True Crime Reporter

A predator succeeds by convincing a child that secrecy is the only safe choice. The child may fear losing a phone, a game, a group of friends, or a parent’s trust. That fear is not a side effect of exploitation. It is part of the strategy. I have been digging into FBI reports. In this episode, I examine how sextortion can begin inside an online game, why gifts and private chats matter in context, and how artificial intelligence has made false images another weapon. Most importantly, I expla

An online terror group called 764 seeks a badge of honor by getting teenage girls to live-stream mutilation of their bodies and, worse, killing themselves as its members watched with glee. FBI investigations report cases in which vulnerable preteen and teenage girls were blackmailed into carving the initials of 764 members into their skin. It is a status symbol called “Blood Content” inside what the FBI calls online domestic terror networks. The blood trail of suffering starts in Texas. Cont

Real human connection is becoming harder to recognize in a world increasingly shaped by AI-generated content. Former FBI counterintelligence agent Robin Dreeke returns to the podcast to explore one of the most urgent questions of our time: who or what should we trust? From the rise of AI personalities and artificial empathy to the subtle ways criminals manipulate human behavior, Dreeke explains how the principles he used in the world of spies apply to everyday life. We also discuss the update

This episode is about the standoff with Iran in the Strait of Hormuz and the threat of its drone attack to the global economy. And I know what some of you may be wondering. What does Iran have to do with the True Crime Reporter® podcast? My answer is simple. For more than forty years, the Iranian regime has been linked to the killing of Americans, sometimes directly, sometimes through proxies, and often with little lasting consequence. This is not an abstract foreign policy debate for me.

As I watched the daring rescue of the two airmen shot down over Iran in early April of 2026, I found myself thinking of John Bagwell. John’s story is not a true-crime saga you’d expect to hear on this podcast, but it is gripping, timely, and no less dramatic. I learned about his military service when he wore a Purple Heart ribbon to a search engine marketing group meeting here in Dallas many years ago. John had never talked about his time in the Vietnam War, and we were surprised. We learned

Burned with lit cigarettes. Impaled with a fishhook. Staples fired into his hip. Deadly drugs forced up his nose. It sounds like a brutal regime’s methods from a torture chamber. But these are the homegrown means of hazing that the Alpha Nu Chapter of the Sigma Chi Fraternity allegedly used on pledges at the University of Texas at Austin. The sadistic practices detailed in a wrongful death lawsuit raise questions about whether fraternity members derive pleasure from inflicting pain. It alleg