Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski | True Crime News & Commentary

The criminologist behind the biggest new book on the Idaho murders has been publicly disavowed by the defense team that hired him. Ann Taylor, Elisa Massoth, and Bicka Barlow said they are "appalled" by Brent Turvey's media appearances and that he is violating his confidentiality agreement. They said he was hired solely for crime scene analysis and is now speaking on topics outside his expertise. Meanwhile, the book's author told NewsNation there is "no smoking gun" and "no secret evidence" in the Kohberger case. This Hidden Killers Week in Review brings together two episodes pulling apart both the book's...

Eric Richins survived the first attempt. He knew what was happening to him. He told people close to him that he believed his wife was trying to end his life. And then Kouri Richins handed him a Moscow Mule with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl in it. This Hidden Killers Week in Review brings together two deep-dive episodes covering every dimension of the Richins case — the financial motive, the secret affair, the insurance fraud, and the murder itself.Tony Brueski reconstructs the two parallel lives Kouri was living. On one side, a house-flipping business in fr...

Eleven when they allegedly met. Thirteen when the relationship allegedly became sexual. Fourteen when she was reportedly dead. The People's Brief in the D4VD case lays out a progression that prosecutors call a years-long pattern of sexual exploitation — and according to the filing, law enforcement directly told David Anthony Burke that Celeste Rivas Hernandez was a minor before the worst of it allegedly occurred. This Hidden Killers Week in Review brings together two episodes featuring retired FBI Special Agent Jennifer Coffindaffer and psychotherapist Shavaun Scott examining every layer of the prosecution's case.Tony Brueski walks through th...

Jordan Chandler told a private investigator that Michael Jackson never did anything to him. Then his father was caught on tape threatening to destroy Jackson. Then a twenty-three-million-dollar check was written. Then the boy vanished — from the case, from both parents, from public life entirely. This Hidden Killers Week in Review pulls together two full episodes on the Jackson allegations — the complete 1993 Chandler case and the biopic-era revelations that keep reshaping the narrative more than thirty years later.Tony Brueski reconstructs the timeline that both sides cherry-pick from — the extortion recording and what it actually proves, the psychi...

The man behind the biggest claims in the new Idaho murders book has been publicly disavowed by the people who hired him. Criminologist Brent Turvey — the primary source for Christopher Whitcomb's book — was called out by Ann Taylor, Elisa Massoth, and Bicka Barlow in a statement saying they are "appalled" by his media appearances. They said he was retained solely for crime scene analysis and is now speaking on subjects beyond his scope. They accused him of violating his confidentiality agreement. His own defense team is telling the public not to take him seriously.This week's Hidden Kill...

According to prosecutors, the morning after Celeste Rivas Hernandez was allegedly stabbed to death, David Anthony Burke ordered a shovel from Home Depot. Then chainsaws. Then a body bag. Then an inflatable pool — all allegedly under the fake name "Victoria Mendez." Then he allegedly gave a radio interview. That evening, he allegedly attended a party for his debut album. The album dropped two days later.This week's Hidden Killers review brings together the most critical D4VD case conversations — the prosecution's nine-page filing that rewrote the public understanding of the timeline and the listener questions that erupted afte...

They memorized every booklet. They followed every rule. They submitted to every authority figure above them in the chain. And when the adults who went through the Duggar family's IBLP curriculum finally stepped outside the system, they discovered that the education they spent their entire childhood receiving was worth almost nothing.This week's Hidden Killers review brings together the most critical conversations from our series on the IBLP — what the curriculum actually taught, how it infiltrated institutions beyond the families who used it, and what happened to the people it was supposed to prepare for life....

Nick Reiner stood in front of a judge, was asked if he understood his rights, and said "Yeah." That was the hearing. Minutes. One word. Meanwhile his brother Jake had just published an essay so raw it reached tens of thousands of readers — about their father's bad jokes, Dodger games, and the fear both parents must have felt before they were allegedly killed.This week's Hidden Killers review brings together the most critical Reiner case conversations — the legal stall, the family fracture, and the emotional gap between two brothers on opposite sides of a murder case.Th...

Bryan Kohberger admitted to killing four people. He took the deal. He waived his appeals. And now the people who were supposed to defend him are publicly fighting each other over evidence claims that didn't matter enough to pursue when the case was still active.This week's Hidden Killers review pulls together the most pointed conversations from the Idaho murders — focused on why the post-plea noise doesn't hold up under scrutiny.Brent Turvey went public alleging chain of custody problems with the Ka-Bar knife sheath. The defense team responded by calling his conduct appalling — not beca...

The guilty plea made headlines. What happened in the room before it didn't. Rex Heuermann didn't just confess — he negotiated. He brought up Karen Vergata, a woman prosecutors never charged him with killing, and got her case folded into a deal that blocks any future prosecution. The cooperation agreement with the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit reportedly has no enforcement mechanism if he refuses to participate or provides false information.This week's Hidden Killers review pulls together the most critical conversations from the Gilgo Beach case — from the legal maneuvering behind the plea to the psychological fallout captured on c...

Prosecutor Brad Bloodworth stood in front of eight jurors and said: “Kouri Richins wanted to murder Eric Richins, thus took out an insurance policy on his life to get money for murdering Eric Richins. Then she murdered Eric Richins, and then she submitted a claim to get the money.” The jury needed less than three hours. In the final episode of our definitive five-part series, we break down the trial that ended Kouri Richins’ performance for good — the thirteen days of testimony, the more than forty witnesses, the defense’s decision to rest without calling a single person to the stand...

Every case covered here has an investigation that's failing somebody. The question is who — and what the law says can be done about it.In the Nancy Guthrie case, the FBI and local law enforcement are publicly fighting over how the investigation was handled. Content creators have allegedly built platforms off defaming the cleared family. Media outlets ran hoax ransom demands. An 84-year-old woman has been missing for over three months with no arrest and no publicly identified suspect. Former felony prosecutor Eric Faddis lays out the legal options the Guthrie family reportedly has — against every party that...

Step back from any single case and look at the full picture. Chandler in 1993: settled for millions. Arvizo in 2005: acquitted, family destroyed on the stand. Francia: initially denied abuse, then changed his story, family settled. Robson and Safechuck: defended Jackson under oath, reversed after death, suing for hundreds of millions. Cascios: defended him publicly for decades, accepted millions in settlement payments, now suing for more. Every accusation has a financial transaction attached to it. Every defense has a reversal lurking behind it.This final episode covers the Cascio siblings — the family that went from Oprah’s couch to a...

The central allegation in "Broken Plea" is that the Ka-Bar knife sheath — the prosecution's key piece of physical evidence linking Bryan Kohberger to the murders through DNA — allegedly had chain of custody problems serious enough to be challenged at trial. It's the kind of claim that sounds explosive on a book jacket. There's one problem: the expert making it didn't include it in his own filed report.Brent Turvey, a criminologist and forensic scientist hired by Kohberger's defense, says he discovered the alleged issue after he submitted his expert analysis to meet a court deadline. The evidence bag...

A Yemassee police chief named Greg Alexander was at the Moselle crime scene the night Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were killed. One month later, Alex Murdaugh wrote him a personal check for $5,000 and backdated it to March. The chief said it was a loan for his parents. He never explained the backdating. He did post on his reelection Facebook page: "I'm not a cat. I don't cover up no doo-doo." That's one of dozens of findings in James Lasdun's new book The Family Man that never made it into the trial — and nobody has been able to explain....

For years, Bryan Kohberger gave the world nothing. He sat silent through court hearings. He showed zero emotion while the families of Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin confronted him at sentencing. When the judge asked if he wanted to speak, he said three words — "I respectfully decline." Then, from a maximum security cell, he finally opened up. Not to a reporter. Not to a judge. To his dog.Kohberger's prison letters have now surfaced, and for the first time since his arrest, we can see what's going on behind that blank stare. He te...

Prosecutors announced they allegedly found a significant amount of child sexual abuse material on David Burke's phone — and terabytes of iCloud data are still reportedly being downloaded and analyzed. That discovery sits on top of charges of first-degree murder with special circumstances, continuous sexual abuse of a child under fourteen, and unlawful mutilation of human remains. And it introduces a dimension that could reshape everything about how a jury perceives this defendant.The People's Brief in the D4VD case was unsealed after the judge denied the defense's motion to seal it. It lays out what prosecutors al...

People with no involvement in the investigation have allegedly fabricated claims, implied motive, and named cleared Guthrie family members as suspects — turning an 84-year-old woman's disappearance into content. The family has been fully cleared by law enforcement. The accusations kept coming anyway.Nancy Guthrie has been missing from her Tucson-area home for over three months. Blood confirmed as hers was found at the scene. A masked, armed individual was captured on recovered doorbell footage. No arrest has been made. No suspect has been publicly identified.The investigation has been marked by public conflict between the FB...

She Googled “luxury prisons for the rich in america” while the investigation into her husband’s death was still open. She searched her own name and net worth. She checked whether deleted texts could be recovered and whether the FBI gets involved in cases like hers. And then she published a children’s book about grief, went on local television to promote it, and performed the role of devastated widow for fourteen months straight. In part four of our definitive series, we dismantle every layer of Kouri Richins’ cover-up — from the 800 deleted messages to the “Walk the Dog” letter found in her jai...

Two of the most psychologically complex cases in recent true crime converge in a single episode — with a psychotherapist who studies the minds behind extreme violence analyzing both.Bryan Kohberger's guilty plea closed the Idaho murders case. But three never-before-published letters from jail have opened a window into his psychological state that the trial process never did. Written to his dog, his sister, and his family — with no mention of victims Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle, or Ethan Chapin — the letters reveal a mind apparently disconnected from reality. Combined with his mother's FBI interview, inmate observations of sev...