A True crime Podcast

Alexander Lawson

The true crime podcast that uncovers the most notorious murders, heists, and mob sagas from the shadows of the past. Each episode transports you to crime scenes long forgotten, weaving gripping narratives of betrayal, bloodshed, and justice—or the lack thereof. From Prohibition-era gang wars to modern-day mysteries. we explore the dark motives, shocking twists, and enduring legacies that still haunt us today. Perfect for armchair detectives and history buffs alike—listen if you dare,

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138 episodes
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English

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Yesterday · 9 min
The Night-Shift Nurse Who Killed 7 Babies: Lucy Letby
A stable twin dies 90 minutes after Lucy Letby takes over. His sister collapses the next night. Then the insulin. Then the air in the lines. Then the triplets. This episode of A True Crime Podcast with Alexander Lawson tells the Lucy Letby case as the court recorded it — and as the fight over it still stands. Between June 2015 and June 2016, babies on the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital began dying and crashing in clusters consultants said they could not explain. A jury later convicted Letby of murdering seven infants and attempting to murder seven more. She received 15 whole-life orders: no parole, ever. She has always said she is innocent. Inside: the year on the ward, how long it took to call the police, the notes the Crown called a confession, the retrial, the failed appeals — and why a public inquiry and medical experts are still arguing over the same tiny bodies. Listener warning: deaths and serious harm of newborns.
Yesterday · 6 min
He Buried Murder Kits Across America — Then Tucked His Daughter In
Israel Keyes looked like a contractor and a dad. The FBI called him one of the most methodical serial killers in modern U.S. history. He flew thousands of miles, picked strangers at random, and dug up weapons he had buried years earlier. Only three victims have been named. He said there were more — then he died in jail and took the map with him. Host Alexander Lawson on the case that still isn’t finished.
Yesterday · 6 min
The Church President Who Was BTK: How Dennis Rader Hid in Wichita for 31 Years
He cut the phone line, murdered a family—including two children—and went home to dinner. For decades, Wichita hunted “BTK.” The man they were looking for wrote parking tickets, led Boy Scouts, and sat in the front pew. This episode of A True Crime Podcast follows Dennis Rader from the Otero house in 1974 to a floppy disk in 2005—the letters, the near-misses, the neighbor he killed, and the metadata that finally put a name on the monster. Ten lives. One ordinary face. Host Alexander Lawson tells the case as it happened. Search: BTK Killer, Dennis Rader, Wichita murders, true crime Kansas.
Yesterday · 7 min
The Cop Who Terrorized California for 12 Years — And Lived Next Door
He broke into homes while you slept. He bound couples. He killed 13 people. Then he vanished for 32 years — and mowed his lawn in a Sacramento suburb. Joseph James DeAngelo was a police officer. He was also the Visalia Ransacker, the East Area Rapist, the Original Night Stalker, and the Golden State Killer. For more than a decade he moved across California. Then DNA from a discarded tissue and a family tree on a genealogy site finally put a name on the mask. Alexander Lawson tells the full path: the badge, the nights, the cold case, and the 2018 arrest that ended one of America’s longest manhunts. If this episode is hard to hear, RAINN is 800-656-HOPE.
Tuesday · 7 min
He Shot His Brother in Their Shared Bed. 77 Days Later, a Whole Principality Walked Him to the Guns
3 a.m. Two brothers. One bed. One shotgun. In 1943, Pere Areny Aleix killed his sleeping brother in a stone house in the Pyrenees — then became the last man a European principality ever executed. No lawyer. A public rosary. Six rifles, and only one loaded. The court said he did it for the inheritance. The file says his mind was already breaking. Alexander Lawson on the fratricide Andorra tried to bury — and the firing squad it never used again. New episode of A True Crime Podcast.
Tuesday · 5 min
Blood on the Rock: Lucien Grimaldi and the Murders That Made Monaco
October 1505. Two Grimaldi brothers. One dagger. By morning, Jean II is dead and Lucien is Lord of Monaco. Eighteen years later his nephew walks into the palace, cuts his throat, and the body is dragged down the steps with forty-three wounds. Alexander Lawson tells the story of how a fortress on a cliff was kept — and lost — inside one family.
Tuesday · 8 min
The Other Princess: Wojciech Janowski and the Monaco Hit
On 6 May 2014, billionaire heiress Hélène Pastor and her chauffeur, Mohamed Darwich, were gunned down outside a hospital in Nice. The shooting looked like a street robbery. It wasn’t. Alexander Lawson traces the case from Monaco’s gilded drawing rooms to a Marseille contract killing — and to Wojciech Janowski, Poland’s honorary consul, charity figure, and the longtime partner of Pastor’s daughter. A monthly fortune. A crumbling business empire. A fitness coach as middleman. A confession that vanished, then returned through a lawyer’s mouth. This episode of A True Crime Podcast is the story of proximity to money, a principality that sells safety, and a conviction that ended in life.
Tuesday · 6 min
The Nurse Who Set Fire to Monaco
Before dawn in one of the most guarded penthouses on Earth, billionaire Edmond Safra locked himself in a bathroom with his nurse. They thought assassins were in the house. The only other man inside was Ted Maher — the nurse hired to keep Safra alive. Host Alexander Lawson tells the story of the 1999 Monte Carlo fire that killed Safra and nurse Vivian Torrente: the staged home invasion, the wastebasket, the self-inflicted wounds, the confession, Monaco’s “trial of the century,” and the prison break that lasted only hours. A small fire. A fortress that filled with smoke. And a man who wanted to be a hero.
Tuesday · 4 min
The Bloody Trunk of Monte Carlo: Marie Goold
August 1907. A trunk leaks on a Marseille platform. Inside is a woman’s torso. Head and legs in another bag. Jewels beside them. The couple who checked the luggage called themselves Sir and Lady Goold. She was Marie — French dressmaker, self-styled lady, and the woman Monaco’s court sentenced to death. Alexander Lawson tells the story of the Monte Carlo trunk murder: a faded Wimbledon finalist, a widow who came to collect a debt, a villa a short walk from the casino, and the last capital sentence ever handed down in the Principality. This is A True Crime Podcast.
Tuesday · 5 min
The Monte Carlo Trunk: Vere St. Leger Goold
August 1907. A leaking steamer trunk at Marseille station. Inside: a woman’s dismembered body. The man who packed it had once reached the Wimbledon final. Alexander Lawson tells the story of Vere St. Leger Goold — Irish tennis champion, gambler, and the only Wimbledon finalist ever convicted of murder — and the killing of Emma Levin in Monaco’s Villa Menesini. Roulette, borrowed titles, a thousand-franc debt, and the crime the papers called the Monte Carlo Trunk Murder. A True Crime Podcast.
Tuesday · 5 min
The Ogre Across the Border: Michel Fourniret in Belgium
June 26, 2003. A 13-year-old girl in Ciney, Belgium, is forced into a van — and escapes. That night ends the long hunt of Michel Fourniret, the so-called Ogre of the Ardennes. Host Alexander Lawson traces the crimes Fourniret committed in and through Belgium: the abduction of 12-year-old Elisabeth Brichet from Saint-Servais; bodies left in the woods of Vresse-sur-Semois; the years he lived in Sart-Custinne and worked at a local school; the failed attacks in Namur and Gedinne; and the pact with Monique Olivier that let him cross the Franco-Belgian border for more than a decade. Content warning: sexual violence and crimes against minors. This episode is based on court records and publicly reported facts. If you have information about unsolved disappearances from this period, contact the police — do not speculate online.
Tuesday · 7 min
Freddy Horion: The Ghent Family Massacre
On 23 June 1979, five people were murdered in a house in Sint-Amandsberg, near Ghent. A father, a mother, two daughters, and a young man who had only come home to see the woman he loved. Months earlier, a Polish shopkeeper had been shot in the port of Ghent. The same weapon. The same names in the dock. Freddy Horion — Sunglasses, the Monster — and Roland Feneulle were convicted of six murders and sentenced to death, immediately commuted to life. Feneulle died in prison. Horion did not. For nearly half a century he was one of Belgium’s longest-serving prisoners, while courts, relatives, and Europe argued over what life actually means. Host Alexander Lawson tells the crimes, the trial, and the decades that followed — including the 2026 transfer from prison to a forensic care centre under an ankle tag. This episode is about the Steyaert family and Hélène Lichachevski first. Horion’s name is only the reason we still have to say theirs. A True Crime Podcast.
Tuesday · 6 min
The Widow of Liège: Marie Alexandrine Becker
In 1930s Liège, a widow poured the tea, borrowed the money, and measured the dose. Marie Alexandrine Becker — the Black Widow, the Belgian Borgia — was convicted of poisoning eleven people and attempting to kill five more. Host Alexander Lawson follows her rise from a farm in Waasmont to a dressmaker’s parlour, the digitaline in the cup, the anonymous letters that finally stopped her, and the 1938 trial that ended in a death sentence Belgium would not carry out. The most dangerous room in this story was not a dungeon. It was a sitting room with two cups. A True Crime Podcast.
Tuesday · 9 min
The Vampire of Muizen: Staf Van Eyken
In 1971, women around Mechelen stopped walking home after dark. Three were found strangled and bitten. The killer was twenty, worked the railway yards, and had danced with his last victim the same night he murdered her. Staf Van Eyken — the Vampire of Muizen — was sentenced to death in 1974. The sentence became life. More than fifty years later he is still Belgium’s longest-serving prisoner, and he says he should never be released. Alexander Lawson tells the story of Marie-Thérèse Rosseel, Ida Smeets, and Lutgarde Van der Wilt — and of the quiet neighbour a whole street failed to see. Content warning: sexual violence and murder.
Tuesday · 6 min
The Dutroux Case: The Girls Belgium Failed to Protect
June 1995: two eight-year-old girls vanish after waving at cars from a motorway bridge. Fourteen months later, police open a hidden cellar in Marcinelle—and Belgium’s justice system is forced into the light. Host Alexander Lawson traces the public record of Marc Dutroux: a convicted offender released early, a trail of missing girls across Wallonia and Flanders, the rescue of Sabine Dardenne and Laëtitia Delhez, the White March, and the 2004 trial that ended in life imprisonment. This episode stays with established facts and the names of the victims. It does not dwell on graphic detail. Listener discretion is advised.
Tuesday · 5 min
The Last Execution: Nicolas Bernardy and the Windhof Murders
July 1945. Five people are shot in a Luxembourg farmhouse living room. Three years later, Nicolas Bernardy is tied to a wooden post and executed by firing squad — the last common criminal put to death in the Grand Duchy. Host Alexander Lawson tells the story of the Windhof massacre: Johann and Susanne Weyer, their son Mathias, farmhand Josef Lucas, and maid Leonie Colling. A fingerprint. A confession that was taken back. A sergeant seen near the farm who was never convicted. And a country still raw from occupation, settling accounts the old way. The post is still in the police museum. You can see the hole.
Tuesday · 6 min
The Body Across Three Borders: Diana Santos and Saïd Banhakeia
A teenager in France finds a torso. Weeks later, more remains turn up in Germany. The woman they belong to — Diana Santos, 40, Portuguese, living in Diekirch — was killed in her Luxembourg home on 18 September 2022. In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, Alexander’s Lawson follows the case of Saïd Banhakeia: the former partner who told a Diekirch court he did not kill her — he only helped cut up the body — and blamed his nephew Gibran, who fled to Morocco and has never stood trial. Prosecution said jealousy. Defence said the wrong man was in the dock. In February 2026 the court imposed life imprisonment. The sentence is under appeal. Diana’s arms were never found. A cross-border murder, two accusations, and a verdict that is not the end of the story.
Tuesday · 7 min
The Policeman Who Poisoned His Family: Gilles L. and the Bereldange Murders
On a Sunday in Bereldange, a Luxembourg police officer poured drinks to toast his promotion. Minutes later his sister and brother-in-law were dying on the terrace. The lab said cyanide. He said it was the wrong poison — that he only meant to ruin their holiday. The court called it murder for money. Alexander Lawson traces the 2016 double killing, the darknet orders, the life sentence, and the later charge that Gilles L. also poisoned his mother, found dead in a bathtub two years earlier. A quiet country. A man with a badge. Glasses no one should have trusted. A True Crime Podcast.
Tuesday · 6 min
Carlo Fett: The Heist That Killed Luxembourg’s First Cop
Luxembourg was supposed to be too small, too rich, and too quiet for this. On 30 October 1985, Carlo Fett walked into the BIL headquarters on Boulevard Royal, smashed the glass with a shotgun, and opened fire. Minutes later, officer Patrice Conrardy was dead — the first police officer in the country’s history killed on duty. Fett fired 22 of the 33 shots. This episode follows Fett from a children’s home in Limpertsberg to the Waldbëlleger Gang’s two-year run of bank, jeweller and petrol-station robberies, the murders on a farm in Waldbillig, a chase that ended against a farmer’s tractor, a life sentence, a prison break, and a cell in Schrassig in 2003. I’m Alexander Lawson. This is A True Crime Podcast. Content warning: gun violence, murder, suicide.
Tuesday · 8 min
Luxembourg’s First Serial Killer: The Crimes of Luis Matias
Luxembourg is one of the safest countries in Europe — until a man starts hunting women in car parks, on footpaths, and across the German border. Between the mid-1980s and 1989, Luis Matias attacks seven women. Three are murdered. Four survive. One of them, Rosanna Campanella, fights him off in a Luxembourg City parking garage, reaches the police, and watches him walk free. He keeps his job. He writes to the newspaper. He claims a fourth killing the state never identifies. Host Alexander Lawson traces how a high-trust country missed its first known serial killer — the failures after the attacks, the 1992 trial, and the women whose names this story still has to protect. Content warning: murder, sexual violence, and police failure. A True Crime Podcast.

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