Conspiracy Theories, Cults, & Crimes

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Deadly Destinations: Paradise Lost Jul 12, 2026

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Three tropical destinations, three true crimes: in Aruba, 35-year-old Robyn Gardner vanishes from a beach with a travel companion who later tries to collect her life insurance... and is never charged. On Thailand's Koh Tao, British backpackers Hannah Witheridge and David Miller are found murdered at dawn, and the convictions that follow are disputed worldwide. In Bali, nine young Australians are arrested for heroin smuggling after their own government tips off Indonesian police, leading to two of them being executed by firing squad. This is episode 1 of Deadly Destinations, a special four-part series on Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes hosted by Vanessa Richardson. Four exotic locations that should have been a dream vacation, but ended in a nightmare. New episodes drop every Sunday, and all four are available now, ad-free, on Crime House Plus. Join at crimehouseplus.com or if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page.

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CRIME: The Mysterious Death of Marilyn Monroe Jul 10, 2026

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On the morning of August 5, 1962, Marilyn Monroe was found dead in the bedroom of her Los Angeles home. She was 36 years old. The Los Angeles County Coroner ruled her death a probable suicide from an overdose of barbiturates, citing her long history of insomnia, depression, and substance use. But almost immediately, the official story began to fray. Inconsistencies in the timeline, conflicting accounts from the people closest to her, and Monroe's well-documented ties to some of the most powerful men in America turned a tragic death into one of the most enduring mysteries of the twentieth century. In this episode of Conspiracy Theories, Cults, & Crimes, Vanessa Richardson revisits the final hours of Marilyn Monroe's life, the doctors and confidants who were near her that night, and the theories that have refused to die in the six decades since.

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CULT: Skull & Bones Jul 08, 2026

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Behind a windowless brownstone on the Yale campus known only as "the Tomb," fifteen students are tapped each year to enter one of the most powerful and secretive brotherhoods in American history. Its alumni have included three U.S. presidents, CIA directors, Supreme Court justices, and titans of finance and media. Founded at Yale in 1832, Skull and Bones has operated by a strict code of silence ever since. Members swear lifelong oaths, perform rituals in private, and confide their deepest secrets to one another before carrying those secrets into government, business, and intelligence. In this episode of Conspiracy Theories, Cults, & Crimes, Vanessa Richardson examines how a single Yale society built a network that quietly shaped the American century, and why critics argue the line between an elite club and something far more controlling can be thinner than it looks.

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CONSPIRACY THEORY: The Secret Plot to Kill George Washington Jul 06, 2026

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In the summer of 1776, as the Continental Army braced for a British invasion of New York City, a network of loyalist conspirators bribed five of George Washington's own elite bodyguards to murder him. Governor William Tryon orchestrated the scheme from a ship in New York Harbor, funneling money through the city's mayor to a gunsmith recruiter... and nearly pulling it off.

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Join Crime House+ to binge a special limited series on Murder: True Crime Stories for America’s 250th: The Crimes That Built America. These are the cases that created the FBI, gave us Miranda rights, sparked criminal profiling, and gave us America’s Most Wanted. Join at crimehouseplus.com or if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page. You’ll also get episodes of Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes ad-free and released one day early.

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CRIME: The Boston Massacre Jul 03, 2026

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On the night of March 5, 1770, British soldiers opened fire on a crowd of colonists on King Street in Boston, killing five men and wounding several others. In this episode of Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes, Vanessa examines how propagandists like Paul Revere transformed a chaotic street confrontation into a rallying cry that helped ignite the American Revolution. What really happened that night, and how much of what we know was shaped by those with something to gain?

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CULT: The Freemasons Jul 01, 2026

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For centuries, the Freemasons have counted kings, revolutionaries, and founding fathers among their ranks, a secret brotherhood whose rituals, oaths, and hidden hierarchies shaped the modern world. But when whistleblower William Morgan was abducted and murdered in 1826 for exposing their ceremonies, the cracks in the fraternity's noble façade became impossible to ignore. In this episode of Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes, Vanessa traces Freemasonry from medieval stone guilds to a documented Italian conspiracy that nearly toppled a democracy.

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CONSPIRACY THEORY: Who Drew the Nazca Lines? Jun 29, 2026

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In Peru's scorching Nazca Valley, ancient inhabitants carved enormous animal figures into the desert floor over a thousand years ago, figures so large they can only be understood from the air. In this episode of Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes, Vanessa traces the decades-long quest to decode these mysterious formations, from the mathematician who dedicated her life to the desert to the bestselling author who claimed they were built for alien spacecraft.

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CRIME: Captain Phillips & the Maersk Alabama Jun 26, 2026

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In April 2009, four Somali pirates boarded the MV Maersk Alabama in the Indian Ocean, taking Captain Richard Phillips hostage in a lifeboat standoff that gripped the world. In this episode of Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes, Vanessa examines how a routine cargo run became one of the most dramatic maritime hostage crises in modern American history. Four tense days passed before Navy SEAL snipers ended the standoff, killing three pirates and freeing Phillips.

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CULT: Pacific Cargo Cults Jun 24, 2026

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In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, indigenous communities across Melanesia developed powerful religious movements in response to the sudden arrival of European colonizers and wartime military forces bearing vast material wealth. Believing this "cargo" was spiritually theirs but deliberately withheld, followers built symbolic airstrips, mimicked military rituals, and wove new beliefs into ancient traditions. In this episode of Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes, Vanessa explores how these movements were far more than misunderstandings. They were sophisticated acts of cultural resistance in the face of colonial upheaval.

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CONSPIRACY THEORY: China's Bigfoot featuring Maci and Nadoly from GHOSTEAS Jun 22, 2026

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For over 2,000 years, the Yeren, China's legendary wildman, has haunted the mountains and folklore of rural China, inspiring fear, government bans, and even a state-funded scientific expedition. In this episode of Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes, Vanessa Richardson is joined by Maci and Nadoly from Ghosteas to trace the creature's origins from ancient poetry to modern eyewitness accounts, and the researcher who spent 50 years hunting for proof. What he found raises a fascinating question: what if the monster was never a monster at all?

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