Crime Clueless

Barbara Mae Tucker was 19 years old — a business student at Mount Hood Community College, a former high school athlete, the baby of a big, blended family — when she was murdered walking to a night class on January 15th, 1980.

In her final minutes, multiple drivers saw her flagging down cars on a road at the edge of campus. Not one of them called police.

What followed was one of the largest investigations Gresham, Oregon...

This is part two of two, if you haven't, listen to part one, then come back to hear the shocking conclusion.

For years after Barbara Mae Tucker's murder in Gresham, Oregon, her case sat alongside a growing list of other unsolved local homicides — a running wound for a family, and a community, that never stopped waiting for answers.

Her mother died without knowing. Her father died without knowing. Her sister spent decades call...

In April 2010, Eric Preimesberger — a 29-year-old father of two known for his big smile and his beloved scooter — vanished from his Reno, Nevada home. His wife told police he'd stormed out after an argument and would never be back. For months, that was the only story anyone had.

But Eric's mother never bought it. She kept pushing, kept calling, kept refusing to let her son's disappearance quietly fade...

If you've been following the Josh Hunsucker case, you know he was arrested for his wife Stacy's death in 2019. What happened in the years after — while he waited, out on bond, for a trial that still hasn't happened — is a story we weren't prepared for either.

This week, we're covering everything that unfolded between his arrest and today: an ongoing wrongful death lawsuit from Stacy's parents, a change-of-venue fight bu...

Two weeks after a South Carolina eye drop poisoning case made national headlines, a flight paramedic's wife collapsed at their North Carolina home and died of an apparent heart attack — plausible, given her years of unexplained cardiac issues.

Josh Hunsucker refused an autopsy, had his wife cremated within two days, and filed for her life insurance before the week was out.

It would take a mother's suspicion, a preserved blood...

In May 2016, Lana Clayton walked into the York County Sheriff's Office and told deputies she'd accidentally shot her husband in the head with a crossbow while he slept. Steven Clayton backed up her story. Accident. No charges were filed. They moved on.

Two years later, Steve was dead — found at the bottom of the staircase in the South Carolina mansion he'd built as an exact replica of George Washington's Mo...

For over a decade, Sheriff Howard Sills has carried the unsolved murders of Russell and Shirley Dermond with him — a case that's outlasted every other investigation of his forty-year career. In this episode, we go deep into the man behind the badge, the staggering range of theories the public threw at this case — mafia, cult, extremism, even an alligator — and the family who's spent twelve years asking not f...

Russell and Shirley Dermond had been married for over 60 years. Retired, well-liked, and settled into a quiet gated community on Lake Oconee, Georgia, they were the kind of couple who never missed a neighborhood gathering — until the weekend of the 2014 Kentucky Derby, when they simply didn't show up.

Days later, concerned friends walk into their unlocked home and find a horrifying scene. 

This is part two of two. If you haven't listened to part one, do that first, then join us for part two.

The Gary Triano case had been cold for nearly nine years when a tip to America's Most Wanted led investigators to a storage unit in Yorba Linda, California.

Inside: microcassette recordings, thousands of emails, financial documents, a map of Tucson, a Ramada Inn receipt dated four months before t...

On the evening of November 1st, 1996, more than 100 people were waiting at Gary Triano's Sabino Canyon home to surprise him for his upcoming 53rd birthday. He never arrived.

Gary Lee Triano was a larger-than-life figure who served on hospital boards, and earned a Medal of Merit from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Task Force. He was also a man whose financial life had left a trail of lawsuits, failed casino deals,...

On the night of September 12th, 1985, 23-year-old CJ DeLuca was working an overnight shift at a Connecticut gas station he wasn't even supposed to be covering. By morning, he was dead — and three hours later, a second gas station attendant had been shot with the same gun.

This wasn't a random act of violence. It was a spree.

Forty years later, investigators believe they know who did it. They ...

On the morning of June 27th, 2000, sixteen-year-old Molly Bish was dropped off for her second day as a lifeguard at Comins Pond in Warren, Massachusetts. She walked toward the water with her things, her mom watched her go, and drove away. Less than fifteen minutes later, the chair was empty. Molly's flip-flops, her first aid kit, her lunch and her towel were sitting at the water's edge — but Molly wasn't there.

<...

This is episode two of two. Please listen to episode one first, this story has too many details to be one part. 

When a former employee named Steven Durst was caught collecting ransom money for the missing couple, the investigation took a dark turn. Durst failed a polygraph and had been telling people the Markleys owed him exactly $1,000 — the same amount withdrawn at the bank. 

He wa...

On a Friday morning ten days before Christmas 1995, John and Shelly Markley helped their five children get ready for school. By the time their kids came home that afternoon, both parents had vanished — leaving behind Shelly's purse and cigarettes, John's wristwatch, an open gun cabinet, a ransacked safe, and a coffee pot that had nearly boiled dry.

The only confirmed sighting that day came from a bank telle...

Hey, Crime Clueless family — we're doing something a little different this week. We're bringing you a two-part crossover from our sister show, Vanished Voices, hosted by Jenna and Shannon.

This is part two of two, if you haven't listened to Part One yet — start there. This story deserves to be heard from the beginning.

On the morning of April 20th, 2011, workers...

Hey, Crime Clueless family — we're doing something a little different this week. We're bringing you a two-part crossover from our sister show, Vanished Voices, hosted by Jenna and Shannon. Vanished Voices focuses on cases that deserve far more attention than they get. 

This week's case is Phylicia Barnes. She was sixteen years old. A straight-A honor ...

The murders of Rose Burkert and Roger Atkison at the Amana Holiday Inn in September 1980 left investigators with a hotel full of witnesses and not a single person who heard a thing. In Part Two, Jenna and Laura dig into the suspects — and there's no shortage of them.

There's Danny Burton, Rose's ex-boyfriend who stalked her relentlessly, killed her dog, and was the person Rose herself told police to look at if she ended up de...

September 1980. A young couple drives four hours from Missouri to a Holiday Inn in rural Iowa for a secret weekend together. When they arrive, the hotel is fully booked — a morticians' convention has taken every room. But a last-minute cancellation opens up Room 260.

By the next afternoon, both are found dead — hacked with an ax, face down on the bed, in one of the most disturbing crime scenes in Iowa history. Chairs pu...

Holly Searcy lost her mother to murder at 10. She lost her father to murder at 19. She battled her own addiction before getting sober and becoming a substance abuse counselor. Now, she's the one fighting for the case no one else has been able to solve.

In Part 2, Holly opens up about what it's like to grow up with both parents taken by violence, the moment she decided to pick up the torch from her exhausted aunt and become her moth...