Show notes
They wore caps and gowns to celebrate the future — but before the night was over, some would lie dead in pools of blood, their dreams buried with them.
EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/capsgownscaskets
READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/4d8r6tb9
FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Graduation is a special time in just about everyone’s life when they make their way from childhood, to adulthood. And while that step might be a bit scary for some, we all get past it – we have to. But what if there is something truly to be afraid of at your graduation? Like the possibility of being murdered? (Murdered During Graduation) *** Joseph McKinnon strangled his girlfriend Patricia Dent, then died while trying to bury her body in their garden. (Killed By Karma) *** When you die, do you know that you are dead? A new study says that maybe… yes. You might still be conscious enough to know you are dead even after your body ceases to live. But for how long? (When You Die, You Are Conscious Long Enough To Know It) *** The term Zodiac in true crime circles invokes images of serial murder, cryptograms and bragging letters in and around San Francisco. But the California Zodiac is not the only Zodiac out there. (A Tale of Two Zodiacs)
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00.00.000 = Show Open
00:01:54.162 = Murdered During Graduation
00:13:33.644 = A Tale Of Two Zodiacs ***
00:35:21.731 = When You Die You Are Conscious Long Enough To Know It ***
00:44:27.121 = Killed By Karma
00:48:08.338 = Show Close
*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad break
LISTEN ON PODCAST APPS:
Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps
*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*
SOURCES and RESOURCES:
“A Tale of Two Zodiacs” by Paul Drexler for Crime Traveller: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/ycknuxfd
“Killed By Karma” by Kaleena Fraga for All That’s Interesting: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/pzrdsmsy
“When You Die, You Are Conscious Long Enough To Know It” by Matthew Lavelle for Ranker’s Graveyard Shift:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/4kkcc9m7
“Murdered During Graduation” by Mary Fetzer for ListVerse: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p92rn29
(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)
WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.
Originally aired: May, 2022
This episode of Weird Darkness, hosted by Darren Marlar, moves from a string of graduation celebrations that ended in murder to a comparison of the Korean and California Zodiac killers, a scientific claim that human consciousness lingers briefly after death, and the case of a South Carolina man who died burying the girlfriend he had just strangled.It opens with a survey of graduation celebrations turned deadly, beginning with the May 2020 party in southwest Indiana where 47-year-old William Baker carried a .30-06 rifle into a shed and shot 18-year-old South Dearborn High School graduate Paycin Kritlow in the back, claiming his daughter had been raped even though she and her friends denied any assault occurred, a killing that earned Baker a 55-year sentence in November 2021. The segment moves through Menhaz Zaman, a 24-year-old outside Toronto who murdered his father, mother, sister, and grandmother with a crowbar-like weapon and a knife the day before a York University graduation he had faked after failing out of Seneca College; the June 2020 shooting of 19-year-old Tyana Johnson in a Bronx park while her friend Ahamad Branch worked as the DJ; and the June 2017 ambush of Maryland teenagers Shadi Adi Najjar and Artem Ziberov, shot thirty times between them by a group who had searched online for a song called "I Kill for My Family" and killed over a stolen handful of marijuana. Other cases stretch across Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina, and Louisiana, including 18-year-old Hailey Deickman, who died days before her high school graduation after Franklin Senfles sold her fentanyl she believed was oxycodone.From there, the show sets two very different Zodiac cases side by side. The first is the Korean "Zodiac Killer," the Hwaseong murders that began on September 15th, 1986 with the rape and strangling of 71-year-old Lee Wan-im and continued as women were strangled with their own clothing on dark rural roads, a case that drew a manhunt of more than 21,000 suspects and sent a disabled man named Yoon Sung-yeo to prison on a coerced confession, until DNA identified Lee Choon-jae in 2019, a man already jailed since 1995 who confessed to 14 murders and 30 rapes and had escaped suspicion because police wrongly believed the killer's blood was type B rather than his actual type O. Darren places that against the California Zodiac, who killed at least five people around San Francisco between 1968 and 1971, taunted newspapers with cryptograms and threats against schoolchildren, and drew suspicion onto former schoolteacher Arthur Leigh Allen without ever being caught. The segment weighs how each case reached the screen, contrasting Bong Joon-ho's 2003 film Memories of Murder, made while the Korean killer was still unknown, with David Fincher's 2007 Zodiac, built on Robert Graysmith's books, and argues that a competent investigation on either continent might have swapped the outcomes.Next, the episode turns to research suggesting that human consciousness may briefly outlast the body. Dr. Sam Parnia, director of critical care and resuscitation research at NYU Langone in New York City, describes cardiac-arrest patients who were revived and could recall specific conversations and the actions of the doctors and nurses working to save them, and his work points to conscious awareness continuing for as long as three minutes after the heart stops even though the brain's electrical activity typically flatlines within twenty to thirty seconds. The segment adds microbiologist Peter Noble of the University of Washington, whose studies on mice and zebrafish found certain genes increasing in activity in the hours after death, and it frames both findings as evidence that cells shut down gradually rather than switching instantly from living to dead.The episode closes with the death of Joseph McKinnon in Trenton, South Carolina, whom deputies first found lying unresponsive in his yard, dead of a heart attack he suffered while filling in a pit a neighbor believed was meant for a new water feature. When investigators could not locate McKinnon's girlfriend, 65-year-old Patricia Dent, and learned she had missed her shift at the Mount Vintage Golf Club, they dug into the pit and uncovered black garbage bags holding her bound, bruised, and strangled body. Edgefield County Sheriff Jody Rowland and Coroner David Burnett concluded that McKinnon had attacked and choked Dent inside their home, wrapped her, and collapsed from cardiac arrest as he covered her over, and her twin sister Pamela Briggs spoke of her grief while police noted the couple had no known history of domestic violence, meaning that had McKinnon lived, Dent might simply have vanished.
Our TOPPODCAST Picks 
Stay Connected
