Nineteen-year-old Ashley Wadsworth travelled from British Columbia to England to spend time with Jack Sepple, a man she had built a relationship with online. At first, it looked like a romantic adventure: sightseeing, smiling photos, and the excitement of finally being together in person.

But behind the pictures, the relationship became controlling and dangerous. Ashley decided she wanted to return home to Canada. Before she could leave, Sepple killed her.

In this episode, Febriana tells John the story of Ashley Wadsworth’s murder, the warning signs in Jack Sepple’s past, and the difficult questions this case raises about coercive control, international relationships, online intimacy, and what can happen when an abusive partner realizes they are losing control.

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In this episode of TMTC, John tells Febriana about Rachel Barber who was 15 years old and training full-time at a performing arts school in Melbourne when she told her boyfriend she had a job after class.

An old female friend was going to pay her a lot of money. Rachel didn’t say the woman’s name. Then she never came home.

In this episode, we cover the murder of Rachel Barber and the case against Caroline Robertson, a former family friend and babysitter whose obsession with Rachel became much darker than ordinary jealousy.

Police would later uncover clothing that did not belong to Caroline, handwritten planning material, a fake identity, and a murder that had been thought through step by step.

This case raises disturbing questions about envy, self-hatred, identity, and what happens when someone stops seeing another person as real.

Listener discretion is advised. This episode discusses the murder of a minor, strangulation, body disposal, and psychological obsession.

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Today's episode is one of the strangest and most unsettling cases we've covered so far: a woman who wrote a children's grief book after her husband's death, then was later convicted of murdering him.

Febriana tells John the case of Kouri Richins, a Utah mother and real estate investor whose husband, Eric Richins, died from a lethal dose of fentanyl in 2022. At first, Kouri publicly presented herself as a grieving widow trying to help her children process the loss of their father. But investigators uncovered a very different story involving financial pressure, life insurance, forged documents, a prior poisoning attempt, and a marriage where Eric had reportedly feared his wife was trying to kill him.

In this episode, John hears the case for the first time as we talk through public grief, image management, financial desperation, and the disturbing question at the center of the case: what kind of person turns a death they caused into part of their public identity?

Content warning: murder, poisoning, fentanyl, family trauma, grief, and children affected by parental death.

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In 1983, Diane Downs drove to an Oregon hospital with her three children shot in the car. She said a stranger had attacked them on a rural road.

But her story quickly started to fall apart.

This week, we cover the Diane Downs case: the strange hospital arrival, her relationship with Robert “Nick” Knickerbocker, the children she may have seen as obstacles, and the daughter who survived long enough to tell the truth.

Content warning: This episode discusses violence against children, child death, and parental violence.

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A mother is killed inside her own home. A father is shot and left for dead. Their daughter is upstairs, tied up, calling 911.

At first, it looks like a home invasion. But then the father wakes up, and the story starts falling apart.

In this episode of Tell Me The Crime, we cover the Jennifer Pan case: the fake grades, fake university, fake work, hidden relationship, staged home invasion, and years of lies that led to one of Canada’s most disturbing family murder cases.

Was this about freedom, money, Daniel, shame, control, or the fear of finally being caught?

Listener discretion is advised. This episode discusses murder, family violence, and coercion.

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In this episode of Tell Me The Crime, we examine the disturbing case of Jean-Claude Romand, the French man who spent nearly eighteen years pretending to be a doctor and researcher connected to the World Health Organization.

His wife believed him. His children believed him. His parents, friends, and even people who trusted him with money believed him. But there was no real medical career, no WHO job, and no normal workday. When Romand left home “for work,” he often spent his days in cafes, libraries, parking lots, service stations, and airport hotels, waiting until it was time to come home and continue the lie.

When that false life finally started to collapse, Romand did not confess. He killed his wife, his two children, his parents, and tried to kill another woman who had trusted him.

This episode looks at identity, shame, family annihilation, deception, status, and the psychology of a person who seemed to find exposure more unbearable than destruction. The central question: did Jean-Claude Romand kill because he could not live without the lie, or because he could not live with the people closest to him seeing the truth?

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In this episode of Tell Me The Crime, we examine the devastating case of Andrea Yates, the Texas mother who drowned her five children in 2001. There was never any question that Andrea committed the act. The question was whether she was legally sane when she did it.

This case forces a difficult conversation about postpartum psychosis, religious delusions, criminal responsibility, and how the legal system should respond when severe mental illness and unimaginable harm collide.

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Michelle Carter and Conrad Roy’s case is one of the most disturbing we’ve covered.

It is about a teenage girl convincing her boyfriend to kill himself. But not just that. According to what Michelle later told a friend, when Conrad got scared and tried to back out, she told him to get back in.

This episode looks at the texts, the pressure, the promise, and the messages Michelle sent to friends before Conrad was even dead. The central question: was this just encouragement, or was it intervention against the part of him that was still trying to live?

This episode discusses suicide and coercive text messages. Listener discretion is advised.

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A family of four was murdered inside their Tokyo home.

Then the killer stayed.

He left behind blood.
Clothes.
A knife.
Fingerprints.
DNA.

Clues everywhere.

But more than twenty years later…

no name.

No arrest.

No answer.

This is the Setagaya Family Murder.

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A neighbor asks for help. A veteran says yes. And within hours, two people are dead.

In this episode, we cover the murders of Sam Herr and Julie Kibuishi, a case involving trust, money, staged evidence, and a plan that briefly made one victim look like the killer.

Daniel Wozniak was days away from his wedding when Sam disappeared and Julie was found dead in Sam’s apartment. What looked at first like one story quickly became something much darker.

This is a case about manipulation, performance, and how a crime scene can be arranged to point investigators in the wrong direction.

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Her name was Laci Peterson.
She was eight months pregnant with a baby boy named Conner.

By the end of the day, her dog would be found wandering alone.
Her house would be empty.
And her husband would have a story that would raise more questions than answers.

Within days, the case would become a national obsession.

Because what looked like an ordinary holiday morning…
would unravel into something much darker.

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Travis Alexander’s friends knew something was wrong.

Not “murder” wrong.

But wrong.

She showed up unannounced.
She seemed to know things she should not know.
She inserted herself into his life even after the relationship was over.

Then Travis missed a trip.

His friends went to his house.

And they found him in the shower.

Stabbed more than 27 times

His throat cut.
Shot in the head.

And the woman everyone had already been worried about…started telling stories.

First, she was never there.

Then, intruders did it.

Then, finally ... she admits the shocking truth

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He left to clear his head.
Just a short trip to a waterfall trail near Mount Salak.

A few hours passed.
Then he came home.

But when he walked through the door—
his family was already mourning him.

Because to them…
he had been gone for three months.

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A woman goes out for a run… and disappears.

When her husband finds her phone, it’s lying on the ground.
With earbuds and hair stuck in them.

Three weeks later, she’s found on the side of the road. 

Bruised. Beaten. Even Branded.

There's a chain around her waist… and a story about being kidnapped.

But the DNA evidence....tells a different story.

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She arrived in Los Angeles alone.
Just another traveler—passing through a city full of strangers.

At first, nothing seemed out of place.
She explored the city, spoke with people, and stayed in a downtown hotel.

But within days, something began to change.

Her behavior became increasingly unusual.
Guests grew concerned.
And then—she vanished.

Weeks later, what was discovered inside the hotel…
would turn the case into one of the most unsettling mysteries in recent memory.

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She got into the car willingly.

At first, everything felt normal. Familiar. Safe.

But over the course of a single night, something began to shift.

Not all at once—but enough that someone could have stopped it.

No one did.

And each moment made the next one harder to turn back.

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He lived a completely normal life.

Husband. Father. Church member. Nothing about him stood out.

But over time, something else was happening—something hidden, controlled, and deliberate.

And eventually…

he started communicating.

Not to confess.

But to be known.

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An 8-year-old girl vanishes in Bali, Indonesia.

Not from a crowded street—but from inside her own home.

At first, it seems impossible.

Then the story starts to unravel.

And what investigators uncover next…

is darker than anyone expected.

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A brutal murder.

A confession that seemed to settle everything. A case the system considered closed.

But something didn’t sit right.

Years later, one piece of evidence forces a second look—

and raises a much darker question:

What if they got it completely wrong?

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A man is found dead on a beach.

No identification. No clear cause of death. No explanation for how he got there.

But hidden in his pocket…

is a message no one can decode.

And the deeper investigators dig—

the stranger it gets.

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It started with footprints in the snow.

They led to the house—but never came back out.

Then came the sounds from the attic. The missing keys. The feeling that someone was watching.

By the time anyone understood what was happening…

it was already too late.

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