A Simpler Time True Crime

A Simpler Time True Crime

I’m Megan, your host, and each week I revisit unsolved cases from decades past, stories that have too often been forgotten or overlooked. Together, we examine the facts, question the myths of the “good old days,” and ask whether a simpler time was ever really a safer one. This podcast honors the people at the heart of each case, focusing not on sensationalism, but on the lives affected and the justice still waiting to be served. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/a-simpler-time-true-crime--6665681/support.

Episodes

May 4, 2026 44 mins
One night in the spring of 1981, a North Dakota teenager didn’t come home. Sometimes when it feels like someone has vanished into thin air, there are very few leads to go on. And for many of the decades that followed, that’s how this case appeared to people outside the local area. There was one clear last sighting of Barb, and then she was gone. But as the case was revisited and looked at more closely by her family, an investigativ...
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An arrest has been made in the 1991 Killing of Cindy Wanner. Here you'll hear the original episode plus the updates. 

A mother is making a little extra money by cleaning her sister's house in an upscale neighborhood. She is feeding her eleven-month old daughter cereal in her high chair while cleaning each room. Somewhere in a small forty-five minute window, someone would gain access to the house and brazenly abduct Cindy in front of...
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From 1986 to 1990, a small community in Louisiana was shaken by a series of disappearances involving teenage girls and young women. By 1990, after multiple cases happened close together, people began to notice patterns.

Some of the victims shared similar appearances. A few were last known to be using a phone, including public payphones, around the time they vanished. Some were the teenage daughters of military families stationed nea...
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Hi A Simpler Time True Crime Podcast Listeners! This week I'm sharing an investigative podcast with you that my friends over at Fire Eyes Media have been working so hard on. Please check out episode 1 today and then go susbscribe to their podcast. 

Introducing the new long form investigative podcast from the team behind Missing in Hush Town, Secrets Beyond the Sacramento River.
Subscribe now wherever you get podcasts and catch new ep...
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On November 1, 1999, Dayton Police Officer Kevin Brame spent an unexpected evening with his two sons and his family. His estranged wife had called to say the boys were hoping to see him, and he never passed up a chance to be with them, especially as everyone was adjusting to life during the separation. He got the boys home in time for baths and bed on a school night, and stayed a little while to set up the new video game he had bou...
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This Episode is Part 2 of the Molly Bish case. If you haven’t already listened to part 1, go back and do that now or this won’t make a lot of sense. In part 1 we discussed Molly, the days leading up to her abduction, the aftermath of the search, and the work her family is done to not only find resolution in her case but to help other families as well. We left off in May of 2003, with a hunter finding what looked to be a torn piece ...
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Its June of 2000 and sixteen-year-old Molly Bish is on day eight of her new job. Fulfilling the role her brother held the summer before, she’s the lifeguard at the local pond in her tiny New England town. In the short window of time between her mother dropping her off and the first kids arriving for swim lessons that day, Molly disappears. When a large-scale search of both the water and nearby land turns up no sign of her, everyone...
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In the late summer of 1973, a graduate student is living alone in an off-campus apartment, taking summer classes to get ahead. She’s well known on campus, the kind of person who’s involved in everything. She’s also a gifted musician with a lot going for her. After a day spent socializing, her night ends with a short walk home, what should have been just a 60 foot stroll across her apartment courtyard. But by the next day, no one ca...
On an early spring evening in 1998, a young soldier returns home on leave, visiting his family for the first extended time since enlisting in the U.S. Army. He’s back in the Bronx neighborhood where he grew up, a place where he had already begun to defy expectations and set his life on a different path.

 Late on a Friday night, he heads out and cuts through the same local park he passed through countless times before. In an instant,...
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Its May 2004 in Aurora, Colorado and a 53-year-old man is starting a fresh chapter of his life. To help keep up with expenses, he rents out a basement apartment within his townhome.  After his most recent roommate moves out, he places an ad to fill the space. Things look promising when he identifies someone interested in the place who even puts money down and signs a rental agreement. But when the homeowner doesn’t show up for work...
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In the early summer of 2001, a young man just weeks away from his twentieth birthday was called into work early at the restaurant where he worked. His car was in the shop, so he arranged a ride with a female coworker. They agreed to meet at the local high school before heading to their shift together. Jason left home to meet her. He never made it. No one reported seeing a struggle. Nothing appeared out of place. And whatever happen...
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In the fall of 1997, a college senior says goodbye to her mother and heads out for the evening, planning to spend a little time with friends cruising around her small hometown. But when her curfew comes and goes without a call, her family immediately knows something is wrong. After a sleepless night spent searching and calling friends, her mother and stepfather contact police. Then Erica’s car is found. But Erica is nowhere to be s...
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In late January of 1968, an Iowa State University freshman was hoping to make her way home to Evanston, Illinois for the weekend. She had planned to ride back with her boyfriend, but when those plans fell through, she needed another way home. Rather than thumbing a ride along the side of the highway, students on campus had something a little more organized. A ride board where people could offer rides or request one themselves. Shei...
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On January 7th, 1996, a historic storm moved into the Northeastern United States, and first responders across the region began preparing for what they knew could be a long and unpredictable night. When Thomas Dorr received a call from the firehouse where he volunteered in his town, he told them he would head in and stay overnight to help if needed. But Tom never made it to the firehouse.

A search for him would end in a devastating d...
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In February of 1983, young mother Ora Owens woke up to every woman’s worst nightmare. A man standing over her bed watching her as she slept as she is home alone with her children. After leaping out of bed to try to run for help, the stranger caught up to her, dragging her back into her bedroom and violently attacking her. In the middle of the attack, her four-year-old son Mitchell walked in. He bravely said to the assailant “You’re...
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I first came across Detective Robert Klein while covering the 1996 murder of Jasmine Porter. Detective Klein was the lead investigator on her cold case, and more than two decades later, he was the one who put the handcuffs on her killer.

Recently retired from the NYPD after an accomplished career that included reaching the rank of Detective First Grade, Detective Klein joined me to talk about what detective work really looks like be...
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On a holiday weekend in 2003, a woman was working overtime to get a project across the finish line for her employer. When her digital footprint trailed off and loved ones failed to hear from her, both her friends and colleagues grew concerned. Concern that was merited when a grisly discovery in the nearby Green River revealed she had met a horrific end to her life. Those closest to her believe the answer to who killed her is obviou...
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On a summer night in 1988, an eight-year-old girl and her mother were at a neighborhood laundromat near their home, sitting together and talking while their first load of laundry finished. As they talked, they barely registered the movements of a man who entered the laundromat and passed through their line of sight. Moments later, he attacked them without warning. Injured and terrified, they managed to make it roughly one hundred y...
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It’s not every day that a town of just six thousand people becomes known for so many strange and unlikely things.

Snowflake, Arizona, named after Erastus Snow and William Flake, is often described as the most Mormon town west of the Pecos. But in sharp contrast to its religious roots, it is also home to one of the largest cannabis cultivation operations in the country. It is the place where Travis Walton famously claimed he was abdu...
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“There is no actual physical injury, is there, other than some bruising? I am not suggesting that bruising is nice, but there is no disfigurement. There are no broken bones. There are no serious physical injuries, are there?”

Those words were spoken by Criminal Court Judge Lorin Duckman at a bail hearing for the man who had been relentlessly stalking and abusing Galina Komar. Galina was present in the courtroom that day, forced to l...
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