14 episodes
Vigilante Opportunist
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- True Crime
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4.1 • 1.4K Ratings
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Vigilante is a podcast about regular people who take justice into their own hands - for better, or for worse. Hosted by Sarah James McLaughlin.
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Byron David Smith: The Deer Hunter
Byron Smith was tired of his home being burgled. He said it had been broken into at least a half dozen times. And he was determined not to let it happen again.
So, Smith set a trap and laid in wait to protect his “castle.”
When two teenage cousins broke into his house on Elm Street, it set off a true-life horror story. -
Ransom! Available now!
Ransom: Season 1 - Position of Trust is a story of greed and betrayal and how one’s outward appearance can be dangerously deceiving.
Go to ransompodcast.com, or follow Ransom on your favorite podcast app.
Twelve-year-old McKay Everett disappeared from his Texas home in September 1995. His father Carl returned from an Amway meeting to find the back door ajar and the telephone ringing. On the line, a woman with a raspy voice demanded $500,000.
Over the next week, the FBI played a game of cat-and-mouse with the kidnappers, who used inside information to stay one step ahead of the investigation. Ultimately the FBI uncovered a series of crimes that started long before McKay was taken. Most shocking of all was the suspect. McKay had been betrayed by someone he trusted – a pillar of the community hiding a dark secret.
But decades later, McKay’s mother, Paulette, still isn’t satisfied with the official story. She doesn’t think everyone involved has been brought to justice. -
James Fairbanks: A Hero and a Devil
James Fairbanks spent his career helping at-risk children. But their stories took a devastating toll on him.
In 2020, Fairbanks said he witnessed a registered sex offender - Mattieo Condoluci - scouting out his next victim. Fairbanks vowed on the spot he wouldn’t allow another child to be abused.
Taking justice into his own hands, Fairbanks confronted Condoluci, shooting him four times, and killing him.
However, Condoluci's daughter praised Fairbanks for killing the man she said repeatedly raped her. -
Rev. Raymond Broshears: Militant Priest
In the 1970s, San Francisco’s gay community was being terrorized.
An unlikely hero emerged - Rev. Raymond Broshears.
Determined to protect his flock, the gun-toting, controversial gay priest brought vigilante justice to San Francisco’s streets. -
Marvin Heemeyer: The Killdozer
Marvin Heemeyer was nearing his breaking point after a decade-long battle with his local zoning commission.
He believed they were conspiring against him.
Heemeyer demanded justice, and in an effort to secure the justice he believed he deserved, he turned to an armored bulldozer and terrorized his local community. -
Varnamtown! Available Now!
Two years ago, Kyle MacLachlan, the star of Twin Peaks, called investigative journalist Joshua Davis with a strange story. Kyle had heard a rumor that Pablo Escobar did a deal in the early 1980s with a remote, coastal Southern town of 300 people. In exchange for vast wealth and limitless cocaine, Escobar would be allowed to land planes and ships in the area. Over the last 24 months, Josh and Kyle investigated the rumor, journeying to Varnamtown to knock on doors and find out what really happens when a firehose of money and cocaine is turned on a small, tight knit community.
Listen to and follow Varnamtown at Apple Podcasts now! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/varnamtown/id1725195343
Customer Reviews
Interesting content, good production quality
I listen to podcasts for several hours each day while working, dog walking, chores, driving, etc and I have pretty high standards for production quality and content. I’m writing this review after listening to the story on Tim & his search and recovery organization.
Pros: the intrigue of the story itself, production quality (minus a couple hard-to-hear phone convos), & the honesty and fairness of the host. She’s open about this being her first foray into ‘podcasting investigative journalism’ and I found myself both rooting for her and worrying for her alongside wondering what would happen next in the story. This made it refreshingly different than other true crime podcasts I listen to. In addition, I appreciated that there weren’t horrific, drawn-out descriptions of violence like in some other true crime podcasts. Finally, I felt that she delicately approached the conundrum of Tim’s approach to his work… yes, he’s doing much-needed work that helps others, but sometimes that’s at the risk of putting his own people in danger. This is, I feel, a fair assessment on the part of the host. I don’t think she’s being unnecessarily harsh when she questions Tim’s methods. After all, don’t we want an investigative reporter to question everything to some extent?
Cons: we didn’t hear the “assumed serial killer’s” side of the story BUT the host disclosed valid concerns - the most important being safety (+1 for trusting your gut). In addition, Clyde wasn’t very honest on the phone so it’s difficult to believe an in-person meeting could be any more informative. BUT I did find the incredible amount of “missing evidence” to be very perplexing…. I wish the host would have investigated that further. How could a police department be so incompetent that they lost multiple pieces of evidence? I started wondering if the medical examiner himself could have be involved, stealing evidence for “trophies.” The fact that he took the evidence home with him is so bizarre. Honestly the failures of law enforcement in this story probably provide enough content for a whole podcast of its own.
Re: content for future episodes, might be worth looking into the shockingly large volume of missing and murdered indigenous women.
Corrupted podcast?
I got halfway through the Byron David Smith episode and then my podcast app crashed. I tried restarting it several times, but every time I opened the app it would crash. Finally managed to delete that episode and start another episode of another show and the app stopped crashing.
Missing information
I feel like there was a lot of missing information in the Deer Hunter episode. There has to be more to the story than we were told.
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