinson, would get out of prison early and pay them a visit. What unfolded was an unspeakable crime and the entire case would hinge on Isabella’s fragile credibility.

In April of 2009, 17-year-old Brittanee Drexel went to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina for spring break. On the evening before she planned to return home, Brittanee went missing. Her disappearance remained unsolved for over a decade. Thirteen years would go by before Myrtle Beach Police and the FBI could determine that Brittanee had crossed paths with a monster.

In April of 2017, Georgia teenagers Johnny Rider and Cassie Bjorge unexpectedly arrived at a friend's apartment. The young couple appeared distraught and injured. Later, a SWAT team came to collect them. Johnny Rider and Cassie Bjorge were arrested and charged with committing a brutal double homicide.

Amber Smith and Trenton Mallory had a simple life together with two boys and a wedding in the works. Then Amber came home to find their house ransacked and Trenton dead. No one could have expected such a tragedy to hit a small snowy town and the killer only would be revealed as the ice started to melt.

In early September of 2016, two young men from Gillette, Wyoming went missing. About a month later, the local police were alerted to a strange, black pickup truck that was parked on the side of a road. This truck reportedly smelled like rotting flesh. When police arrived to investigate, they found the missing men, but they didn’t find all of them. They only found a few chopped-up pieces.

Sunday, February 1, 2004 was Superbowl XXXVIII, a game between the Carolina Panthers and the New England Patriots. Sarasota Springs, a medium-sized community in Florida, was celebrating the game like most other American towns: with beer, food, and family. While the rest of Sarasota Springs indulged in the festivities with their loved ones, one family was desperately searching for one of theirs, an 11-year-old girl named Carlie Brucia.