Precision & Instinct

Simone Valdez and Eli Marchetti

Every case has a body, a mystery, and no confession.

Precision and Instinct is a true crime debate show built around two hosts who never agree. Eli Marchetti argues the hard evidence — what can actually be proven. Simone Valdez argues the pattern — what the evidence is too careful to say out loud. There is no narrator telling you what to think, and no tidy resolution. Just two sides of every case, argued out in full, and you decide who is right.

Each episode takes on a real, unresolved case — from an unidentified man found dead on an Australian beach with a coded poem in his pocket, to the real exorcism that inspired a horror classic, to the oldest unsolved murder in Los Angeles history. Every case gets the same treatment: hard evidence versus pattern and instinct, argued out completely, no verdict handed to you.

The case files. Every episode has a companion page at precisionandinstinct.com with the full case in writing and the source list behind it, where every claim is marked confirmed, disputed, or single-source. Listen first, then check our work.

New episodes weekly.

SIMONE VALDEZ grew up two blocks from the water in Santa Barbara, in a family of storytellers who trusted their gut long before they trusted the news. Her grandmother read coffee grounds; her mother ran a small business on instinct alone and never once went under. Simone inherited both the skepticism of outsiders and the conviction that some truths show up in a room before they show up on paper. She spent her twenties as a behavioral researcher, then a private investigator's assistant, chasing the parts of a case that never made it into the official report — the pause before an answer, the detail nobody thought to ask about. She has an unshakeable belief that people tell you who they are, if you're willing to actually watch. Precision and Instinct lets her finally say out loud what she's been thinking the whole time.

ELI MARCHETTI was raised in a house where dinner conversations doubled as cross-examinations. The son of a Cook County paralegal and a high school chemistry teacher, he spent his childhood summers on the South Side of Chicago, where he learned early that a good story and a true one are rarely the same thing. He studied journalism before switching, halfway through, to statistics — a decision his mother still brings up. Before turning his attention to cold cases and unsolved mysteries, Eli spent the better part of a decade fact-checking for a Midwest newsroom, where he developed a reputation for being the last person in the building willing to sign off on a headline. He now lives by one rule: if it can't be documented, it isn't true yet — it's just a good guess wearing a suit. Precision and Instinct is his first venture into audio, though friends say he's been cross-examining people for free his whole life.

The hosts are characters created by Verb Editorial. Their voices are AI-generated. All research, writing and production are done by a human team.

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S1 · E14
Sunday · 14 min
The Hall-Mills Murders: Jersey’s Original True Crime Circus
Hey! We would love to hear your thoughts, send us a voice note. On a September night in 1922, a small-town minister and a choir singer he'd been having an affair with were shot dead and laid out side by side under a crab apple tree in a New Jersey lovers' lane — his hat over his face, her scarf around her throat, torn love letters scattered between them, and his own calling card propped at his feet like a signature. The crime scene was never secured: within days it was pulling an estimated thousand cars a day, with vendors selling balloons and twenty-five-cent bags of dirt scooped from under the tree until souvenir hunters had stripped the bark off it. Four years, a missing grand jury file, and a witness testifying from a hospital bed later, the reverend's widow and her two brothers stood trial in the biggest media circus American journalism had seen before Lindbergh — and walked out acquitted. This week, Eli makes the case that the acquittal was the only honest verdict a badly-compromised, circumstantial case could produce. Simone isn't ready to let a filed-down pistol, a changed story, and a family with the money to buy the best defense in the state off the hook that easily. Want to see for yourself? The case file has the full story in writing, and the source list shows which claims are confirmed, which are disputed, and which rest on a single account. Case file: https://precisionandinstinct.com/cases/hall-mills-murders/ Source list: https://notes.precisionandinstinct.com/episodes/14-the-hall-mills-murders.html CONTENT NOTE: This episode covers a real, unsolved 1922 double homicide and the 1926 trial of four named historical defendants — Frances Hall, Henry Stevens, Willie Stevens, and Henry Carpender — all of whom were acquitted or never brought to trial and were never legally found guilty of anything. All named principals in this case, including both victims and the prosecution's central witness, died between 1930 and 1992; there are no living subjects and no sensitivity sign-off gate on this case. Standard care applies throughout to any language implying guilt, since the jury's verdict stands and has never been overturned — the episode itself argues both sides without resolving which one is right. The hosts are characters created by Verb Editorial. Their voices are AI-generated. All research, writing and production are done by a human team.
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S1 · E13
October 4 · 16 min
The Mad Gasser of Mattoon
Hey! We would love to hear your thoughts, send us a voice note. In September 1944, in the small Illinois railroad town of Mattoon, a woman named Beulah Cordes picked up a cloth left on her own front porch — and within seconds her lips were swelling and her mouth and throat were burning, with a skeleton key and a lipstick tube, neither hers, sitting beside it. Over the next two weeks, dozens of residents reported a mysterious "gas maniac" breaking into homes at night to leave people gassed and paralyzed, drawing in the Illinois State Police and the FBI, before the panic collapsed within days of the police chief publicly doubting it — and no suspect was ever arrested or charged. This week, Eli and Simone dig into a case the town's own public health commissioner couldn't fully settle in real time: whether this is one of history's clearest documented cases of mass hysteria, or whether one badly-explained porch means something in Mattoon actually happened. Want to see for yourself? The case file has the full story in writing, and the source list shows which claims are confirmed, which are disputed, and which rest on a single account. Case file: https://precisionandinstinct.com/cases/mad-gasser-of-mattoon/ Source list: https://notes.precisionandinstinct.com/episodes/13-the-mad-gasser-of-mattoon.html CONTENT NOTE: This episode discusses a wartime panic involving documented chemical injury to a real, named private individual (Beulah Cordes) and references to wartime loss (a household member killed at Normandy) as historical context, not as a focus of grief or tragedy narration. One contested historical candidate (Farley Llewellyn) is named once, sourced to a single self-published book flagged as unreliable by Wikipedia's own editors; no motive, personal life, or biographical detail about him is discussed. No suspect was ever arrested or charged in this case, and it remains officially unresolved. The hosts are characters created by Verb Editorial. Their voices are AI-generated. All research, writing and production are done by a human team.
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S1 · E12
September 27 · 15 min
Spy in a Bag: The Death of Gareth Williams
Hey! We would love to hear your thoughts, send us a voice note. In August 2010, a 31-year-old GCHQ mathematician on secondment to MI6 vanished for over a week without anyone at his own intelligence agency raising an alarm. When police finally checked his Pimlico flat, they found him dead inside a padlocked holdall bag in the bathtub. What followed was a 2012 coroner's inquest that found it "likely" he was unlawfully killed — and a 2013 Metropolitan Police reversal calling it "probably an accident." Neither has ever been proven. No one has ever been charged. As of a 2023 forensic review, the file remains officially open. This week, Eli and Simone dig into a case where two of Britain's own institutions reached opposite conclusions from the same evidence, and neither has ever closed the book. Want to see for yourself? The case file has the full story in writing, and the source list shows which claims are confirmed, which are disputed, and which rest on a single account. Case file: https://precisionandinstinct.com/cases/gareth-williams-spy-in-a-bag/ Source list: https://notes.precisionandinstinct.com/episodes/12-the-death-of-gareth-williams.html CONTENT NOTE: This episode discusses an unresolved death that remains an open case; Gareth Williams's family has publicly and repeatedly disputed the official "accident" finding as recently as 2013. The episode also discusses aspects of Williams's private life (a fashion-course enrollment, a wardrobe of women's clothing, and visits to bondage-related websites) strictly within the framing the coroner herself established at inquest — this is not tabloid speculation, and neither host draws conclusions about his sexuality or private life beyond what the official record supports. Neither host reaches a verdict on whether Williams was unlawfully killed or died by accident; the case remains genuinely unresolved. The hosts are characters created by Verb Editorial. Their voices are AI-generated. All research, writing and production are done by a human team.
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S1 · E11
September 20 · 15 min
The Confessions of Mack Ray Edwards
Hey! We would love to hear your thoughts, send us a voice note. In March 1970, a Los Angeles highway construction supervisor named Mack Ray Edwards walked into a police station, set a loaded handgun on the counter, and confessed to killing children for sixteen years. Only three of those killings were ever charged. The rest of his claimed victims - a number that grew to as many as eighteen or twenty across his own retellings - were never charged, and the sites he directed investigators to, decades apart, have all come up empty. This week, Eli and Simone dig into what's left when a confession outruns the evidence behind it: a freeway built over one victim's grave, two more empty excavations under freeways and overpasses across two counties, and a debate about how much a dying man's word should count when the physical record can't confirm or rule it out. Want to see for yourself? The case file has the full story in writing, and the source list shows which claims are confirmed, which are disputed, and which rest on a single account. Case file: https://precisionandinstinct.com/cases/mack-ray-edwards-confessions/ Source list: https://notes.precisionandinstinct.com/episodes/11-the-confessions-of-mack-ray-edwards.html CONTENT NOTE: This episode discusses the murders of children, including cases involving surviving family members who may still be living. Several of the discussed cases remain open, unresolved cold cases with no other suspect. Neither host resolves any specific uncharged case as fact - the debate stays at the level of how much an uncorroborated confession should be credited. The hosts are characters created by Verb Editorial. Their voices are AI-generated. All research, writing and production are done by a human team.
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S1 · E10
September 13 · 16 min
The Death of Dag Hammarskjöld
Hey! We would love to hear your thoughts, send us a voice note. In September 1961, UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld's plane went down fifteen kilometers from Ndola Airport en route to Congo Crisis ceasefire talks — all sixteen aboard died. The official finding: pilot error. But sixty-five years later, the UN's own investigation is still open, and its most recent report calls an external attack "plausible." This week, Eli and Simone work through six decades of competing evidence — a disputed ballistics finding that undercuts the official explanation for two bodyguards' bullet wounds, letters alleging intelligence-service involvement, dueling named-suspect theories, and a UN investigator who keeps saying member states are almost certainly withholding archives. Neither host lands on a verdict — because the file genuinely hasn't closed. Want to see for yourself? The case file has the full story in writing, and the source list shows which claims are confirmed, which are disputed, and which rest on a single account. Case file: https://precisionandinstinct.com/cases/dag-hammarskjold-plane-crash/ Source list: https://notes.precisionandinstinct.com/episodes/10-the-death-of-dag-hammarskjold.html CONTENT NOTE: This episode discusses a fatal plane crash, real intelligence services (US/CIA, UK/MI5, apartheid-era South African intelligence, Belgium) in connection with a disputed assassination theory, and an investigation the United Nations itself still considers open as of October 2024. Framing is deliberately non-conclusive — neither host names a specific culprit or government. Listener discretion advised given the politically contested subject matter. The hosts are characters created by Verb Editorial. Their voices are AI-generated. All research, writing and production are done by a human team.
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S1 · E9
September 6 · 15 min
The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run
Hey! We would love to hear your thoughts, send us a voice note. Between 1934 and 1938, someone dismembered at least twelve people in Cleveland and left them scattered through a ravine called Kingsbury Run — and the city could only ever put a name to two of them. Eliot Ness, the most famous lawman in the country, personally led the hunt, burned an entire shantytown to the ground trying to break the case, and it broke him instead: he was out of a job within four years, dead broke by 1957, and only famous again after he died. Three men came under suspicion — a drifter who confessed and then recanted before dying in custody, a man convicted years later of an eerily similar murder, and a surgeon who was never charged with anything at all. None of them was ever convicted. Eli argues the physical trail, thin as it is, points more concretely at the two men who at least left a paper record. Simone argues the pattern points at the surgeon — and that the case's real casualty may have been the one detective who chased it hardest. Want to see for yourself? The case file has the full story in writing, and the source list shows which claims are confirmed, which are disputed, and which rest on a single account. Case file: https://precisionandinstinct.com/cases/kingsbury-run-torso-murders/ Source list: https://notes.precisionandinstinct.com/episodes/09-the-mad-butcher-of-kingsbury-run.html A note before you press play: this episode discusses graphic violence, including the murder and dismemberment of real people, most of whom remain unidentified nearly a century later. We approach it with the same care we'd want if it were someone we knew. The hosts are characters created by Verb Editorial. Their voices are AI-generated. All research, writing and production are done by a human team.
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S1 · E8
August 30 · 15 min
Bruno Llambrich: Le Prédateur des Bois
Hey! We would love to hear your thoughts, send us a voice note. For over a decade, a serial rapist attacked women alone on wooded roads outside Paris and left behind DNA that matched nothing in France's national database. In 2021, investigators tried something French citizens themselves aren't legally allowed to do: they sent the crime-scene profile through the FBI to a commercial ancestry database. A distant cousin's harmless curiosity about his own family tree became the thread that unraveled the case — and led straight to Bruno Llambrich, who died in custody before any court ever tested whether the method that caught him was legal. Three weeks before this episode was recorded, France's Constitutional Council struck down the law that would have made the technique legal going forward. Eli argues the tool works and the failure was in the drafting. Simone argues the workaround was chosen with eyes open, and no rewrite fixes that. Want to see for yourself? The case file has the full story in writing, and the source list shows which claims are confirmed, which are disputed, and which rest on a single account. Case file: https://precisionandinstinct.com/cases/bruno-llambrich-predateur-des-bois/ Source list: https://notes.precisionandinstinct.com/episodes/08-le-predateur-des-bois.html A note before you press play: this episode discusses sexual assault and covers a real, still-developing legal situation. We approach it with the same care we'd want if it were someone we knew. The hosts are characters created by Verb Editorial. Their voices are AI-generated. All research, writing and production are done by a human team.
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S1 · E7
August 23 · 22 min
The Typewriter & The Execution of Ethel Rosenberg
Hey! We would love to hear your thoughts, send us a voice note. In 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg became the only American civilians ever executed for espionage during peacetime — convicted of passing atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union. But the evidence against them was never equal. This week, Eli and Simone dig into declassified VENONA cables, a recanted "smoking gun" testimony, an FBI director who privately argued against the execution, and the ambitious young prosecutor who pushed for it anyway. It's a story about Cold War paranoia, a courtroom shortcut that cost a life, and the two young sons left behind — and what happened to the man who tried hardest to protect them. Want to see for yourself? The case file has the full story in writing, and the source list shows which claims are confirmed, which are disputed, and which rest on a single account. Case file: https://precisionandinstinct.com/cases/ethel-rosenberg-execution/ Source list: https://notes.precisionandinstinct.com/episodes/07-ethel-rosenberg-the-typewriter.html CONTENT NOTE: This episode discusses capital punishment and a graphic execution, political persecution, and antisemitism. Listener discretion advised. The hosts are characters created by Verb Editorial. Their voices are AI-generated. All research, writing and production are done by a human team.
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S1 · E6
August 16 · 14 min
Pancho Villa: The Parral Ambush
Hey! We would love to hear your thoughts, send us a voice note. July 20th, 1923. A black Dodge roadster rolls through the streets of Parral, Mexico, and in under five seconds, the most dangerous man in Mexico for the better part of a decade is dead — shot more than a hundred and fifty times by nine men with rifles. The day before, he was farming cattle on a government-sanctioned ranch, guarded by exactly four men. Three years earlier, he had fifty. The next day, at his funeral, almost nobody comes. Eli says the real story is what happened after — a public confession, a twenty-year sentence, and a release after just seven months, ordered by a governor who owed his job to the men consolidating power in Mexico City. Simone says the ambush itself tells a more personal story — three separate men, three separate grudges, one house, one morning. Along the way: the 1916 raid that made Pancho Villa the only person to lead an armed foreign attack on U.S. soil between the War of 1812 and Pearl Harbor, the year the U.S. Army spent hunting him and never found him, and the film contract he signed to have his own battles shot for American movie theaters. Want to see for yourself? The case file has the full story in writing, and the source list shows which claims are confirmed, which are disputed, and which rest on a single account. Case file: https://precisionandinstinct.com/cases/pancho-villa-assassination/ Source list: https://notes.precisionandinstinct.com/episodes/06-pancho-villa-the-parral-ambush.html A note before you press play: this episode covers a real assassination with graphic detail, discussed directly. We approach it with the same care we'd want if it were someone we knew. The hosts are characters created by Verb Editorial. Their voices are AI-generated. All research, writing and production are done by a human team.
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S1 · E5
August 9 · 13 min
The Boy in the Box
Hey! We would love to hear your thoughts, send us a voice note. February 25th, 1957. A college student checking a rabbit trap in a Philadelphia wooded lot finds a young boy's body stuffed inside a cardboard box that once held a bassinet. No missing-person report anywhere ever matched him. No Social Security number. No name. For sixty-five years, "America's Unknown Child" stayed exactly that — despite a psychic's tip to a real foster home, a woman's unverified confession decades later, and thousands of leads that went nowhere. Eli says almost seven decades of theories never cleared a real evidentiary bar — and that it took a genetic genealogy program stitching together distant cousins, not a single lead from all those years, to finally give him back his name in December 2022: Joseph Augustus Zarelli. Simone says the truth was written on his own body the whole time, and that every dead-end theory pointed the same direction for a reason. Even with a name, there's still no killer — and the same potter's field that held him for decades is now giving up more of its unidentified dead using the technique that finally worked on Joseph. Want to see for yourself? The case file has the full story in writing, and the source list shows which claims are confirmed, which are disputed, and which rest on a single account. Case file: https://precisionandinstinct.com/cases/boy-in-the-box-joseph-zarelli/ Source list: https://notes.precisionandinstinct.com/episodes/05-the-boy-in-the-box.html A note before you press play: this episode covers a real child homicide, including references to sustained abuse. We approach it with the same care we'd want if it were someone we knew. The hosts are characters created by Verb Editorial. Their voices are AI-generated. All research, writing and production are done by a human team.
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S1 · E4
August 2 · 15 min
The Black Dahlia
Hey! We would love to hear your thoughts, send us a voice note. January 15th, 1947. A mother walking with her child in a Los Angeles vacant lot spots what she thinks is a discarded mannequin. It's Elizabeth Short — twenty-two years old, cut cleanly in half at the waist, her body completely drained of blood. Seventy-nine years later, it's still the oldest unsolved murder in LA history, and the deeper it goes, the stranger it gets: a killer who mailed the victim's own belongings to a newsroom nine days later, a taunting string of letters, and a prime suspect — a physician caught on a police wiretap all but admitting it — who was never charged and died free. Eli says almost eighty years of investigation has never met a real evidentiary bar. Simone says the pattern speaks for itself. Tonight, they argue it out, including a real, still-standing connection to Santa Barbara most retellings of this case never even mention. Want to see for yourself? The case file has the full story in writing, and the source list shows which claims are confirmed, which are disputed, and which rest on a single account. Case file: https://precisionandinstinct.com/cases/black-dahlia-elizabeth-short/ Source list: https://notes.precisionandinstinct.com/episodes/04-the-black-dahlia.html A note before you press play: this episode covers a real homicide with graphic detail. We approach it with the same care we'd want if it were someone we knew. The hosts are characters created by Verb Editorial. Their voices are AI-generated. All research, writing and production are done by a human team.
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S1 · E3
July 26 · 13 min
The Springfield Three
Hey! We would love to hear your thoughts, send us a voice note. June 6th, 1992. Two friends come home from graduation parties to spend the night at a mother's house in Springfield, Missouri — the safe option, the responsible choice. By morning, all three women are gone. Cars still in the driveway. Purses, keys, shoes all left behind. The only thing broken in the entire house is the porch light. Over thirty years later, there's still no body, no arrest, and one prime suspect who told a reporter from prison that he knew where they were buried — then called the question "frivolous" when asked directly if he did it. Eli says over five thousand tips and decades of searches have never produced a single piece of physical evidence. Simone says a two-dollar broken porch light might be the most important clue in the whole case. Want to see for yourself? The case file has the full story in writing, and the source list shows which claims are confirmed, which are disputed, and which rest on a single account. Case file: https://precisionandinstinct.com/cases/springfield-three/ Source list: https://notes.precisionandinstinct.com/episodes/03-the-springfield-three.html A note before you press play: this episode covers a real, still-unsolved disappearance. We approach it with the same care we'd want if it were someone we knew. The hosts are characters created by Verb Editorial. Their voices are AI-generated. All research, writing and production are done by a human team.
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S1 · E2
July 26 · 16 min
The Real Exorcist
Hey! We would love to hear your thoughts, send us a voice note. January 1949, just outside Washington, D.C. A thirteen-year-old boy starts exhibiting behavior no one in his family can explain — scratching in the walls, furniture moving on its own, welts spelling out words on his skin. A Lutheran pastor witnesses it first. Then two Jesuit priests at Saint Louis University get involved, and over the following weeks perform what's become one of the most famous exorcisms in American history — the real case that inspired the novel and film. Eli says there's not a single neutral witness in the entire record. Simone says you don't get this many independent, credible people converging on the same specific claims by accident. Along the way: a diary that sat sealed in an abandoned hospital room for decades, and a detail from a single, less-reliable source that — if true — reframes the entire case. Want to see for yourself? The case file has the full story in writing, and the source list shows which claims are confirmed, which are disputed, and which rest on a single account. Case file: https://precisionandinstinct.com/cases/real-exorcist-roland-doe/ Source list: https://notes.precisionandinstinct.com/episodes/02-the-real-exorcist.html A note before you press play: this episode covers real events involving a minor experiencing significant psychological and physical distress. We approach it with the same care we'd want if it were someone we knew. The hosts are characters created by Verb Editorial. Their voices are AI-generated. All research, writing and production are done by a human team.
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S1 · E1
July 26 · 16 min
The Somerton Man
Hey! We would love to hear your thoughts, send us a voice note. December 1st, 1948. A man in a full suit and tie is found propped against a seawall on a quiet Australian beach, legs crossed, arms folded, like he simply sat down and never got up. No wallet. No ID. Every label cut out of his clothes. Seventy-five years later, nobody has ever definitively said who he was — and the deeper the case goes, the stranger it gets: an unclaimed suitcase, a scrap of paper reading Tamam Shud sewn into a hidden pocket, a rare book with an unbreakable code scrawled in the back, and an unlisted phone number belonging to a nurse who denied everything. Eli says it's a man who built himself to disappear — no conspiracy required. Simone isn't so sure. Tonight, they argue it out, and you get to decide who's right. Want to see for yourself? The case file has the full story in writing, and the source list shows which claims are confirmed, which are disputed, and which rest on a single account. Case file: https://precisionandinstinct.com/cases/tamam-shud-somerton-man/ Source list: https://notes.precisionandinstinct.com/episodes/01-somerton-man.html A note before you press play: this episode covers a real, still-unidentified death. We approach it with the same care we'd want if it were someone we knew. The hosts are characters created by Verb Editorial. Their voices are AI-generated. All research, writing and production are done by a human team.
- Transcript
July 21 · 1 min
Precision & Instinct Series Trailer
Hey! We would love to hear your thoughts, send us a voice note. Every case has a body, a mystery, and no confession. Precision and Instinct is a true crime debate show built around two hosts who never agree: Eli argues the hard evidence, Simone argues the pattern underneath it, and neither one wins. There's no narrator telling you what to think — just two sides of every case, and you decide which one holds up. New cold cases, argued out in full, every episode. First case drops soon — a man found dead on an Australian beach in 1948 with no name and no explanation. Follow now so it's waiting for you the moment it's live.
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