Sword and Scal‪e‬ Kast Media

When 29-year-old Natasha Waalen was found dead next to her dirt bike, police assumed it had been a terrible accident. They were wrong. Natasha had been murdered and her death was sloppily covered up to look like a motorcycle crash. Who would want this young mother, acupuncturist, and university graduate dead? Fingers soon pointed towards the father of her child and former boyfriend, Ryan Boland as the police uncovered the violent, questionable past behind Ryan’s good ol’ boy facade. But the town soon questioned if he had acted alone.

On Sunday June 28th, 2015, Dr. Teresa Sievers returned home early from a family vacation only to find she was not alone in the house. In the aftermath of a brutal murder, it appeared on the surface to be a robbery—but no valuables were taken, and no clues were left behind except for a bloody, hairy hammer. Uncovering the truth would take months, and involve a conspiracy that crossed multiple states.

We sometimes get things wrong. In this exclusive interview with Kim Dixon, sister to Zachary Penna's victim from Episode 181, she joins us to tell us why.

In December of 2000, 31-year-old real estate appraiser Mike Williams went missing while duck hunting on Lake Seminole in Jackson County, Florida. The initial belief was that Mike had drowned and that alligators had eaten his body. Seventeen years would go by before Florida law enforcement could prove that something even more horrifying and nefarious happened to Mike Williams.  

Zachary Penna was having a horrible day. He left work early to pick up his car but the auto shop said it wasn’t ready which ruined his evening plans. He had to walk home in the South Florida heat and when he got there he was locked out. It’s enough to piss anyone off but Zachary had a different reaction. He stripped off most of his clothes, trudged through some nearby woods, and murdered Freddy Sanchez and Wayne Dixon, two complete strangers, in their own home.

Special thanks to Marc Freeman, court reporter for the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

An unreal crime scene with a dead fortune teller, her dead daughter, and an otherworldly tone has police in Westminster, CA grasping at straws trying to solve the case. They consulted Warlocks, cult experts and were even approached by a dog psychic. They come up with nothing. That is, until they catch a break with a credit transaction… on the opposite coast. In a case that takes you from Little Saigon to rural North Carolina and leads you on a path of greed and destruction this episode will have you questioning your own fortune.

“This was a horrible crime and these stories need to be told. I thank you for telling them. We can have reforms but victims cannot be forgotten because evil will still be there and these stories are cautionary tales. Their lives mattered. It mattered to all of us who worked to bring them justice. And Justice, is a lifetime commitment.”

-Sonia Balleste, Chief Deputy District Attorney, Santa Barbara