True Crime Reporter

by Robert Riggs This isn’t the kind of story I usually tell. The police didn’t converge on the scene with sirens blaring and guns drawn. But what happened inside a Dallas apartment co...

The story sounds like something straight out of a spy thriller.  A plot by America’s most feared criminal syndicate and its most secretive intelligence agency to assassinate a foreign leader using ...

In this episode, we continue our deep dive with retired FBI Special Agent Robin Dreeke—a man whose job wasn’t just catching spies but recruiting them. Dreeke led the FBI’s elite Counterintelligence...

Whether walking through a dimly lit parking lot, meeting someone new, or even evaluating the behavior of people close to you, the ability to read people and size them up could mean the difference betw...

Beware of the Fraudster Knocking At Your Door Scammers don’t just lurk online—they may be coming straight to your front door. For centuries, con artists have refined their craft, using deception...

How well do we truly know our friends? Can we discern when they are lying, or even worse, when they might be hiding a deadly secret? In this episode, I delve into the unsettling story of Fred Roeh...

In the blood-soaked pantheon of Depression-era gangsters, one killer stood apart - not for his height, but for his face.  Witnesses consistently described him as looking like "an angel," with brigh...

Mike Cox’s name is synonymous with Texas crime reporting.  Cox spent decades covering grisly crimes, working as a police beat reporter and later as the Chief of Media Relations for the Texas Depart...

True Crime Reporter® presents a story that straddles the line between horror and history. Mike Cox, a veteran police beat reporter and former chief of media relations for the Texas Department of Publi...

Joe Pulizzi, the Godfather of Content Marketing, takes an audacious leap into crime fiction, delivering a story that is as mesmerizing as it is chilling.  Set within the haunting confines of a fune...

Chaos erupted inside the impenetrable Walls Unit prison in Huntsville during the scorching Texas summer of July 1974.  Frederico “Fred” Gomez Carrasco, a notorious drug lord often compared to Pablo...

Investigative Reporter Robert Riggs dives into the mind of a serial killer with author John David Bethel as we explore his latest novel “Mapping The Night.” Bethel's books stand out for their profo...

Genaro “Geno” Ruiz Camacho's drug empire thrived on violence.  In the late 1980s in Dallas, he ruled with an iron fist and displayed an almost unimaginable cruelty towards those who crossed his pat...

If Minneapolis police officers had been wearing body cameras, would it have prevented the excessive force that led to the murder of 46-year-old George Floyd? Dr. Jennifer Matthews says Body-Worn Ca...

Dallas Socialite Sandra Bridewell cultivated an image of elegance and vulnerability. In part one of our series, Beneath the Charm: Unveiling The Black Widow, Sandra Bridewell’s first husband’s life...

Amidst the sprawling cityscape of Dallas, where power and prosperity intersect with secrets and lies, Sandra Bridewell's story unravels. Bridewell was a beautiful, alluring socialite in the affluen...

Through the mist of forgotten histories, the figure of William J. Flynn beckons, offering a glimpse into a life that, though eclipsed by time, remains a testament to human endeavor and spirit. In t...

The mystery of Patty Hearst's transformation from a college student born into privilege to a Marxist militant wielding an M-1 carbine in a bank robbery remains as compelling as ever on the 50th annive...

David Berkowitz, known as the “Son of Sam,” terrorized New York City for a year in the late 1970s with a series of random murders and cryptic taunts to police and the press. Ever since then, the qu...

This story shrouded in mystery, involves a Texas prison escapee that could be ripped straight from a spy novel. Bank robber and suspected drug smuggler Charles J. Woods of Dallas made a daring esca...

Death Row Calling--I Know Where Your Daughters Live I delve into the shadowy underworld of contraband communication, where prisoners wielding illegal cell phones orchestrate a web of threats and cr...

Nothing Good Happens After Midnight In the vast, rugged terrain of Texas, where the stories of outlaws and the law are etched into the very soil, we find a beacon of knowledge in an unexpected ...

In this episode, I’m going to take you behind the high walls and razor wire into the dark corners of the largest prison system in the world.  David Stacks, a former Texas prison warden with 30 year...

This episode marks a somber milestone.  The 25th anniversary of the execution of Kenneth Allen McDuff – a name that chills the soul of the men and women in law enforcement who hunted him down – and th...

PDuring the Great Depression, Newsreels about John Dillinger, the first gangster declared Public Enemy #1, drew cheers from movie audiences across America and hisses when pictures of J. Edgar…...

There's a crime trend sweeping the United States of flash mob thieves charging into department stores to make off with armfuls of loot. Gangs rush inside affluent suburban neighborhoods in night to br...

Investigative Reporter Stephen Michaud, among the nation’s best, spent six years unraveling how an iconic ranch was taken from a dying Texas Cowboy. It's a sprawling Texas ranch near the border wit...

Doug Noll says murderers are not born, they're bred. Today kids revert to what they see around them...violence. Doug Noll founded the Prison of Peace Project. Noll teaches hardcore inmates how to d...

The Bandido's Intimidating Presence On U.S. Highways A violent war for control of illicit drugs and weapons leaves a deadly trail of bullets and blood across highways in the U.S. Southwest. It s...

Road rage violence shatters records on US Highways. Experts say a perfect storm of post-pandemic anger and violent criminals out of jail due to liberal bail practices has set off a wave of deadly road...

Former NCIS Special Agent Joe Kennedy established the first federal cold case homicide unit.  Starting in 1986 with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), Kennedy investigated crimes invo...

If you are a fan of the NCIS television drama, you are in for a treat. My guest is homicide investigator Joe Kennedy, a former Special Agent for the real-life NCIS. NCIS Special Agent Joe Kenned...

The high school baseball player hung a homemade motivational sign on the wall of his bedroom.  It read Brandon Puffer will be a Major League Baseball player. Indeed, Puffer made it to what ballplay...

Steve January, the Chief Deputy of the McLennan County Sheriff in Waco, Texas, was a lawman cut from denim of the old west. Hundreds of officers recently paid their last respects to January, whose ...

God forbid if I ever was murdered, I would want Johnny Bonds on the case.    His name sounds like a film noir detective. Johnny Bonds is the stuff true crime legends are made of.  In 1972, he be...

Before, there was Osama bin Laden. Before, there was Timothy McVeigh. There was Ted Kaczynski.  The UNABOMBER. FBI codename for “UNiversity and Airline BOMBER.” For sixteen years, Jamie Gehring...

50 Sexual Assault Victims Will Never Forget The Stare of Serial Rapist David Hawkins When He Held A Gun To Their Heads This is the third episode in my series about how new DNA technology solves pre...

The Golden State Killer got away with 12 murders, 50 rapes, and more than 100 burglaries for over forty years before being caught.  DNA evidence from his crime scenes never matched DNA samples in t...

The Double Helix That Catches Killers And Sexual Predators Sitting across the desk from a DNA profiler, she told me that I was leaving a trail of cells in her office that would lead back to me, esp...

Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were two of the most notorious outlaws in American history, forever linked to the public consciousness.  They were young, daring, and dangerous, and they captured the...

Kenneth McDuff - "The Brookstick Killer" & Jerry McFadden "The Animal" Texas Death Row Inmates Called Them The “Macs.” Kenneth McDuff and Jerry McFadden.   Two violent psychopaths hated and f...

Jerry "Animal" McFadden Pastor Wayne Whiteside says, “there are people that seem to be hell-bent on being held bound.” Whiteside knows of what he preaches after ministering to prison inmates for...

Jerry and Dava Truett lived well beyond their means in the small central Texas town of Kosse. They owned a lake house and a speed boat. They drove a pair of expensive pickup trucks and numerous recrea...

Chris Hansen, the journalist who created the televised series To Catch A Predator, warns that the problem of adults preying on children for sex is growing at an alarming rate.  The National Center ...

The previous episode showed how homicide detectives solved 50-year-old cold cases. They analyzed old evidence using new DNA extraction technology pioneered by Othram, a forensic genealogy lab in Te...

14-year-old Stephanie Anne Isaacson Prom Photo 1989 14-year-old Stephanie Anne Isaacson left her father’s apartment in North Las Vegas on June 1, 1989. She walked through an empty sandlot, her u...

Don Bentley Pictured With His Helicopter Gunship In Afghanistan Don Bentley’s career zigzagged from flying an Army helicopter gunship on combat missions in Afghanistan to working counterintelligenc...

There’s a bank in Quantico, Virginia, that gets robbed every day. And I am going to take you there. Hello. I’m Robert Riggs.  In this episode of True Crime Reporter®, former FBI Agent Don Ben...

In the previous episode, Inside Story Of The Deadliest Attack On Police Officers Since 9/11, the negotiator for the Dallas SWAT team revealed the inside story about the mass killer who ambushed Dallas...

On the evening of July 7, 2016, Black Lives Matter protesters marched in downtown Dallas and other cities nationwide. They peacefully gathered in response to the police shootings of two black men, ...