Not Today

On September 29th 2016, 45 year old Elizabeth Wettlaufer voluntarily reported herself as a serial killer to Toronto Police. Wettlaufer injected her victims with fatal doses of insulin because she believed God was telling her to. Her victims were elderly and vulnerable, ranging in age from 75 to 96.

Harry Houdini was a Hungarian-born American magician and escape artist, renowned as the "Handcuff King" for his death-defying escapes. He became world-renowned for escaping from handcuffs, straitjackets, milk cans, and locked chests, often while submerged in water. While his death was not a direct result of his performances, he had a few terrifying brushes with death and another magician who attempted one of his acts did tragically die on stage when something went wrong.

In this Listener story episode we discuss almost falling into an upside down volcano, a parent who was held at gunpoint, very creepy characters in Disneyland Paris, and more!

The Word of Life Christian Church began as a tiny bible study led by self proclaimed prophet, Jerry Irwin. Eventually the bible study progressed into a fully fledged cult with around 80 members at its peak. When the paranoid and power-hungry Jerry Irwin suddenly died, his eldest daughter Tiffanie took his place. As the leader, Tiffanie subjected the group to extreme isolation, control, and abuse which ultimately would result in the brutal murder of 19-year-old Lucas Leonard.

22-year-old Hannah Pettey, a married mother of two from Alabama, suffered debilitating pain and lost more than 45 pounds as her health rapidly declined. As doctors worked to figure out what was causing the months of Hannah’s pain, they concluded someone had been poisoning her and whoever it was, they were probably pretty close to her.

In 2003 Ken Jones spent four agonizing days in the frozen wilderness of Romania’s Transylvanian Alps, dragging himself to safety after getting hit by an avalanche that left him with a shattered pelvis and broken femur.

Janie Lynn Ridd and her roommate Rachel Booth had been best friends for 25 years, but when Rachel began getting mysteriously sick leading to multiple hospitalizations, she discovered that Janie allegedly tried to purchase an extremely dangerous strain of anti-biotic resistant bacteria to poison her with. And even worse, that wouldn’t have been Janie’s first attempt at Rachel’s life over the past year.

On January 6, 1994, U.S. Olympic figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was attacked at the Cobo Arena in Detroit, just before the national championships. An unknown assailant attacked Kerrigan as she left skating practice, hitting her with a metal pipe, targeting the knee on her landing leg in an apparent attempt to knock her out of the upcoming Winter Olympics. The event turned into a massive scandal when Nancy’s attacker was linked back to her biggest competitor, Tonya Harding. 

In July of 2013, 19-year-old musician, Jessie Blodgett, was found strangled in her own bed, with no signs of forced entry. Jessie was loved by everyone who knew her, so friends and family had no idea who could have committed this intimate crime. The case took a surprising turn when, soon after Jessie’s murder, detectives got a call from a neighboring town that a man wielding a knife attacked a young woman walking her dog in a park, and a clue found at that scene connected both victims to the same killer.

While on a week-long diving expedition in Komodo National Park, James Manning, Charlotte Allin,  Kath Mitchenson, Lauren Pinel and Helena Naradainen resurfaced to find their dive boat missing. When they saw the boat return, they tried to flag it down, but the boat didn’t notice them. An hour later, the divers were horrified to see the boat speed away, leaving them stranded in the middle of the ocean.  

In this episode we'll be discussing some terrifying phrogging stories including a man hiding in a young girls closet and weird occurrences in a college house that lead the guys living there to believe it may be haunted!

In September of 2015, Isabel Eriksson was drugged, kidnapped, and locked in an inescapable bunker. When she woke up, she found her date, Martin Trenneborg, sitting in the room with her. His plan was to keep her and several other women there for years.

On July 30, 1945, The USS Indianapolis was struck by two torpedoes from a Japanese submarine, which took down the ship in only minutes. Of 1,195 crewmen, ~900 entered the water, facing sharks, painful dehydration, and exposure for nearly five days before they were finally rescued. It was the U.S. Navy's single worst loss of life at sea.

Dean Faiello worked in construction before being employed at a day spa, where he became skilled at hair removal. In 1996, he began his own practice, SkinOvations, from an office on Park Avenue. The medical spa offered blood vessel removal, electrolysis, laser hair removal, laser skin treatments, tattoo removal, and facials. Faiello was fraudulently practicing medicine as a dermatologist when he was arrested by the New York Police Department in October 2002, after one of his “patients” was reported missing and was suspected dead.

Joanne Lees and her boyfriend Peter Falconio thought they were taking the trip of their dreams but it would sadly end in a tragedy so massive the whole world would know their names. While driving down an isolated road in Australia's outback in 2001, Peter was flagged down by a mysterious driver and was shot and killed on the side of the road. The man attempted to abduct Joanne but she managed to escape and later provided a description that led to the capture of their attacker.

After attempting to take a leisurely self-guided tour of the ancient Mayan ruins in the jungle on Cozumel island, Ken Wilson became hopelessly lost when he split up from his group and lost track of the trail. By the time Ken had realized he didn't recognize his surroundings he was already deep in the jungle and too far away for anyone to hear his calls for help. Every step he took brought him deeper into the jungle maze, further from rescue as darkness approached.

Let's close out 2025 with some bone chilling survivor stories that our listeners wrote in, including a close call with a famous serial killer, a terrifying encounter at an empty gas station, a run-in with an escaped convict, a nasty electric scooter accident, and more!

Family drama turned deadly when an ostracized mother-in-law, Theresa White, arranged to have her daughter-in-law, Melissa Shreve, murdered by an old friend with alleged mob connections.

Donna Cooper, her daughter Gina, and Jenny Leung took a drive into Death Valley for a day of exploring. After deciding to take a detour they realized too late that their GPS was leading them further into the desert with no real direction. Two hundred miles later they were out of gas and almost out of hope that they would get out of there alive.

The Donner Party was a group of American pioneers who migrated to California along the Oregon Trail in a wagon train from the Midwest. After taking a new and dangerous shortcut, the party became trapped by an exceptionally heavy snowstorm in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. When their food supply ran out the group resorted to cannibalism of those already dead.

On November 14, 1974, Barbara Mabee Abel returned home from work with her 6-year-old son to find the Casanova Killer, Paul John Knowles, waiting in her kitchen with a double barrel sawed-off shotgun. To protect her son and sister, she convinced Knowles to take only her, begging him to kidnap her instead of harming her family. During her captivity, she employed a survival strategy of charming him and attempting to make him fall in love with her to keep him from killing her. By this time, Paul John Knowles, had already been on a 4 month killing spree and claimed to kill more than 35 people.

Merthe, a 15-year-old girl, sent 78 friends on facebook a public invitation to her 16th birthday party at her home. However the event was set to public and it got picked up and taken over online. What should have been Merthe’s 16th birthday party ended up as a gathering of tens of thousands of people causing riots and a great deal of damage on September 21st 2012 in the town of Haren, Groningen, Netherlands.

On July 22nd 2010, Dave Akers and Gary Nall decided to take a sight seeing trip in Gary’s small plane. What should have been a short flight before sunset turned into a fight for their lives after the plane got caught in a powerful down draft that caused them to crash almost 4,000 feet up a remote mountain side in the Alaskan wilderness. Despite their injuries, the men quickly discovered their only option was to attempt to hike off the mountain.

The night before Thanksgiving 2021, Leslie Reeves and Chris Smith went on their first date after hitting it off online. The next day, friends and family became increasingly anxious when they couldn’t reach either one of the pair. Leslie’s best friend Nanette Stuiber was so worried she showed up to Chris Smith’s home, which was when she and one of Chris’s concerned loved ones discovered something was very wrong inside the house. When authorities arrived they found the glass on the back door had been shattered, there had been a struggle, and both Chris and Leslie had been shot. Leslie had been murdered and Chris was clinging to life. Investigators needed to piece together what could have happened in the hours leading up to the discovery of this grizzly crime scene.

In December 1968, 20-year-old Barbara Jane Mackle was kidnapped from her motel room and buried underground in a ventilated box that was designed to keep alive for a full week while she was held for ransom. Her kidnappers, Gary Steven Krist and Ruth Eisman Schier, demanded $500,000 from Barbra’s father Robert Mackle, who was a very famous and wealthy Florida businessman. Over the course of 83 hours Robert, along with the help of Richard Nixon, Jay Edgar Hoover, and the FBI, did exactly what the kidnappers demanded to get Barbra out of the box alive.

On Halloween night in 2004, three roommates spent the evening handing out candy to trick-or-treaters before going to bed. A few hours later, Lauren Meanza was awoken to the sounds of the screams of her roommates, Adriane Insogna and Leslie Mazzara, above her. As she opened her bedroom door, she heard whoever had been attacking her friends coming down the staircase toward her, so she bolted out the backdoor. Leslie and Adriane would be found brutally murdered in an upstairs bedroom, and Lauren would live tormented by the survivors' guilt from that night. The investigation would bring to light that their killer was a lot closer to the girls than anyone could have imagined. 

In April of 2009 four Somali pirates boarded the Maersk Alabama, a US/Danish cargo ship off the coast of Africa, a notorious piracy hotspot. The crew aboard the Alabama did everything they could to keep the pirates from gaining control of the ship, however the pirates still held multiple crew members hostage, including Captain Richard Phillips. After chief engineer, Mike Perry, managed to capture one of the pirates, the crew attempted to negotiate an exchange of hostages. However the failed attempt led to Captain Phillips being held on a lifeboat with the pirates, who demanded a $2 million ransom for his release. The captain's capture resulted in a standoff between the pirates and the US Navy, including Navy SEAL Team Six.

Let's talk about some terrifying Reddit Let's Not Meet stories!

In this episode we're talking about two terrifying instances of intruders living in their victim's home. In our first story, Tina Bowen, her sister Karen, and thier friend Kathy, believed the ghost of their mother haunted the Bowen home, but after months of terrifying signs they would learn that a highly disturbed 16-year-old boy named Daniel Laplante had been living in the cellar for six months. In the second, an intruder broke into a couple's brand new home and left something surprising in the basement.

Christopher Thomas’ obsession with Samantha Stites began in 2011 after meeting her through a Christian student group. What began as seemingly innocent contact quickly devolved into constant unwanted attention. His behavior grew more sinister over the years as he relentlessly harassed and tracked her through her college years and beyond. Stites was granted a personal order of protection which lasted six years, however as soon as it expired Christopher was back as if he had never left.  In October 2022, Christopher broke into her home, kidnapped her and took her to a soundproof bunker he had built inside a rented storage unit. While inside the bunker, he told Samantha he had been inspired by Joe Goldberg from the thriller series, You.

On February 21st 2008, Melissa Oxley frantically called 911 after finding the dead body of her husband, Ben, lying next to her in bed. Ben had been shot in the head with a shotgun and killed in his sleep, so Melissa hid with her 6-year-old stepdaughter Alyssa as they waited for authorities. After police arrived, they searched for an intruder but found nothing, and all evidence seemed to be pointing to Melissa as her husband's murderer. However, 6-year-old Alyssa always knew her stepmother was innocent, and what she saw that night would change the course of the investigation. 

On April 25th 2006, a small earthquake triggered an underground rockfall at the Beaconsfield gold mine in northern Tasmania. Of the seventeen people who were in the mine at the time, fourteen escaped immediately following the collapse, however three men were unaccounted for. Larry Knight, Brant Webb and Todd Russell were missing and only two of them would come out alive after two weeks being trapped nearly 1 kilometer below the surface.

Let's talk about some terrifying Reddit Let's Not Meet stories, including two men in purge masks on the side of the road, an attempted kidnapping, a dog named parmesan that saved her family from a man with a very large knife, and more!

Benjamin Obadiah Foster was the subject of a statewide multi-day manhunt after he  attacked his ex-girlfriend, Justine Siemens, beat her unconscious, then fled the scene. Local police would soon discover that Foster had a history of violence against women years before he attacked Siemens. This man was extremely dangerous and needed to be caught fast.

On December 20, 1980 in Lengby, Minnesota, 19-year-old Jean Hilliard was involved in a car crash in sub-zero temperatures. Instead of staying in her car and potentially freezing to death, Jean decided to walk to a friend’s house about 2 miles away. Because it was -22 degrees outside, Jean’s body gave out only 15 feet from her friend’s front door. She was found the next morning and rushed to the hospital. Her body was so frozen that medical staff couldn't even administer a hypodermic needle without it snapping.

On October 29th 2022, a crowd surge occurred during Halloween festivities in the Itaewon neighborhood of Seoul, South Korea, killing 159 people and wounding 196 others. It is one of the deadliest disasters in South Korea.

On July 29th 2023, five people sat down for what was supposed to be a nice lunch at the home of Erin Patterson, a 48 year old woman from rural Victoria Australia. Within 24 hours, 4 of those guests had fallen violently ill with what appeared to be food poisoning, and within a week, three of them were dead. Keep an eye out for our Bonus Episode tomorrow!

In 2010, Cynthia Guy-Thomas, an addiction therapist, blackmailed her patient into helping her find a hitman to kill her ex-husband.

This week we'll be diving into some of the stories of our listeners!

17-year-old Anthony Templet was charged with second degree murder after he shot and killed his father, Burt Templet, in June of 2019. On the surface, the case seemed simple: a young man shot his father in the midst of an argument. Anthony had even called 911 and confessed to the crime directly after committing it, being described as calm and emotionless. But Anthony's case was anything but simple. Anthony was the victim in the story, and the first time he received the help and care he deserved was after killing his father.

In Part 2 we'll be diving into the many crimes of the Barrow Gang and the inevitable demise of Bonnie and Clyde.

American Airlines flight 965 from Miami to Cali Colombia was almost at it’s destination when it crashed into a nearby mountain during landing. Only four passengers survived.

Bonnie and Clyde were a pair of infamous American outlaws who, along with their gang, engaged in a spree of bank robberies and murders across the United States during the Great Depression.

Best friends, Jamie Andrew and Jamie Fisher, decided to leave their group vacation to take on one of the most difficult climbs in the French Alps. While climbing the pair found themselves trapped on a tiny ledge in a sudden and viscous storm.

Phrogging is the act of secretly living in someone else's home without their knowledge or permission. It's a form of hidden intrusion, where the perpetrator lives alongside the homeowners, often in unused spaces like attics, basements, or crawl spaces, while avoiding detection.

in 2014, Carlesha Freeland-Gaither was abducted at random off the street in Philadelphia. Thanks to Carlesha's quick thinking and a witness to the crime calling 911, investigators were able to find Carlesha before it was too late.

After getting bit by a bat, Jeanna Giese was the very first person to survive rabies without the rabies vaccines thanks to an incredible team of doctors that came up with a new and experimental treatment plan!

Five teenage boy scouts and their guides had a plan to hike one of the most difficult trails into the Grand Canyon. They only had enough water to make it down to the Colorado River, but once they made it there, they would refill and have plenty of water to hike back out. They didn't expect to hike into a heatwave and run out of water well before they could get down to the river.

Seemona Sumasar spent seven months in jail after her ex-boyfriend orchestrated an elaborate scheme to frame her in a spree of faked armed robberies.