Podcasts · History · True Crime
Conspiracy Theories, Cults, & Crimes
Crime House
143 episodes
Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes explores true stories of belief taken too far: murderous cults, criminal cover-ups, mass manipulation, and the conspiracies that still won't die. Hosted by Vanessa Richardson, three weekly episodes dig into cases like Jonestown, Heaven's Gate, CIA mind control experiments, and presidential assassinations. This is true crime at the intersection of faith, fear and manipulation.Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes is a Crime House Original, powered by PAVE Studios. Follow us on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe to @crimehousestudios on YouTube and follow us @crimehouse on Instagram.
Episodes page 1 of 3
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CULT: The Process Church: Christ and Satan
Founded in London in the mid-1960s by two former Scientologists, Robert de Grimston and Mary Ann MacLean, the Process Church of the Final Judgment taught that Christ and Satan were not opposites but complementary…
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CONSPIRACY THEORY: Amityville: Hoax or Haunting?
In November 1974, Ronald DeFeo Jr. shot and killed six members of his family in their house on Ocean Avenue in Amityville, New York. Thirteen months later, George and Kathy Lutz moved in with their three children and…
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HAUNTED TAKEOVER: Hidden History | The Voynich Manuscript
Something has crept into this feed…For Halloween, Hidden History with Dr. Harini Bhat has slipped through the walls to haunt your feed with an episode just for you. Locked in Yale's Beinecke Library sits a 600-year-old…
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CRIME: Danny Rolling: The Killer Who Inspired Scream
Over four days in August 1990, five students were murdered near the University of Florida campus in Gainesville. Their names were Sonja Larson, Christina Powell, Christa Hoyt, Tracy Paules and Manuel Taboada. The…
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CULT: Human Sacrifice: The Wicker Man
Around 53 BC, Julius Caesar wrote that the Gauls built enormous human figures out of woven branches, filled them with living people, and set them alight. That passage, written by a general describing the enemy he was…
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CONSPIRACY THEORY: Annabelle: The Warrens' Haunted Doll
In 1970, a nursing student in Connecticut was given a Raggedy Ann doll for her birthday. Within weeks she and her roommate believed it was moving around their apartment on its own, leaving handwritten notes, and…
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CRIME: The Astronaut Love Triangle
Early on February 5th, 2007, Air Force captain Colleen Shipman was walking to her car at Orlando International Airport when a woman in a wig and a trench coat followed her, banged on her window, and sprayed a chemical…
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CULT: The Family: Australia's LSD Cult
In the hills outside Melbourne, Australia, a yoga teacher named Anne Hamilton-Byrne convinced several hundred followers that she was Jesus Christ. Her members were not dropouts: they were doctors, lawyers, nurses,…
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CONSPIRACY THEORY: The Mandela Effect
In 2009, at a science fiction convention in Atlanta, a paranormal researcher named Fiona Broome discovered that strangers shared her vivid memory of Nelson Mandela dying in prison in the 1980s. Mandela walked free in…
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CRIME: Britain's First Female Serial Killer: Mary Ann Cotton
Long before the name Jack the Ripper struck fear into Victorian England, a respectable-looking widow named Mary Ann Cotton was quietly killing her way through the north of the country. By the time investigators caught…
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CULT: When Prophecy Fails: The Seekers
In 1954, a housewife in Oak Park, Illinois named Dorothy Martin began taking down messages from beings she called the Guardians, and told the small circle around her that a flood would destroy the middle of North…
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CONSPIRACY THEORY: Is Anyone Real Anymore? The Dead Internet Theory
In 2021, an anonymous forum post floated a theory that sounded absurd: the internet effectively died around 2016, and most of what we now see online, the posts, comments, arguments, and trends, is generated by bots and…
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Introducing WHAT THE FACT with Connor Tomlinson and Carter Roy, a new Rewind podcast!
Fun fact: Did you know Jaws almost never existed because the shark kept sinking while filming? That is Connor Tomlinson just getting started. If that sounds fascinating, you are going to love Rewind Studios’ new…
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CRIME: Victor Lustig: He Sold the Eiffel Tower Twice
In 1925, a con man calling himself Count Victor Lustig read that the Eiffel Tower was costly to maintain. He took a suite at one of the best hotels in Paris and invited five scrap dealers to a confidential meeting. On…
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CULT: The Church Universal and Triumphant
In the 1980s, a charismatic woman named Elizabeth Clare Prophet convinced thousands of followers that she was channeling messages from Jesus, Buddha, and a spiritual entity called Saint Germain, and that nuclear…
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CONSPIRACY THEORY: Aviation Industry Whistleblowers
John Barnett spent 32 years at Boeing before going public with alarming claims about faulty oxygen masks, substandard parts, and a corporate culture that punished anyone who dared to speak up. In March 2024, in the…
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CRIME: MH370
On March 8th, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished from the sky with 239 people aboard, disappearing during a routine flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. The plane's transponder went dark, it changed course…
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CULT: The Rosicrucians
In the early 17th century, mysterious manifestos appeared in Europe announcing the existence of a secret brotherhood called the Rosicrucians, said to possess hidden knowledge of alchemy, mysticism, and the deepest…
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CONSPIRACY: The Mad Monk Who Controlled the Romanovs
In the final years of Imperial Russia, a mysterious peasant mystic named Grigori Rasputin rose to extraordinary influence over the royal Romanov family. Trusted by the Empress for his apparent ability to ease her son's…
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CRIME: The Murder That Started World War I: Franz Ferdinand
On June 28th, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was shot and killed alongside his wife on the streets of Sarajevo by a young nationalist named Gavrilo Princip. The assassination was…
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CULT: The Thule Society: The Secret Group That Birthed the Nazi Party
In the aftermath of World War I, a secretive occult group emerged in Germany called the Thule Society, blending Norse mythology, racial mysticism, and extreme nationalism into a dangerous new ideology. Its members…
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CONSPIRACY: What Is Denver Airport Hiding?
Since it opened in 1995, Denver International Airport has been the subject of some of the most enduring conspiracy theories in America. Built years behind schedule and wildly over budget, the airport is famous for its…
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CRIME: Who Killed JonBenét?
In December 1996, 6-year-old beauty queen JonBenét Ramsey was found murdered in the basement of her family's home in the quiet mountain town of Boulder, Colorado, in a case that would become one of the most…
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CULT: Power in the Woods: Bohemian Grove
Deep in the redwood forests of Northern California lies Bohemian Grove, a private retreat where some of the most powerful men in the world, presidents, business titans, and political power brokers, have gathered in…
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CONSPIRACY THEORY: Did the CIA Invent Modern Art?
During the Cold War, the CIA quietly turned modern art into a weapon. Convinced that America needed to prove its cultural superiority over the Soviet Union, the agency secretly promoted abstract expressionist painters…
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CRIME: LSD & Mind Control: Operation Midnight Climax
In the 1950s and 60s, at the height of the Cold War, the CIA launched a secret program called Operation Midnight Climax as part of its notorious MKUltra mind-control research. Operating out of safehouses in San…
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CULT: God's Drug Empire: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love
In the late 1960s, a group of California idealists calling themselves the Brotherhood of Eternal Love set out to change the world through psychedelics, believing that LSD could bring about spiritual awakening and…
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CONSPIRACY THEORY: Brazil's UFO Cover-Up: The Varginha Incident feat. Laurah Norton from One Strange Thing
In January 1996, the small Brazilian city of Varginha became the center of one of the most famous UFO stories in South American history. Multiple witnesses, including three young women, reported seeing a strange…
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CRIME: Chico Mendes: Killed for the Trees
Chico Mendes was a Brazilian rubber tapper who became one of the world's most important environmental activists, organizing peaceful resistance against the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. By the 1980s, he had…
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CULT: The Ayahuasca Cult: Santo Daime
Founded in the Brazilian Amazon in the 1930s, Santo Daime is a religion that blends Catholicism, indigenous tradition, and African spirituality around a single sacred sacrament: ayahuasca, a powerful psychedelic brew.…
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CONSPIRACY THEORY: The Ark of the Covenant
According to the Bible, the Ark of the Covenant was a gold-covered chest built to hold the Ten Commandments, an object of such immense divine power that it could level cities and strike down anyone who touched it.…
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CRIME: The Mysterious Murder of Barry & Honey Sherman
In December 2017, billionaire pharmaceutical founder Barry Sherman and his wife Honey were found dead in their Toronto mansion, their bodies posed beside the indoor pool, each hanging from a railing by a belt. Police…
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CULT: Secrets of Opus Dei
Founded in Spain in 1928, Opus Dei is a Catholic organization built on discipline, secrecy, and the belief that ordinary life can be a path to holiness. Officially recognized and championed by the Vatican, it has…
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CONSPIRACY THEORY: The Pizza Connection
For nearly a decade, the Sicilian Mafia ran the largest heroin pipeline in the world, hiding it inside something as ordinary as the neighborhood pizza parlor. Morphine was bought in Turkey, refined into heroin in…
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CRIME: $200,000 and a Parachute: D.B. Cooper
In November 1971, a man calling himself Dan Cooper boarded a commercial flight in Portland, Oregon, told a flight attendant he had a bomb, and demanded $200,000 and four parachutes. After releasing the passengers in…
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CULT: Lords of Darkness: The Hellfire Club
In the 18th century, England's most powerful men, politicians, aristocrats, and intellectuals, gathered behind closed doors for a secret society known as the Hellfire Club. Founded by the wealthy rake Sir Francis…
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CONSPIRACY THEORY: The Princes in the Tower
In 1483, two boys, the 12-year-old King of England and his 9-year-old brother, were placed in the Tower of London by their uncle, who had sworn to protect them. In 1483, two boys, the 12-year-old King of England and…
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CRIME: Never Caught: Jack the Ripper
In the autumn of 1888, a killer stalked the impoverished streets of London's Whitechapel district, murdering and mutilating at least five women in a matter of weeks. The press dubbed him Jack the Ripper, a name drawn…
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CULT: Blood and Brotherhood: The Yakuza
For more than a century, the Yakuza have operated as Japan's most powerful organized crime syndicates, hiding in plain sight with corporate offices, business cards, and fan magazines. But beneath the legitimate front…
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CONSPIRACY THEORY: The Vanishing Fortune: Lost Confederate Gold
On April 2, 1865, Confederate President Jefferson Davis fled Richmond with the entire Confederate treasury, a fortune in gold ingots, silver bricks, and coins guarded by teenage Navy midshipmen on a train heading south…
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Deadly Destinations: Trip of a Lifetime
A young British teacher in Tokyo is stalked and murdered by a man who evaded police for two and a half years. An experienced hunter on a dream African safari is shot dead in her cabin — and her husband collects nearly…
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CRIME: One Bullet, One Nation: The Lincoln Assassination
On the evening of April 14, 1865, just five days after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, President Abraham Lincoln attended a performance of Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre in Washington. He was shot in…
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CULT: Knights of the Golden Circle
In 1854, an adventurer named George Bickley founded a secret society with a singular goal: build a slave empire stretching from the American South through Mexico, Cuba, and the Caribbean. He called it the Knights of…
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CONSPIRACY THEORY: Thomas Jefferson's Secret Family
In 1802, a journalist reported that President Thomas Jefferson was keeping an enslaved woman named Sally Hemings as a concubine and had fathered her children. Jefferson said nothing. His family denied it. America's…
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Deadly Destinations: Into the Wild
Three people sought refuge in remote wilderness — and never made it home safely. A young American woman vanished without a trace in Nepal's Himalayas, a serial killer preyed on hitchhikers along an Australian highway,…
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CRIME: The Donner Party
In the spring of 1846, a group of nearly ninety American pioneers set out from Springfield, Illinois, bound for California. They were farmers, merchants, and families with young children, led by a 60-year-old man named…
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CULT: Free Love, Total Control: The Oneida Community
In 1848, a preacher named John Humphrey Noyes founded a religious community in upstate New York built around an idea most Americans found unthinkable. At Oneida, traditional marriage was abolished in favor of what…
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CONSPIRACY THEORY: The MLK Assassination
On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was 39 years old. The killing triggered unrest in more than a hundred American cities and…
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Deadly Destinations: Death on the High Seas
Three separate journeys onto the water ended in death, disappearance, and unanswered questions. NBA champion Bison Dele vanished from his own sailboat in the South Pacific in 2002; cruise passenger Merrian Carver…
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CRIME: The FBI's War on Black America: COINTELPRO
Between 1956 and 1971, the FBI ran a secret program called COINTELPRO, short for Counter Intelligence Program. Its targets included civil rights leaders, Black liberation groups, anti-war activists, and feminist…
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