Serial Killers with Ben Carter

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Forbidden Knowledge
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Serial Killers with Ben Carter explores the lives, crimes, and investigations behind history’s most notorious killers. Each episode follows the timeline of events, examining victims, evidence, and law enforcement efforts through a structured, documentary-style approach. Analyzing motives, patterns, and psychological profiles, the series reveals how these crimes unfolded—and how they were ultimately uncovered. ⚠️ Listener discretion is advised. Unlock bonus content and full video episodes: https://www.patreon.com/theforbiddenknowledgenetwork

  1. 4h ago

    The Candy Man Murders: How Did Dean Corll Lure His Victims?

    On August 8, 1973, seventeen-year-old Elmer Wayne Henley contacted Pasadena police after shooting Dean Arnold Corll. That report led investigators to Corll’s rented Southwest Boat Storage stall in the Houston area and then to additional burial sites connected to the investigation. The discoveries exposed a series of killings of teenage boys and young men from 1970 through 1973, many from Houston Heights and nearby communities. Corll, a former candy-business operator and Houston Lighting and Power electrician, died before he could be charged or tried. The legal record instead centers on Henley and David Owen Brooks, both teenagers during the crimes, whose statements and convictions established participation in bringing victims to Corll and in specific murders. Henley was ultimately convicted of six murders after retrial; Brooks was convicted in the murder of James Stanton Dreymala. This episode follows the missing boys, the families who reported them, the evidence used to identify remains, the searches at Southwest Boat Storage, Lake Sam Rayburn, and High Island, and the court rulings that defined legal responsibility. The count is carefully qualified: a 1978 appellate opinion says Henley’s directions led to 27 bodies recovered in the initial investigation; Joseph Allen Lyles was later linked through forensic identification; NCMEC’s August 2023 public account described at least 28 victims; and 2023 Houston Chronicle reporting discussed 29 known victims and possible additional victims. NCMEC, NamUs, and Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences materials reviewed through the October 29, 2026 research cutoff did not establish a new public name for John Doe 1973, and that status must be rechecked before publication. The unresolved issue is not whether the proven convictions occurred, but whether every victim has been named. This podcast uses artificial intelligence in its research, writing, production, and narration. Episodes are editorially reviewed before publication. #SerialKillersWithBenCarterVictimCenteredChronolo #DeanCorll #HoustonMassMurders #HoustonHeights #Pasadena

  2. Oct 23

    Gerard John Schaefer: The Police Officer Convicted of Killing Two Teenagers

    In September 1972, seventeen-year-old Susan Place and sixteen-year-old Georgia Jessup disappeared in South Florida. Susan’s mother, Lucille Place, had written down the license number of the car Susan left in, and contemporary reporting in TIME says Susan had called the man Jerry Shepherd or Jerry Shephard. Months earlier, two other teenagers, Nancy Trotter and Paula Wells, had escaped after being abducted and restrained by Martin County deputy Gerard John Schaefer. Their report brought Schaefer to police attention before the missing-person cases became homicide cases. This episode follows the documented path from survivor report, to family persistence, to recovered remains, to search evidence, and finally to Schaefer’s 1973 conviction for killing Susan Place and Georgia Jessup. It treats the convictions as established legal outcomes, while separating them from later suspicions about other missing women and girls. Investigators found items and writings at Schaefer’s mother’s home that widened public suspicion, but the available record does not prove every suspected case. In 2022, authorities identified Susan Gail Poole through DNA comparison with her mother and publicly described Schaefer as a possible suspect, but that identification did not establish who killed her. The central question remains how evidence can connect unresolved cases to a convicted offender when suspicion is not the same as proof. This podcast uses artificial intelligence in its research, writing, production, and narration. Episodes are editorially reviewed before publication. #SerialKillersWithBenCarterVictimCenteredChronolo #GerardJohnSchaefer #SusanPlace #GeorgiaJessup #NancyTrotter

  3. Oct 16

    Robert Pickton: The Pig Farm Investigation That Exposed a Serial Killer

    In February 2002, police entered Robert William Pickton’s Port Coquitlam property under a firearms warrant. A missing-women investigation was also involved, and the search soon shifted toward evidence connected to women reported missing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. In 2007, Pickton was convicted of six counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Wolfe, Georgina Papin, and Marnie Frey. The Supreme Court of Canada affirmed those convictions in 2010. This episode follows the case chronologically: the disappearances families and advocates struggled to have taken seriously, the 1997 assault case involving an anonymized survivor known as Ms. Anderson, the 1998 stay of those charges, the divided investigations across Vancouver and Coquitlam, the formation of Project Evenhanded, and the farm search that changed the case. It also explains the legal limits of the record: Pickton was charged in twenty-six murder cases, convicted in six, and the remaining twenty charges were stayed. Reports that remains or DNA from thirty-three women were found on the farm do not equal thirty-three murder convictions, and Pickton’s undercover claim of forty-nine victims was not a verified count. The central unresolved issue is what the courts could not answer for families whose loved ones’ cases never went to trial, and what the public inquiry later found about the policing failures that delayed accountability. This podcast uses artificial intelligence in its research, writing, production, and narration. Episodes are editorially reviewed before publication. #SerialKillersWithBenCarterVictimCenteredChronolo #RobertPickton #PicktonFarm #VancouverMissingWomen #DowntownEastside

  4. Oct 9

    Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris: The Toolbox Killers Investigation

    In 1979, five teenage girls disappeared or were found dead across Southern California: Lucinda “Cindy” Schaefer, Andrea Hall, Jacqueline “Jackie” Gilliam, Leah Lamp, and Shirley Ledford. Lawrence Bittaker was later convicted of five murders and related felonies. Roy Norris pleaded guilty to five murders, received a sentence of 45 years to life, and testified against Bittaker under a plea agreement. The investigation that ultimately connected the five murders began with a separate rape survivor, identified in court records as Robin R. Her photographic identification of Bittaker and her description of his van supported an arrest warrant. When officers entered the seized van while investigating her assault, they found evidence that helped connect Bittaker and Norris to other crimes, including photographs, personal property, and a recording introduced at trial. The case depended on more than Norris’s testimony, but his cooperation shaped the chronology and helped police locate the remains of Jacqueline Gilliam and Leah Lamp. Lucinda Schaefer and Andrea Hall were legally recognized as murder victims, though their remains were never recovered. Shirley Ledford’s body was found the morning after her abduction. The central question is how investigators proved five murders when two victims were never found and one key witness was an accomplice with a deal. The California Supreme Court affirmed Bittaker’s conviction and death sentence in 1989. Bittaker died in prison in 2019; Norris died in custody in 2020. This podcast uses artificial intelligence in its research, writing, production, and narration. Episodes are editorially reviewed before publication. #SerialKillersWithBenCarterVictimCenteredChronolo #LawrenceBittaker #RoyNorris #SouthBay #RedondoBeach

  5. Oct 2

    Israel Keyes: The Murder Kits He Hid Across America

    In June of twenty eleven, William and Lorraine Currier disappeared from Essex, Vermont. Their car was found less than a mile from home, but they were not. Eight months later, eighteen-year-old Samantha Koenig was abducted from the Common Grounds coffee stand in Anchorage, Alaska. A ransom demand and withdrawals from an account linked to her stolen debit card led investigators across several states and, finally, to Israel Keyes in Lufkin, Texas. Keyes was arrested in March of twenty twelve and later admitted responsibility for Samantha Koenig and for William and Lorraine Currier. Federal prosecutors charged him in the Koenig case, but he died by suicide in custody before trial. Investigators recovered two concealed caches connected to his accounts: one in Alaska and one near Blake Falls Reservoir in New York. Those recoveries corroborated preparation and parts of his statements, but they did not prove every crime he claimed. This episode follows the Koenig investigation, the later connection to the Currier case, the landfill search that failed to recover the Curriers’ remains, the recovered supplies, and the FBI’s later estimate that Keyes may have been responsible for eleven homicides. It also treats Debra Feldman as the FBI did in twenty thirteen: a possible, not confirmed, identification. This podcast uses artificial intelligence in its research, writing, production, and narration. Episodes are editorially reviewed before publication. #SerialKillersWithBenCarterVictimCenteredChronolo #IsraelKeyes #SamanthaKoenig #WilliamCurrier #LorraineCurrier

  6. Sep 25

    Charles Cullen: The Nurse Who Moved From Hospital to Hospital

    In June 2003, Reverend Florian Gall died at Somerset Medical Center in Somerville, New Jersey. His sister, Lucille Gall, first understood his death as a medical crisis. Months later, investigators asked her about digoxin, a heart medication, and an abnormal drug result. That question led to Charles Edmund Cullen, a registered nurse who had worked across New Jersey and Pennsylvania hospitals from 1987 until his arrest in December 2003. This episode follows the documented chronology: Cullen’s early work at Saint Barnabas Medical Center, earlier suspicions involving medication irregularities, admitted murders at Warren Hospital, Hunterdon Medical Center, Easton Hospital, Lehigh Valley Hospital, and St. Luke’s Hospital, and the events at Somerset Medical Center that finally moved the case into a criminal investigation. It also examines the role of Amy Loughren, Cullen’s Somerset colleague, who helped detectives Timothy Braun and Daniel Baldwin interpret medication and dispensing records. Cullen pleaded guilty to 29 murders and 6 attempted murders in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. He received life sentences. His own estimate of 30 to 40 deaths, and later higher estimates by others, are not the same as proven victim counts. The central question remains how he continued working after earlier concerns, and how many patients were harmed in cases where records, biological evidence, or clear proof no longer exist. This podcast uses artificial intelligence in its research, writing, production, and narration. Episodes are editorially reviewed before publication. #SerialKillersWithBenCarterChronologicalTrueCrime #CharlesCullen #AmyLoughren #SomersetMedicalCenter #FlorianGall

  7. Sep 17

    The Alaska Killer Who Hunted Women in the Wilderness

    In June nineteen eighty-three, seventeen-year-old Cindy Paulson escaped from Robert Christian Hansen at Merrill Field in Anchorage, Alaska, and told police he had abducted, restrained, and sexually assaulted her before trying to take her to his aircraft. Hansen was a local baker, hunter, and pilot with an alibi and a respectable public image. Her report forced investigators to compare one survivor’s account with women who had disappeared or been found dead in remote parts of Southcentral Alaska. This episode follows the documented investigation led in major part by Alaska State Trooper Glenn Flothe, with Anchorage police, Alaska State Troopers, and FBI behavioral-analysis assistance. A search of Hansen’s home, vehicles, and aircraft recovered firearms, victim property, and a marked aviation chart that helped connect him to multiple homicide sites. Hansen pleaded guilty to murdering Sherry Morrow, Joanna Messina, Paula Goulding, and an unidentified young woman known as Eklutna Annie. He also pleaded guilty to crimes against Cindy Paulson. Under a cooperation agreement, he admitted killing seventeen women and helped investigators locate remains, but only four murders were resolved by conviction. Some attributed victims remain disputed, some women were never recovered, and Eklutna Annie remains unidentified. The central question is not whether Hansen was guilty, but how much of the map, and how many missing women, the surviving evidence can truly explain. This podcast uses artificial intelligence in its research, writing, production, and narration. Episodes are editorially reviewed before publication. #SerialKillersInvestigativeTrueCrime #RobertHansen #CindyPaulson #AlaskaSerialKiller #KnikRiver

  8. Sep 11

    David Parker Ray: The Investigation Into the Toy-Box Killer

    On March 22, 1999, Cynthia Vigil escaped captivity near Elephant Butte, New Mexico, while still wearing a metal collar and chain. Her report led police to David Parker Ray and Cindy Hendy, and to a converted trailer investigators associated with confinement, assault, recordings, restraints, and a large collection of unidentified personal property. Ray, popularly known as the Toy Box Killer, faced separate prosecutions involving surviving women, was found guilty of twelve counts in the Kelli Garrett case, later entered guilty pleas to kidnapping, criminal sexual penetration, and conspiracy to commit kidnapping, and received more than 223 years in prison. Angelica Montano reported a similar ordeal, and her allegations became part of the prosecution, but she died of pneumonia before her case could be tried. Dennis Yancy, an associate in Ray's circle, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the death of 22-year-old Marie Parker, who disappeared in 1997, though Ray was not convicted of her murder. The FBI has stated that Ray claimed about forty abducted victims from several states and later released hundreds of evidence photographs, asking families of missing people to identify jewelry, clothing, and other objects. This episode follows what investigators proved, what they suspected, and what remains unknown. This podcast uses artificial intelligence in its research, writing, production, and narration. Episodes are editorially reviewed before publication. #SerialCrimeInvestigationSurvivorLedTrueCrimeSusp #DavidParkerRay #ToyBoxKiller #CynthiaVigil #ElephantButte

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Serial Killers with Ben Carter explores the lives, crimes, and investigations behind history’s most notorious killers. Each episode follows the timeline of events, examining victims, evidence, and law enforcement efforts through a structured, documentary-style approach. Analyzing motives, patterns, and psychological profiles, the series reveals how these crimes unfolded—and how they were ultimately uncovered. ⚠️ Listener discretion is advised. Unlock bonus content and full video episodes: https://www.patreon.com/theforbiddenknowledgenetwork

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