Episodes

There’s a bank in Quantico, Virginia, that gets robbed every day. And I am going to take you there. Hello. I’m Robert Riggs. In this episode of True Crime Reporter®, former FBI Agent Don Bentley takes us inside the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. New Special Agents start their career there in an intensive 20-week long training program. Realistic training scenarios unfold in a mock town called Hogan’s Alley named after a comic strip from the 1890s. Town House In Hogan's Alley That Is The Site ...

In the previous episode, Inside Story Of The Deadliest Attack On Police Officers Since 9/11, the negotiator for the Dallas SWAT team revealed the inside story about the mass killer who ambushed Dallas officers during a Black Lives Matter protest five years ago. Members of our True Crime Community have asked to learn more about the purpose of SWAT teams. SWAT stands for Special Weapons and Tactics. It’s a highly trained elite unit selected from rank-and-file officers who apply. In the True Crime ...

On the evening of July 7, 2016, Black Lives Matter protesters marched in downtown Dallas and other cities nationwide. They peacefully gathered in response to the police shootings of two black men, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling. A few blocks from the site of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, an African American man who had left the U.S. Army following disgraceful conduct got out of his SUV, ready for combat. The mass murderer arrived with a calculated plan to kill police offic...

The True Crime Reporter® Podcast features stories and interviews from the respective careers of investigative reporter Robert Riggs and former U.S. prosecutor Bill Johnston. Listeners have asked how both of them got involved in investigating criminal cases. In response, the podcast featured an episode with Riggs on July 4, 2022, explaining how he first got involved in digging for information during the Watergate scandal case while working for Congressman Wright Patman. In this episode, we cover ...

Many U.S. prisons are trade schools for crime. High recidivism rates underscore the failure of the current criminal justice system. Released and rearrested inmates pass through an expensive revolving door. The Texas prison used to be called the Texas Department of Corrections (TDC), but there was little evidence that it corrected bad behavior. In Texas, nearly one-fourth of the prisoners released return within three years. Nationally, half of the prisoners released return within three years. How...

A growing threat of grievance killings is taking center stage across the world. Recent examples include the assassination of Japan’s popular prime minister to a patient in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who gunned down two doctors and two medical personnel because he was angry about ongoing pain following his surgery. Sasha Larkin, the Deputy Chief of the Homeland Security Division at the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, describes this new threat. Dep Chief Sasha Larkin of the Homeland Security Divis...

A 77-page report by a special committee of the Texas House of Representatives concluded that no one was able to stop the gunman from carrying out the deadliest school shooting in Texas history, in part because of “systemic failures and egregious poor decision making” by nearly everyone involved who was in a position of power. 376 law enforcement officers descended on the school in a chaotic, uncoordinated scene devoid of clear leadership and a sense of urgency to take down the gunman, according ...

25-year-old Anna Moriah Wilson, known as “Mo” was an up-and-coming professional cyclist in gravel racing. Friends described her as a beacon and light and energy. But another cyclist, Kailin Armstrong allegedly snuffed out that light in a hail of gunfire. Shockwaves from the grievance killing spread from Austin, Texas where the murder occurred to news media around the world. It is a true-crime story that is stranger than fiction. Two female cyclists vying for the affection of a male cyclist were ...

Many of you have asked how Robert became an investigative reporter. After all, most of the stories you hear on this podcast come from my reporter’s notebook. Riggs' career path has zigged and zagged since I received a degree in Architecture and Construction from Texas A&M University. Upon graduation, he headed off to Capitol Hill. In this episode, my cohost, former prosecutor Bill Johnston, takes me back to the Watergate scandal 50 years ago. Bill has never heard some of these stories, and in la...

Katherine Schweit headed up the FBI’s active shooter program, where she authored the bureau’s landmark research about mass shootings and how to respond best to save lives. In the wake of the massacre of children and their teachers in Uvalde, Texas, school safety weighs heavily on the minds of teachers and students’ families. In this episode of True Crime Reporter®, investigative reporter Robert Riggs and Schweit discuss why the number of mass shootings is spiking to the point that some parents a...

For many years, Texas had a law and order image. Politicians campaigned for office about getting tough on crime. A gubernatorial candidate’s TV ads featured actors wearing black and white overalls swinging sledgehammers in the prison yard. His voice-over pledged to teach youthful criminals “the joy of busing rocks.” Texas ran a revolving-door prison system. Lawmakers passed tougher laws but refused to spend money to build prisons to hold more convicted criminals. The public did not know about th...

Matt Baker, the charismatic Baptist minister who almost got away with murdering his wife is among our most popular episodes. On his way to the pulpit in Waco, Texas, Baker molested numerous young women. An investigation of the Southern Baptist Convention, America’s largest Protestant denomination, revealed that church leaders covered up sexual assaults by hundreds of pastors like Matt Bakers for twenty years. A seven-month investigation conducted by Guidepost Solutions released in May of 2022 fo...

Can you imagine yourself falling in love with a serial killer or murderer to the point you will give up your family, career, and even your life for them? A veteran Alabama jail officer, Vicky White, did just that in April of 2022 when she staged a getaway with a capital murder suspect. The 56-year-old White had an unblemished record. She was on her last day of work before retirement. Her colleagues had just voted her Corrections Employee of the Year for a fifth time before she went on the run. A...

In this vintage photo 1993, Peabody Award-Winning Investigative Reporter Robert Riggs stands on a guard tower overlooking Texas Death Row. Poking up behind him to the right of the large spotlight is the steeple of the prison, the chapel, where seven condemned prisoners made their daring break for freedom five years later. 29-year Martin Gurule, a cold-blooded killer from Corpus Christi in South Texas, made it over the prison’s fence on a foggy Thanksgiving night under a hail of rifle fire from g...

Frivolous lawsuits filed by convicted criminals flooded the federal court system in Texas. A prison inmate who regarded himself as the "Perry Mason" of the Texas prison sued for millions of dollars because his Thanksgiving Turkey was served cold. Another sued because his Rice Krispies Cereal did not Snap, Crackle, or Pop as advertised.

Sheriff Parnell McNamara promised his constituents in McLennan County, Texas around Waco that he would actively pursue cold cases. McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara & Reporter Robert Riggs McNamara was elected for a third four-year term in January 2021. He has made good on his campaign pledge to open up long-forgotten homicide cases. Because as McNamara sees it, no one should get away with murder, and the victim’s family deserves to know what happened. U.S. Marshall Guy McNamara 1933 (on ...

Cold case investigator Paul Holes played a major role in ending a decades-long reign of terror by The Golden State Killer. First known as The East Area Rapist, a masked psychological sadist assaulted 50 women in Northern California between 1976 and 1979. He progressed from burglaries to vicious sexual assaults in the middle of the night to bludgeoning his victims to death. Along the way, he called 911 to taunt the police. Suddenly it seemed he had disappeared. But he had moved to a new hunting g...

Doug Feldman’s resume gave no clue that a mass killer was lurking inside him. He graduated from a prestigious university, was a financial wizard, and was the funniest man in the room at social functions. Everything appeared to be going his way. But beneath Feldman's calm exterior, a volcano was swelling inside him. First, there were tremors. Then, a deadly eruption against random strangers. Security Camera Footage of Mass Killer Doug Feldman Riding A Harley As He Randomly Guns Down A Gasoline Ta...

Gun-wielding gang members from Houston burst into a rural bank located a hundred miles north of Houston. The high school-age teenagers graduated from burglaries and drive-by shootings to cold-blooded murders that day. They left behind the bullet-riddled body of an 82-year-old woman who was tending her family’s graves. They robbed a bank and shot up the small town while making their getaway. They pistol-whipped a deputy sheriff and used his gun to shoot a Texas State Trooper. Investigative report...

It was called the "Ride Murder." The bullet-riddled body of an unidentified seaman from the Port of Houston, Texas, was found dumped in a ditch a few miles away. HELP US FIND THIS MAN'S FAMILY Two men and a woman used a “honey pot” trap to lure the seaman into their car to rob him. It was one of the most sensational murder trials ever brought in East Texas. School children paraded through the county jail on macabre field trips to get a look at the accused killers. Jailhouse Sketches by The Ride ...

Before Columbine. Before Sandy Hook. Before Virginia Tech. There was the Sniper in the Tower at the University of Texas. America’s first mass murder and school shooting unfolded on live television in Austin, Texas, more than a half-century ago. Since then, the question has lingered, “Why did he do it?” Gary Lavergne, the author of A Sniper in the Tower: The Charles Whitman Murders, addresses the whys and the myths about the why. In this True Crime Reporter™, Confidential investigative reporter R...

Kenneth McDuff "The Broomstick Killer" Retired CBS News Anchor Bob Schieffer was the first reporter to interview Kenneth McDuff and cover his crimes in 1966. Fort Worth Star-Telegram police beat reporter Bob Schieffer; appeared in "The Anatomy of a Newspaper" article dated 01/12/1964 Back then, Schieffer was the police beat reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Fort Worth Star-Telegram reporter Bob Schieffer in combat helmet while reporting from Vietnam, spring 1966 Schieffer had just retur...

We usually take our fans inside the crime scene tape of real-life crimes. But in this episode, we are testing out a fictional Texas Ranger superhero named Creed True, inspired by real-life cases. The Texas Ranger became a superhero in pop culture long before Spider-Man and fellow characters from Marvel Comics captured our collective imaginations. Think about how “Who was that masked man?” is now part of our vocabulary. Superheroes possess supernatural or superhuman powers and are dedicated t...

Texas kicked off festivities on Texas Independence Day, to commemorate the 2023 Bicentennial of the Texas Rangers. As the Rangers approach their 200th year of service, their legend is embodied in the following quote. When Texas Ranger Captain Bill McDonald was sent to Dallas in the 1890s to prevent a scheduled prizefight, McDonald was greeted at the train station by the city's anxious mayor, who asked: "Where are the others?" McDonald supposedly replied, "Hell! ain't I enough? There's only one p...