Wicked Words - A True Crime Talk Show with Kate Winkler Dawson

Axton Betz-Hamilton: The Less People Know About Us

15 Jun 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Millions of us have had our identities stolen—the thief can be a stranger, or someone very close to you. Author Axton Betz-Hamilton grew up in f...

Robert Hilland: Chasing Evil

08 Jun 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In 1998, FBI agent Robert Hilland was at a dead end with a cold case, until he got a huge break… from a famous psychic, John Edward. ...

Jessica McDiarmid: Highway of Tears

01 Jun 2026

Contributed by Lukas

For decades, scores of Indigenous women and girls have vanished from an isolated stretch of highway in northwestern British Columbia called The Highwa...

Liam Le Guillou: An Unknown Compelling Force PT 2

18 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

We’re back talking to filmmaker Liam Le Guillou about his documentary An Unknown Compelling Force: The Dyatlov Pass Incident. We learn more abou...

Liam Le Guillou: An Unknown Compelling Force PT 1

11 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Filmmaker Liam Le Guillou was fascinated with the mystery surrounding the deaths of nine experienced Russian hikers in the Ural Mountains in 1959. Pau...

Naomi Clifford: Women and the Gallows

04 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Throughout history, women have been convicted of crime, sometimes violent crimes, we know that. But most were not sent to the gallows. Historian Naomi...

Diane Fanning: Bitter Remains

27 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Author Diane Fanning is known for covering high profile cases like Casey Anthony and JonBenet Ramsey. But not with this book. In the summer of 2011, L...

Patrick Radden Keefe: London Falling

20 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In 2019, surveillance cameras at the headquarters of Britain’s spy agency in London recorded video of a 19-year-old man. He was pacing back and ...

Andrea Dunlop: The Mother Next Door

13 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

One type of crime we don’t talk about much is Munchausen by proxy. It’s a mental health condition and a form of child ...

Susan Orlean: The Library Book

06 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Author Susan Orlean wrote a best-selling book years ago that you’ve probably heard of: The Orchid Thief. It was made into a movie called Adaptat...

William J. Mann: Black Dahlia

30 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

One of the most enduring mysteries in crime history is the horrible murder of Elizabeth Short. The Black Dhalia case has been told over and over again...

Paula Lavigne: Murder at the U

23 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

This is our second ESPN story about the intersection between sports and murder. ESPN was asked by the Miami-Dade Police to look into the 200...

Rachel Nuwer: The School for Wildlife Traffickers

16 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

I’ve never interviewed someone about wildlife trafficking, but journalist Rachel Nuwer’s story for The Economist was so compelling that I ...

Randy Barnett: Felony Review

09 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Randy Barnett is a law professor at Georgetown University. But decades ago, he was a young prosecutor in Cook County’s State’s Attorney&rs...

Deborah Esquenazi: Night in West Texas

02 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

We’re taking you back to 1980s West Texas. When a Catholic priest was found murdered in a seedy hotel in Odessa, investigators focused on a gay ...

Seamus McElearney: Flipping Capo

23 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

FBI agent Seamus McElearney had dreamed of investigating the mafia in New York when he first joined the bureau. But of course, no one would flip on th...

Elliot Williams: Five Bullets

16 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

We’re talking about a very famous case this week. In 1984, Bernie Goetz shot four Black teenagers on a subway in Manhattan. He was hailed as a h...

Paul Solet: Chowchilla

09 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In 1976, 26 kids were riding on a school bus in Chowchilla, California when they were kidnapped along with their driver by three men. The men buried t...

Skip Hollandsworth: She Kills

02 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

I’m really thrilled to have my buddy Skip Hollandsworth on the show this week. He wrote a book called "She Kills.” And it’s a collec...

Adam Rittenberg & Kyle Bonagura: Finding Dolores Wulff

26 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

An assistant college football coach never thought they’d find his mother because Dolores Wulff had been missing for more than 40 years. Paul Wul...

Michael F. Weisberg: A Second Shot

19 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In 1971, James Tappen Hall was gunned down in Maryland as the deputy sheriff patrolled the grounds of a country club. The police searched fo...

Meg Gardiner: UNSUB

12 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Meg Gardiner is a thriller writer, a really great one. She has several series, but the one I’m most interested in started with a book called UNS...

Brad Ricca: Lincoln’s Ghost

05 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Harry Houdini, the world’s greatest magician, wowed audiences around the world in the 1920s. He must have felt invincible, but then an evil spir...

Conversation Rewind with Kate Summerscale: The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher

29 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The brutal murder of a 3-year-old shocked Victorian England not only because of how it happened, but because of who the police suspected. Could o...

Conversation Rewind with Margalit Fox: Conan Doyle for the Defense

22 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

One of the most incredible stories in true crime is the tale of Arthur Conan Doyle and how he helped free a man…who was innocent of m...

Rachel McCarthy James: Whack Job

15 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When Rachel McCarthy James and her father wrote their best-selling book The Man from the Train, Rachel became fascinated with axes. Were they goo...

Dick Harpootlian: Dig Me a Grave

08 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Dick Harpootlian might be a name you recognize. He’s from South Carolina, and he’s one of Alex Murdaugh’s defense attorneys. He&rsqu...

Yepoka Yeebo: Anansi’s Gold

01 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The popular former president of Ghana was once accused of hiding gold from the West African country’s government. But it turns out that he was t...

Rod Sadler: Depraved Obsession

24 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For more than a decade, a serial killer stalked teenage boys in Michigan. Ronald Lloyd Bailey was eventually caught. But the story becomes more compli...

Ceri Jackson: The Boy from Tiger Bay

17 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Almost 40 years ago, a brutal murder on Valentine’s Day shook the country of Wales. When a 20-year-old is murdered in a dark corner of Cardiff&r...

Dane Huckelbridge: Queen of All Mayhem

10 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We hear a lot about gunslingers and outlaws in the American West, and those stories are mostly about men. But there were female outlaws, too—lik...

Áine Cain and Kevin Greenlee: Shadow of the Bridge

03 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The murders of Liberty German and Abigail Williams in Delphi, Indiana shook the country. But the impact of the attention, the speculation and the fear...

Rich Cohen: Murder in the Dollhouse

27 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The disappearance in 2019 of Jennifer Dulos is one of the most chilling stories I’ve ever read about. When the mother of five vanished from her ...

Jane Borden: Cults Like Us

20 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What is the origin story of cults? Author Jane Borden says it goes all the way back to the Puritans and their doomsday beliefs. She says tha...

Anne Soon Choi: L.A. Coroner

13 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When you write a biography about a man dubbed “Coroner to the Stars,” it’s bound to be a compelling story. Who doesn’t want to...

Patricia Cornwell: Scarpetta

06 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

I’ve interviewed quite a few authors who are inspired by real people or real crimes. And then they write these fantastic novels. Patricia Cornwe...

Ross Halperin: Bear Witness

29 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A gang in a mountain barrio in Honduras terrorized the people there for years. The police claimed that their hands were tied because witnesses refused...

Michael Beach Nichols: Perfect Wife

22 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Most of us have heard about Sherri Papini. She’s the woman who faked her own kidnapping in 2016, which terrified her husband and soon sparked ou...

Bryan Burrough: The Gunfighters

15 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We’ve heard from my buddy Bryan Burrough before for one of his Audible books based on a true crime story. His new book is very different. It&rsq...

James Polchin: Shadow Men

08 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Our story this week is set in the 1920s in Westchester County, New York…it’s a Jazz Age mystery. A young ex-sailor is found dead on a des...

Dan Slater: The Incorruptibles

01 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

New York in the early 1900s was filled with people trying to make their lives better. But for many, the rise of organized crime kept them in constant ...

Tanya Talaga: The Knowing

25 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

If you’ve ever dug deep into your family history, you know that there are sometimes surprises. Author Tanya Talaga discovered tha...

Alex Eliseev: Cold Case Confession

18 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This week on Wicked Words on Exactly Right: in 1999, a woman named Betty Ketani went missing in Johannesburg, South Africa. She just vanished from the...

Megan Abbott: El Dorado Drive

11 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

New York Times’ best-selling author Megan Abbott often uses true crime stories as a jumping off point for her wildly popular novels. Now she has...

Caroline Fraser: Murderland

04 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This week’s author grew up in the Pacific Northwest with the memories of notorious serial killers like Ted Bundy and the Green River Killer, who...

Matthew McGough + Rick Jackson: Black Tunnel White Magic

28 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1990, a UCLA student was found murdered in a tunnel in LA. Detective Rick Jackson and his partner were assigned to the complicated case. Who had a ...

Elon Green: The Man Nobody Killed

21 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We’ve had journalist Elon Green on before to talk about his fantastic book Last Call. His new book is about an inspiring young Bl...

Jonquilyn Hill: Through the Cracks

14 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When an 8-year-old disappeared from a homeless shelter in Washington, D.C. in 2014, nobody noticed for 18 days, even her family. Seven years later, Re...

Mary Kay McBrayer: Madame Queen

07 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This week on Wicked Words we’re traveling back to 1923 Harlem and its seedy world of gambling and racketeering. Author Mary Kay McBrayer tells m...

Duncan McCue: Kuper Island

23 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Kuper Island is a remarkable podcast, an investigation into one of Canada’s most notorious so called Indian residential schools. Journalist Dunc...

Thomas Maier: The Invisible Spy

16 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

I love a good spy story. We’ve talked about spies embedded with the American government. We’ve discussed librarians and academics research...

Virginia Feito: Victorian Psycho

09 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Occasionally we interview fiction authors who use true crime stories as jumping off points for their novels. Virginia Feito wrote a book called &ldquo...

Claire St. Amant: Killer Story

02 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

I’m so excited about this interview. It’s with Claire St. Amant. She’s a journalist and an author. And she was a TV produc...

Gilbert King: Bone Valley

19 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We might have our first Pulitzer Prize winner on our show. Author Gilbert King digs into cases of wrongful conviction. Today, we’re talking abou...

Christopher Goffard: Crimes of the Times

12 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

LA Times reporter Christopher Goffard was the voice behind the hit podcast “Dirty John.” And now he has a new podcast that covers crimes i...

Pagan Kennedy: The Secret History of the Rape Kit

05 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This week on Wicked Words, years ago author Pagan Kennedy wondered about the history of the rape kit, a crucial tool for investigators today. Who desi...

Brendan Koerner: The Skies Belong to Us

28 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Plane hijackings aren’t very common anymore. But in the late 1960s and early 1970s, armed criminals were forcing commercial airliners to divert ...

Hallie Lieberman: The Devil Went Down to Georgia

21 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For years, a predator preyed on gay men in Atlanta. He was known as the Handcuff Man. He attacked male sex workers, disfigured them, and then left the...

Joseph Cox: Dark Wire

14 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 2018, the FBI discovered that high level criminals around the world were using encrypted devices to plot intricate crimes. When a powerful, secure ...

Avril Speaks: Uprooted

07 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1986, 17-year-old Keith Warren was found hanging from a tree in Silver Spring, Maryland. His sister wanted answers—how did he die? It was rul...

Lana Hall: The Incel Terrorist

31 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This is a story about a landmark case in Canada from just a few years ago. A teenager attacked two women in a massage parlor in Toronto in 2020. He ki...

Lise Olsen: The Scientist and the Serial Killer

24 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Dean Corll was a serial killer in Houston in the early 1970s. He kidnapped and murdered more than two dozen missing teenage boys before he was murdere...

Marcia Clark: Trial by Ambush

17 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It’s been 30 years since the infamous OJ Simpson trial, and the lead prosecutor Marcia Clark has had quite a career since then. She writes ficti...

Elyse Graham: Book and Dagger

10 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Did you know that some of the most effective American spies during World War II were librarians and archivists and history professors? Some were locke...

Craig A. Monson: The Black Widows of the Eternal City

03 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We don’t talk a lot on this show about female killers, but author Craig Monson has brought me a fascinating story right out of a Hollywood film....

Thomas Morris: The Dublin Railway Murder

24 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This week on Wicked Words, we’re traveling to 1856 Ireland for a locked-door mystery. A cashier for a Dublin railway station is found dead, sava...

Rick Jervis: The Devil Behind the Badge

17 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On this week’s episode of Wicked Words, we’re traveling to the Texas border town of Laredo. When four vulnerable women are murdered, polic...

Rollo Romig: I Am on the Hit List

10 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When an outspoken journalist in India was assassinated in September of 2017, it shocked the world. The conspiracy that was uncovered by journalists an...

Simon Read: Scotland Yard

03 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Some of my most favorite true crime stories in history come from the UK, specifically London. So I was very excited to talk to author S...

Michael Arntfield: Monster City

27 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Police cold-case units have broken some of the country’s most notorious murder cases. Today we're talking to writer Michael Arntfield about Nash...

Carol Dawson: The Unforgotten

20 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

I know this sounds like an old story: a woman goes missing and it seems like a cover-up. But when Shelley Watkins’ body was discovered in 1993, ...

Ron Smith: No One is Perfect

13 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Thirty years before the OJ Simpson trial, a different murder case captured the attention of the country. When a successful Florida businessman is brut...

Katy Vine: The Problem with Erik

06 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For this week’s episode, we travel to my hometown of Austin, Texas. An iconic local business is embroiled in a murder for hire case that attract...

Becky Cooper: We Keep the Dead Close

30 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Author Becky Cooper was a student at Harvard University when she heard a curious rumor about a murdered student in the late 1960s. Cooper was told tha...

Radley Balko + Tucker Carrington: The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist

23 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

After two three-year-old girls were raped and murdered in rural Mississippi, two innocent men were convicted and were in prison for decades. Meanwhile...

Dr. Katherine Ramsland + Tracy Ullman: The Serial Killer’s Apprentice

16 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Acclaimed forensic psychologist Katherine Ramsland was one of my first guests on this show. She detailed her time with serial killer Dennis Rader. She...

Ethan Brown: Murder in the Bayou

09 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Who killed eight women in a small Louisiana town between 2005 and 2009? And were their murders the work of a serial killer or people connected to a co...

Ellen McGarrahan: Two Truths and a Lie

02 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1990, a young journalist witnessed a botched execution and it changed her life. Author Ellen McGarrahan found herself haunted by the question of wh...

Dean Jobb: A Gentlemen and a Thief

25 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We’ve had this author on before when he talked about his book on serial poisoner Dr. Thomas Neill Cream. Today, Dean Jobb tells us about a diffe...

Ellen J. Green: Murder in the Neighborhood

18 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

I talk a lot about how history repeats itself. This story, unfortunately, feels like it can happen today even though it’s actually 75 years old....

Ron Stodghill: Redbone

11 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Self-made millionaire Lance Herndon was one of Atlanta’s elite in 1996 when he was murdered in his home. Police had a host of suspects, and they...

Hal Higdon: Leopold and Loeb: The Crime of the Century

04 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

One of the most famous crimes in American history was the murder of 14-year-old Bobby Frank. Two young men, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, wanted to...

Karen Jacobs and Rob D'Amico: Shane and Sally

28 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Here's our story this week: in the summer of 1988, 16-year-old Shane Stewart and 18-year-old Sally McNelly went missing in the West Texas town of San ...

Paul Thomas Murphy: Pretty Jane and the Viper of Kidbrook Lane

21 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A murdered teenage girl. A suspicious, affluent family. And a lot of sticky social situations. They’re all in our story, which is set in nineteenth ...

Abbott Kahler: Eden Undone

14 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

At the height of the Great Depression, an oil mogul from LA decided to escape society with his mistress to create their own utopia on a faraway land. ...

Jared Fishman: Fire on the Levee

07 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005. Four years later, a young prosecutor in the Justice Department was drawn into examining a mysterious...

Kathleen Brunelle: She’s Gone: Five Mysterious Twentieth- Century Cold Cases

30 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

I’ve said this many times: unsolved cases frustrate me. I need a solution, or a conclusion. But cold cases are so important: and my next guest wants...

Anirban Bhattacharyya: Swipe Right to Kill

23 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For this episode of Wicked Words, we travel to India, where some of the world’s most complicated, most compelling true crime stories come from. This...

Colin Archdeacon: Ctrl+Alt+Desire

16 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Filmmaker Colin Archdeacon had an unusual relationship with convicted killer named Grant Amato in Florida. Amato murdered his parents and his brother ...

Rebecca Morris: Boy Missing: The Search for Kyron Horman

09 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This is one of the most shocking unsolved missing-child cases in the world. A 7-year-old boy named Kyron Horman went missing in 2010 in Portland, Oreg...

David Dominé: A Dark Room in Glitter Ball City: Murder, Secrets, and Scandal in Old Louisville

02 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

I love a good murder story set in the South and this is an intense one. It centers on a vicious murder in a crumbling Kentucky mansion and a killer wh...

Rena Pederson: The King of Diamonds

26 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We’re now digging into a real Texas story. We’re talking about a brazen jewel thief in the 1960s who burgled some of the wealthiest homes in Dal...

Hedley Thomas: The Teacher’s Pet

19 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This next story needs a trigger warning: it’s about the grooming and the sexual assault of children. But it was an important case in Australia and a...

Brittany Caffet: The Shell Lake Massacre

12 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the summer of 1967, a family of nine was murdered in their home by a stranger in rural Canada. It was one of the worse random mass murders in the c...

Wenguang Huang: A Death in the Lucky Holiday Hotel: Murder, Money, and an Epic Power Struggle in China

05 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A murder conspiracy in China is at the center of a fascinating true crime story involving politics, greed and deception. There are no heroes in this b...

Michael Wolraich: The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

29 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

I had never heard of the tragic case of former Vaudeville star Vivian Gordon in 1930s New York. She had threatened some of the city’s most powerful ...

Mandy Matney: Blood on Their Hands: Murder, Corruption, & The Fall of the Murdaugh Dynasty

22 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

I’ve listened to many versions of the story of the Murdaugh dynasty and I’m always interested in hearing new, fresh details. Well, author and podc...

Gregg Olsen: The Amish Wife

15 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

One of the most interesting aspects of true crime is how we’re able to explore cultures and societies that are unfamiliar to us. That was the case f...

Patricia Cornwell: Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper, Case Closed

08 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Several years ago, Patricia Cornwell wrote a book about Jack the Ripper called, Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper, Case Closed.  This book presen...

Introducing Wicked Words - A True Crime Talk Show with Kate Winkler Dawson

01 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Kate Winkler Dawson's true crime talk show Wicked Words is back! On each new episode of Wicked Words, Kate interviews journalists, podcasters and au...