Crime Scene

Mary Carole McDonnell spent decades in television producing true crime shows. But in 2017, she allegedly pulled off a multimillion-dollar con of her own.

Her company, Bellum Entertainment, made syndicated true crime shows like Corrupt Crimes, Murderous Affairs and I Married a Murderer. In December 2017, she walked into a bank and said she was heir to the McDonnell Douglas aerospace fortune — with an $80 million trust about to pay out. The bank extended her a line of credit, and over the next six weeks, she obtained $14.7 million.

She drove a Porsche and kept a boat in Newport Beach. Meanwhile her staff went unpaid for weeks at a time. Her on-camera experts were retired FBI agents, including Joe Pistone, the agent known as Donnie Brasco. None of them saw through her the alleged scheme.

So how did a woman who made television about criminals allegedly pull off a fraud of this scale?

Jonathan and Cooper break down the case, from a fabricated family fortune to the people who were left dealing with the fallout. A federal grand jury indicted McDonnell in 2018, but she never appeared to face the charges. She remains a fugitive on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

For important links from this episode, check out our source material here.

Listen to Doctor Billions here.

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Elizabeth Holmes said a single drop of blood could run dozens of lab tests in a few hours. Investors believed her. So did Walgreens, a board full of former cabinet secretaries, and Forbes, which named her the world’s youngest self-made billionaire.

But the technology never worked as promised.

Jonathan and Cooper trace how Theranos raised more than $700 million, and sent most patient samples to other companies’ analyzers.

They also cover how a pathologist’s blog, two young lab workers, and Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou helped bring the company down.

The story was supposed to end with Holmes’s 2022 conviction and 11-year sentence. Then came You Can See Everything, the new A24 documentary from Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim. Filmed inside Holmes’s home during the 34 days before she reported to prison.

Jonathan and Cooper ask what a film like this owes the patients and investors who still haven’t been paid back. Stay until the end to hear their reactions, recorded outside the theater on opening day in Los Angeles.

You can hear John Carreyrou’s full account of the case in Bad Blood, now on The Binge.

▶️ Listen to Bad Blood: The Final Chapter for the whole story on Elizabeth Holmes’ Theranos on Apple Podcasts or on Patreon.

❗For important links from this episode, check out our source material here.

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In August 1987, two teenage boys were found lying side by side on railroad tracks in Saline County, Arkansas. Don Henry and Kevin Ives were dead, partly covered by a tarp, with a rifle nearby. The initial ruling was that they had fallen asleep on the tracks after smoking marijuana. A second autopsy raised serious questions. Nearly 40 years later, their deaths remain unsolved.

Co-host Jonathan Hirsch returns to the case that started Crime Scene to examine where the investigation stands today, the troubling questions surrounding the original inquiry, and why he still believes there are answers to be found. The prosecutor who led a grand jury investigation was later convicted on drug charges, while questions about a possible connection to drug trafficking have never fully gone away.

Now Jonathan has acquired boxes of archival material collected by the Ives family, along with files from a federal task force investigator whose work on the case reportedly put him at odds with local authorities. Could any of the evidence still be tested? What might these records reveal about an investigation that has gone unanswered for decades?

Jonathan is taking a fresh look at the case — and the investigation will continue in a new Boys on the Tracks series coming to The Binge for the case’s 40th anniversary in 2027.

For important links from this episode, check out our source material here.

▶️ Listen to Doctor Billions here, and Doctor’s Orders here.

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In January 2021, Maya Millete, a mother of three from Chula Vista, California, disappeared. Surveillance cameras captured no footage of her leaving her neighborhood, and her body has never been found.

Jonathan and Cooper walk through the case against her husband, Larry Millete. Maya had told her family that if anything happened to her, Larry would be the reason. She had just borrowed $10,000 to hire a divorce attorney. After she disappeared, investigators found 1,700 pages of messages on Larry's laptop. For more than a year he had paid online spellcasters. At first he wanted spells to keep her in the marriage, but later he asked them to make her sick, break her bones and put her in an accident. Two days after she vanished, before anyone had reported her missing, he asked them to lift every hex off her.

The episode also covers the 444 unexplained miles on the family Lexus, the freezer rolled out of the house, Maya's secret relationship with a coworker, and how prosecutors won a first-degree murder conviction against Larry without ever explaining how she died.

Plus, Jonathan and Cooper react to Larry Millete’s sentencing and what the verdict means for Maya’s family.

For important links from this episode, check out our source material here.

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On October 17, 2021, Heidi Planck left her son’s football game at halftime and disappeared. About an hour later, surveillance footage captured her walking her dog behind a luxury high-rise in downtown Los Angeles. Three hours after that, the dog was found alone on the building’s 28th floor. Heidi was nowhere to be found.

The building had cameras throughout its corridors and key-card access at its elevators. Heidi’s phone, smartwatch, laptop, and car tracking were all switched off. Yet despite an extensive investigation, her disappearance remains unexplained.

Producer, journalist, and podcast host Alexis Linkletter (The First Degree, Crimes of Reddit, Unraveled: Long Island Serial Killer) joins Jonathan and Cooper to examine the disappearance of Heidi Planck, the LAPD’s decision to classify the case as a homicide, and a massive landfill search that yielded no answers.

They also explore the financial fraud allegations involving Heidi’s employer, an underground poker ring that drew investigators into a federal raid, and the unanswered questions surrounding a case in which no one has been charged. A court has declared Heidi legally dead, but she remains listed as missing by the state.

For important links from this episode, check out our source material here.

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“The Journey,” an audio investigation hosted by the New Yorker staff writer Ava Kofman, unravels the mystery of how Guojun Xuan and Silvia Zhang, a wealthy Los Angeles couple, obtained dozens of children through nearly as many surrogates—and exposes a scandal that threatens to undermine the entire surrogacy industry.

In Episode 1, "Gifts," a woman in Texas agrees to carry a child for the couple. She thinks she’s helping a family in need. Then, she becomes a whistleblower.In the Dark is an acclaimed investigative-journalism podcast that launched in 2016. Its third season won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for audio.

To keep listening to "The Journey," search for In the Dark wherever you get your podcasts.

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Thirty years after Tupac Shakur was gunned down at a Las Vegas stoplight, the first person ever charged in his murder is finally on trial. But with no gun, no DNA, and no living eyewitness willing to identify the shooter, the case hinges on one extraordinary question: did Duane “Keffe D” Davis spend two decades confessing to his role in Tupac’s death, or just selling a story too good to stop telling?

For important links from this episode, check out our source material here.

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Before you watch the new Netflix series, you need to know the real story.

Lizzie Borden’s infamous rhyme says she gave her mother forty whacks, but nearly every word of it is wrong. Now, as Netflix’s new Monsters series tells the story again, we return to the blood-soaked house that launched more than a century of books, films, and theories, all chasing the same impossible question: if Lizzie didn’t do it, who did?

For important links from this episode, check out our source material here.

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On the night of September 11th, while New York’s detectives were pulled toward the ruins of Lower Manhattan, a Polish immigrant gets lost on his way to a cleaning job and is shot dead on a Brooklyn street. Henryk Siwiak becomes the only homicide New York City records that day, but with no witnesses, no suspect, and a crime scene swallowed by history, the question of who killed him has remained unanswered for twenty-five years.

For important links from this episode, check out our source material here.

Listen to the first episode of What Happened to the Harrisons? wherever you get your podcasts here.

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A rising Iowa news anchor leaves for work before dawn and vanishes just steps from her own front door, leaving behind a bent car key, scattered belongings, and one of the most haunting crime scenes in the state’s history. Thirty-one years later, Jodi Huisentruit is still missing, and the search for her has become a second kind of mystery.

For important links from this episode, check out our source material here.

Listen to the first episode of What Happened to the Harrisons? wherever you get your podcasts here.

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A pastor’s wife is found dead in a North Carolina state park, and the evidence leads authorities to one clear conclusion: suicide. But as the paper trail she left behind begins to surface, a very different story emerges about a marriage unraveling behind the pulpit, a congregation forced to reconsider the man it trusted, and a federal case that asks not how Mica Miller died, but what was happening to her while she was still alive.

For important links from this episode, check out our source material here.

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When a Los Alamos lab worker vanishes after an ordinary morning in northern New Mexico, the clues left behind only make the story stranger. Nearly a year later, her remains are found in the forest, but no one can say what happened to Melissa Casias. Her case is caught between a family's suspicion, a town's unanswered questions, and a conspiracy theory that reaches all the way to Washington…which we had to know more about.

INTRODUCING CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATES: What Happened to the Missing Scientists?

Subscribe on Apple, Patreon, or Spotify to listen to Episode 1 of our 3-part series today. Episodes release weekly.

One scientist goes missing. Then another. Then another. Some…wind up dead.

Soon it felt like the whole country was whispering about it…from podcasters to influencers to politicians, including President Trump. All struggling with the same terrifying question…

Why are so many American scientists dead or missing? Could foreign actors be targeting them? Are we under siege?

Over the next three episodes of Crime Scene Investigates, we’re going to try to separate fact from fiction. To make sense of what’s really going on. Join us.

For important links from this episode, check out our source material here.

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Today, we are sharing part one of a two-part series from the award-winning true crime podcast RedHanded, hosted by Suruthi Bala and Hannah Maguire. RedHanded is the UK's #1 True Crime podcast, covering everything from high-profile murders and cults to con artists and cultural catastrophes, always asking not just what happened, but why.

In part one, Suruthi and Hannah dive into the disturbing case of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez, whose dismembered body was found stuffed in the trunk of singer David "D4vd" Burke's Tesla more than four months after she visited his Hollywood Hills home. The story exploded across the internet, and Burke's own fanbase had reason to believe his claims of innocence weren't the full picture. Head over to RedHanded to catch part two, where Hannah and Suruthi cover the arrest and trial of David Burke.

Follow and listen to more episodes of RedHanded here:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/redhanded/id1250599915https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/redhanded/id1250599915?i=1000769960705

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How do you murder someone in a small town with no forced entry…and get away with it for a decade?

Stephanie Gawboy, a beloved massage therapist, was found shot to death on her own table in Redway, California — deep in Humboldt County's cannabis country — five days after anyone last saw her alive. No broken locks. No signs of a struggle. Just a community full of people who thought they knew her, and one question that still hangs over the town: who was close enough to walk in, and why did they want her dead?

If you know anything about the death of Stephanie Gawboy, call the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office tip line at (707) 268-2539, or email us at podcastcrimescene@gmail.com.

For important links from this episode, check out our source material here.

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A man goes missing. Fifteen months later, his family finds a fresh concrete slab poured in his backyard. What's buried underneath changes everything.

Five years ago, journalist Justine van der Leun started sending letters to Kwaneta Harris, a convicted murderer in a Texas prison. She was also a gifted writer, ""Mama Detroit"" to the women around her. She swore the story wasn’t what it seemed.

So Justine went digging. What she found was a decade-long relationship curdled, a body under a concrete slab, and a trail of stolen identities and lies. Who is Kwaneta Harris?

What She Buried⁠ is available now on ⁠The Binge Cases⁠ feed, wherever you get your podcasts. If you don’t subscribe to The Binge+ on Apple or Patreon where you get all episodes instantly and ad-free, follow the show so you get every Monday release.

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In 2001, a 53-year-old Oklahoma grandmother with no criminal record sits her daughter and two granddaughters around a Ouija board, convinced the planchette isn't a game – it’s a direct line to God. By morning, her son-in-law is dead.

This week on Crime Scene, Jonathan and Cooper are joined by paranormal expert Sabrina Deana-Roga (Two Girls One Ghost) to unpack one of the only cases where a Ouija board was entered into evidence…and the rare insanity defense that actually worked.

For important links from this episode, check out our source material here.

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Sante Kimes had a hundred names, a hundred cities, and a con for every one of them. For decades, she got away with it. But when one scheme finally goes wrong, investigators don't just find a fraud case — they find a partner in crime nobody saw coming even for the Dragon Lady.

Her son.

For important links from this episode, check out our source material here.

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Listen to the newest trailer from The Binge for our August series, WHAT SHE BURIED, on Apple or Spotify. Follow The Binge Cases wherever you listen so you don’t miss it – subscribers get the entire season August 1st, ad-free. For non-subscribers, catch the first episode on Monday, August 3rd.

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She was framed as a stalker, branded a criminal, and nearly lost everything for crimes she didn't commit. When we first covered The Fake Stalker, listeners heard the unbelievable case of Michelle Hadley - a woman accused of terrorizing another woman, only for investigators to uncover a far more disturbing truth.

Now Michelle sits down with Jonathan to share what it was like to survive the ordeal, rebuild her life, and tell her story in the new Netflix documentary A Toxic Love Story.

Stream A Toxic Love Story now on Netflix.

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Crime Scene is hosted by Jonathan Hirsch and Cooper Moll.

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A school bus never makes it home. Twenty-six children and their driver disappear without a trace, sending a small California town, and the nation, into panic. On the 50th anniversary of the Chowchilla kidnapping, we revisit the crime everyone remembers... and the story almost no one knows.

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Remember "The Fake Stalker?" The unbelievable story of a pregnant newlywed who claimed her husband's ex was stalking her is the subject of Netflix's upcoming documentary A Toxic Love Story. Jonathan Hirsch will be sitting down with Michelle Hadley herself next week—and Patreon subscribers can submit questions for the interview here.

Follow Crime Scene on socials!

Instagram:@thebingecrimescene |@thebingetruecrime

TikTok:https://www.tiktok.com/@thebingecrimescene

Crime Scene is hosted by Jonathan Hirsch and Cooper Moll.

Instagram:@thisisjonathanhirsch |@bycoopermoll

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A Texas prosecutor is shot dead in a courthouse parking lot. Eight weeks later, the county's own DA and his wife are murdered in their home. As an entire county arms up waiting for the next hit, anonymous messages taunt investigators and point toward gangs and cartels — but the real killer is closer, and stranger, than anyone guessed. This is the Kaufman County DA murders.

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For important links from the episode, check out our source material here.

Don’t miss THE POET (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-binge-cases-u-r-next/id1525807626), out now.

Follow Crime Scene on socials!

Instagram:@thebingecrimescene |@thebingetruecrime

TikTok:https://www.tiktok.com/@thebingecrimescene

Crime Scene is hosted by Jonathan Hirsch and Cooper Moll.

Instagram:@thisisjonathanhirsch |@bycoopermoll

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