Stay ConnectedFrom the award-winning creator of Down The Hill: The Delphi Murders, comes DEVIANT, a new true crime series that dives into the dark corners of what human beings are capable of. Host Dan Szematowicz tells good stories about bad people who do very bad things.
Some people are wired for good. Some are wired for bad. And some are wired… to be Deviant.
Follow the show wherever you listen and across socials @deviant.podcast (IG, TT, YT)
Copyright: © Cold Open Media 2024
In small towns, fear doesn’t always hide in the shadows.
Sometimes it writes letters.
Sometimes it carries a shotgun.
In this episode of DEVIANT, host Dan Szematowicz takes you inside two real American nightmares.
In Circleville, Ohio, thousands of anonymous letters turn a quiet town inside out, exposing secrets, destroying lives and leaving behind a mystery that’s never solved.
In Skidmore, Missouri, a man named Ken Rex McElroy terrorizes his neighbors for years while the law looks away. And then, one July afternoon, the town decides to take justice into its own hands.
Two towns. Two reckonings. One truth: when fear becomes unbearable, silence breaks.
Follow on Instagram and TikTok @deviant.podcast.
SOURCES:
State of Ohio v. Paul Freshour (1983); Columbus Dispatch archives; Circleville Herald archives; Unsolved Mysteries (NBC, 1993); CBS 48 Hours (2021); In Broad Daylight by Harry N. MacLean; Kansas City Star and Washington Post archives; FBI and Missouri State Highway Patrol case summaries.
Copyright 2025, Cold Open Media LLC
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
(RE_AIR)) He brags about his crimes for years, but nobody takes him seriously until 1992 ,when he’s caught in the act. Now everyone is listening as police attempt to untangle the full mystery of Joseph Daniel Miller, and the private graveyard he creates outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. DEVIANT host Dan Szematowicz takes introduces you to the serial killer you probably don't know about.
JOIN OUR PATREON: http://www.deviantpodcast.com
Visit DEVIANT's socials:
http://www.instagram.com/deviant.podcast
http://www.tiktok.com/@deviant.podcast
Copyright 2025 Cold Open Media LLC
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
There are major changes afoot here at DEVIANT, and the show is evolving in a big way. Dan Szematowicz and Andrew Iden update you on what's happening, and what you can expect from the show moving forward. Buckle up!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
(ENCORE PRESENTATION)
It's Halloween, and DEVIANT is do something unusual. Hosts Dan Szematowicz and Andrew Iden tell three ghost stories, all of which are based in the real. Turn on your spookie light...it's story time!
👉 Support the show + get exclusive content: www.deviantpodcast.com 👉 Follow us on TikTok & Instagram: @deviantdopodcast
🔔 Subscribe for more stories from DEVIANT Copyright 2025 Cold Open Media LLC
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
(PART 5/5) In the final episode of the series, Andrew Iden continues his conversation with Tyler DiPeppe, a former member of Atomwaffen Division who now works to help others escape extremism.
Tyler talks about leaving the movement, the work of de-radicalization, and the effort to build a life after hate. He also reflects on family, forgiveness, and what it means to live with the residue of old ideas while trying to help others move past them.
This episode closes the story of Devon Arthurs, Brandon Russell, and the network of hate they helped build — and it points to what comes next: understanding the poison to find an antidote.
Episodes weekly. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
👉 Support the show + get exclusive content: www.deviantpodcast.com 👉 Follow us on TikTok & Instagram: @deviantdopodcast Copyright 2025 Cold Open Media LLC
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
(Part 4/5) Tyler DiPeppe was once part of Atomwaffen Division, a violent neo-Nazi group born online.
Now he’s ready to explain how it happened.
In this conversation, host Andrew Iden speaks with Tyler about the abuse, isolation, and search for identity that left him vulnerable to radicalization. They discuss how online propaganda and community manipulation draw people in, how loneliness becomes a weapon, and what it takes to break free.
This is the most personal episode yet—a conversation about responsibility, empathy, and the human cost of hate.
New episodes weekly. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
👉 Subscribe to DEVIANT for more true crime stories about murder, hate, and the American underworld. 👉 Support the show + get exclusive content: www.deviantpodcast.com 👉 Follow us on TikTok & Instagram: @deviantdopodcast Copyright 2025 Cold Open Media LLC
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
(Part 3/4) Six years after he murdered his two roommates, Devon Arthurs stands before a judge in Tampa and says he’s ready to change.
But as psychiatrists describe hallucinations, self-choking episodes, and conflicting diagnoses—from schizophrenia to schizoaffective disorder—one question dominates the courtroom:
Is Arthurs genuinely ill… or performing for leniency?
Host Andrew Iden examines how the case twisted through years of mental-competency hearings, how experts view the psychology of radicalization, and what drives young men toward hate.
Featuring analysis from Luke Baumgartner (George Washington University’s Program on Extremism), Hannah Gais (Southern Poverty Law Center), and journalist Ali Winston, this episode unpacks the intersection of ideology, identity, and illness in one of America’s most disturbing true-crime stories.
👉 Subscribe to DEVIANT for more true crime stories about murder, hate, and the American underworld. 👉 Support the show + get exclusive content: www.deviantpodcast.com 👉 Follow us on TikTok & Instagram: @deviantdopodcast Copyright 2025 Cold Open Media LLC
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
(Part 2/4)
Two days after the Tampa double murder committed by Devon Arthurs, police in Key Largo, FL arrest Brandon Russell, a Florida National Guard member, nuclear physics student and the co-founder of the extremist Atomwaffen Division. Also, he's Devon Arthurs's only surviving roommate. What they discover in his car and apartment reveal the terrifying reach of a violent, accelerationist neo-Nazi network.
In this episode, host Andrew Iden investigates how Russell built Atomwaffen from an online forum into an international terror collective, his obsession with extremism even after serving time in federal prison, and the sinister plans he and his followers carried into the 2020s, including a failed plot to take down Baltimore’s power grid.
From bomb-making manuals to propaganda networks, this is the story of how hate mutates, survives, and spreads.
New episodes weekly. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
👉 Subscribe to DEVIANT for more true crime stories about murder, hate, and the American underworld.
👉 Support the show + get exclusive content: www.deviantpodcast.com
👉 Follow us on TikTok & Instagram: @deviantdopodcast
Copyright 2025 Cold Open Media LLC
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
(Part 1/4)
On a Friday afternoon in Tampa, 18-year-old Devon Arthurs walks into an apartment leasing office and says “I just killed two people.” Those two: his roommates...young men caught in the grip of online radicalization.
What follows is a hostage standoff, a web of neo-Nazi ideology,and the unraveling of a case that exposes the violent underbelly of American extremism.
Hosted by Andrew Iden, this episode of DEVIANT examines how ordinary lives spiral into hate, how the internet fuels extremist communities and how one murder case reveals the very real dangers lurking in plain sight.
🔎 New episodes weekly. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
👉 Subscribe for more deep-dive true crime conversations: https://www.youtube.com/@deviant.podcast
👉 Support the show + get exclusive content: www.deviantpodcast.com
👉 Follow us on TikTok & Instagram: @deviantdopodcast
Copyright 2025 Cold Open Media LLC
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Being punished for crimes you haven’t committed yet sounds like Minority Report. But in 15 states—including California—it’s the law. Under the Sexually Violent Predator Act (SVP), offenders who’ve already served their time can be held indefinitely if experts believe they’re likely to reoffend.
In this episode of DEVIANT: Off Script, host Dan Szematowicz sits down with Dr. Samantha Stein, forensic psychologist and author of Evil at Our Table: Inside the Minds of the Monsters Who Live Among Us. Dr. Stein is one of the few evaluators trusted to decide whether violent sexual offenders should be involuntarily hospitalized after release.
We dive into:
It’s a rare, unflinching look inside a system that blurs the line between justice and prediction.
Samantha Stein’s book, Evil at Our Table, is available wherever books are sold, including here: https://a.co/d/c7huoJB
👉 Subscribe for more deep-dive true crime conversations: https://www.youtube.com/@deviant.podcast 👉 Support the show + get exclusive content: www.deviantpodcast.com 👉 Follow us on TikTok & Instagram: @deviantdopodcast Copyright 2025 Cold Open Media LLC
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Our TOPPODCAST Picks 
