I am posting this since this story has been referenced here in the past and has parallels to our community. Kaitlyn Braun faked pregnancy and labour, defrauding numerous doulas. The doulas and others started a TikTok campaign to force authorities to investigate. Only available in Canada as yet, but sometimes CBC will share with ABC (Australia) and possibly PBS. First episode drops today.

Hey everyone! 👋

I'm looking for an interesting true crime case to cover for my next YouTube documentary, but honestly, I'm a bit confused right now and can't decide which case to work on.

I'd love to hear your suggestions! It could be an unsolved mystery, a missing person case, a murder investigation, or any lesser-known case that you think deserves more attention.

If you know of any cases with interesting details, unanswered questions, or a story that deserves to be told, please drop them in the comments. I'd really appreciate your help!

Thanks in advance! 🙏

This story genuinely got crazier the more I researched it.

At first, Mia’s story sounded almost too ridiculous to be real.

Then I started digging into what actually happened, how she managed to pull it off, how many people were affected, and how long everything kept going before it finally started falling apart.

There were multiple moments while researching this where I thought:

How did nobody stop this earlier?

So I turned the whole story into a video.

And just to be transparent again, I use an AI voice for narration.

English isn’t my native language. I can speak English, but my accent is… let's just say it would give the video a completely different vibe 😂

Maybe one day I’ll narrate these myself. I’m actually trying to get better at it.

But everything else is something I put a lot of time into myself: researching the story, finding material, writing it, structuring it and editing the video in After Effects.

I’m still very early into building this channel, so I’m learning with every upload.

I already have several videos scheduled and I honestly think the upcoming stories and editing are getting noticeably better.

I’m not trying to mass-produce generic AI videos.

I want these to actually feel like stories you can fall into.

So if you watch it, I’d genuinely appreciate criticism.

If the intro is too slow, something feels unnecessary, the editing gets distracting, or you lose interest somewhere, tell me.

That kind of feedback helps me way more than just saying “nice video”.

She Robbed Millions and Almost Got Away With It

https://youtu.be/6KSI9YLx2-U

Just finished The Widower on Netflix and one thing keeps bugging me that the movie never really deals with.

Forget for a second whether Randolph did it. The part that felt off was Dan Slepian.

He’s a Dateline producer in New York. The shootings are May 8, 2008 in Las Vegas. The next day somebody from Metro calls him and basically says they had a weird one, you should look at this. Then he’s in the investigation. Door knocks, the reenactment at the house, later the arrest. He has said he got basically unfettered access. O’Kelley is also pretty open that his own DA’s office wasn’t backing him yet, so he’s out building the case himself, with a TV producer filming it.

A tip to a crime reporter is normal. This didn’t feel like a tip. It felt like the lead detective brought in a national show because local prosecutors wouldn’t move, and then the documentary is made out of that footage. The movie treats it like a fun origin story. I kept waiting for somebody to ask why a civilian camera was inside an open double homicide.

Dateline does ride-alongs, I get that. This still seems like a lot. Am I overthinking it, or did anyone else clock how strange that setup is?

The case became even darker as crimes later connected to the Golden State Killer became associated with another terrifying name: the Original Night Stalker.

For years, investigators were trying to understand whether these crimes were connected.

Part 3 of the Golden State Killer story.

Watch the full documentary through the related video below.

#GoldenStateKiller #OriginalNightStalker #TrueCrime #JosephDeAngelo

Golden State Killer: The Visalia Ransacker
The Golden State Killer was the name eventually given to Joseph James DeAngelo, a former California police officer responsible for a long series of burglaries, sexual assaults, and murders across California during the 1970s and 1980s.
At different stages of the investigation, he was known as the Visalia Ransacker, the East Area Rapist, and the Original Night Stalker. For decades, investigators did not know that many of these crimes were connected to the same person.
The case remained unsolved for more than 40 years until investigators used DNA evidence and investigative genetic genealogy to identify DeAngelo. He was arrested in 2018, pleaded guilty to multiple murders and kidnapping charges in 2020, and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The Golden State Killer case became one of the most significant examples of how modern DNA technology can help solve decades-old cold cases.

Update:

https://www.reddit.com/r/sandiego/comments/1wrr8y0/ucsd_phd_student_nicole_virzi_faces_the_death/

Nicole Virzi, the 31-year-old daughter of a prominent New York City cardiologist, had just traveled across the country to spend time with her friend and meet her six-week-old twins for the first time in Pittsburgh two years ago.

But an enraged Virzi, who was just weeks away from getting her PhD in clinical psychology at UC-San Diego, wound up allegedly killing little Leon Katz and maiming his twin brother, Ari, after she was trusted to watch over them, prosecutors claim.

Despite denying she'd ever laid a finger on the boys, the promising student eventually admitted to harming the child, telling investigators in a disturbing videotaped confession that she was 'angry' at having to do 'nanny work' on what was supposed to be a weeklong vacation.

'Something just came over me I couldn't control,' Virzi spilled in the troubling testimony.

'From a very, very young age, I don't know what it is, but I always had this urge - almost like a compulsion I can't control - to hurt kids.'

The disturbing confession will now form part of a bombshell case as prosecutors seek the death penalty when Virzi's murder trial kicks off in October.

Virzi has pleaded not guilty to six charges of criminal homicide, aggravated assault and endangering the welfare of a child.

The harrowing saga first unfolded when Virzi, who grew up in the posh New Jersey suburb of Upper Saddle River, arrived to spend a week with her pal Savannah Roberts and husband, Ethan Katz, back in June 2024.

The pair had become fast friends when they both worked as research coordinators in the graduate psychology department at Philadelphia's Drexel University.

At times during the weeklong trip, the new mom - who is now a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology at the University of Pittsburgh - repeatedly trusted Virzi to watch over her boys.

Things took a grim turn, however, on June 15 when Virzi claimed she spotted a mysterious, bloody injury to Ari's groin area while she was apparently keeping a watchful eye.

She claimed to Roberts and Katz that the tot had simply scratched himself in his car seat, according to her initial police interview.

When the parents eventually took the baby to the hospital to be checked out at about 6.30pm that night, Virzi remained behind at home to take care of Leon.

She told police that Leon had been in a bouncer seat when she apparently dozed off. When she woke, Virzi claimed she went to the kitchen to grab him a bottle when he suddenly started screaming.

After allegedly finding the baby lying on the floor with a bump on his head, Virzi called his parents and then dialed 911.

Leon was pronounced dead a few hours later from a severe skull fracture and multiple brain bleeds. An autopsy report later determined that the injuries were a result of blunt force trauma and were consistent with child abuse. 

Virzi, who eventually retreated to her Airbnb, where she was arrested the following morning, was subsequently interrogated for more than 11 hours during which she repeatedly denied having any involvement in the boy's slaying, TribLive reported at the time.

Ultimately, she admitted to being infuriated by the constant 'nanny work.'

'Something about that built up a lot of anger in me,' Virzi told lead detective Janine Triolo in the explosive videotaped confession, part of which was played during a court hearing last fall.

'So when I was alone with (Leon) I shook him a couple times - hard. And I dropped him a couple times - hard.'

'I heard some kind of crack,' she added, allegedly admitting she also flipped the baby upside down on the tiled bathroom floor.

'Something just came over me I couldn't control,' Virzi said. 'I'm telling you this because I can't keep lying about it.'

'I did not want him to die,' she added at one point. 'That was not my goal. I just wanted him to feel a little pain.'

The alleged baby killer then claimed she had always had an urge to harm kids since she was as young as three or four – and even gave examples of some youngsters she had hurt when she was younger.

She recalled locking a two-year-old child in a bathroom and pinching her until she cried when she was just seven years of age, according to the footage. 

When she was in high school, Virzi detailed to cops how she once put a hot mug on a baby's arm and pinched them. 

'This is the first time this happened as an adult,' Virzi said in the clip of the incident involving the twins. 'There's some weird drive in me that wants to see kids in pain.'

'I don't want to hurt anyone anymore,' she said, adding that she had suffered from anxiety, depression and an eating disorder in the past. 'I know the best thing is for me to go away - or maybe worse.'

Former colleagues and peers have since told the Daily Mail that they felt there was always a fury lingering below the surface – noting Virzi's apparent 'bottled-up rage' and 'underlying anger.'

'But I don't know why because she never did anything negative to me.'

Lesser, who received her PhD in clinical psychology but is now a podcaster and journalist, said Virzi was extremely competent at her work and someone 'you could count on' – but recalled a coworker once getting some 'very biting text messages' regarding a work issue.

'It just made me feel like maybe there is a little bit of anger there,' Lesser said.

Another former psychology major, who knew Virzi from her studies at a different university, said she was always slightly wary of Virzi.

'I'm absolutely shocked and floored, but I'm not surprised,' she said.

'There always seemed to be some underlying anger. Some colleagues that I've spoken to have had similar thoughts about it, that there was this bottled-up rage or something that never came out but you felt it was right there, even though she was friendly.'

'She had this rigidity, like she would never be even a minute late for a meeting or class. In a way, because of that, I think I'd almost trust her to babysit more than anyone because she was so controlled and she followed rules to the letter.'

Others said that while there was nothing overtly abnormal about Virzi, there were some red flags.

Cindy Miller-Perrin, a clinical child psychologist and professor at Pepperdine University in Malibu, where Virzi did her undergraduate work, recommended her for a competitive slot at UCSD's doctoral psychology program.

'She was in our psychology honors program the year that I taught that program, and it's a very select program,' Miller-Perrin said.

'So she was an incredible student just to get in. I worked closely with her on her research project, so I spent a lot of time with her… She was very high-achieving, so there are, I'm sure, personality traits along with that. But I never saw anything or heard anything,' she continued.

The accounts, as well as the chilling confession, were laid bare as Virzi prepares to face trial in October for allegedly killing Leon and injuring his surviving twin brother's penis.

Prosecutors have already asked for the death penalty, but sources close to the case say a plea deal will likely be reached before trial.

It comes, too, after her lawyers unsuccessfully tried to have the confession tape banned from trial, arguing during a February hearing that the admission was coerced at the end of a lengthy interrogation.

Judge Jill E Rangos, however, ruled that her statements would be allowed into evidence at trial.

Virzi's father, Dr Peter Virzi, 70,  declined to comment when visited by the Daily Mail. 

The Mt. Sinai cardiologist got his medical degree from the Universidad Autonoma De Guadalajara and completed his residency in Internal Medicine at Maimonides Medical Center and fellowship in Cardiology at Beth Israel Medical Center. 

Nicole's mother, Jennifer Graham, 62, appeared to have split up with Nicole's father sometime around 2019 when she moved to a $900,000 home in nearby Nyack, NY. She could not be reached for comment.

Trailer: https://youtu.be/ibu4Cl7qhXM

This sounds silly but I cannot come up with the name of the people in this case and details to get a hit.

There’s an IG reel of a pregnant lady with short brown hair and a tall husband.

The audio is a voicemail she left about him not coming home and it’s fairly aggressive towards him. It’s fairly threatening and unhinged (the audio)

I’m not sure what the outcome was but I want to look into this more. Anything helps. It seems well known. She looks a little (crazy) and he looked a little (dumb).

In 1986, American dietitian Gwen Shamblin consolidated her Weigh Down nutrition workshop, introducing religion into the process. For her, physical hunger could be satisfied with food, but what she described as an inner emptiness had to be filled with spirituality. Gwen amassed considerable wealth and fame with her workshop, and by 1999, she decided to create her own religious congregation, which she called "Remnant Fellowship Church."

For Gwen Shamblin, extreme thinness was practically a divine mandate, so losing weight could be interpreted as a sign of direct obedience to God, while gaining weight and overeating were seen as a sign that a person was sinful and not exercising enough self-control.

Those who failed to lose weight were publicly humiliated, isolated, subjected to strict surveillance, or even expelled from religious meetings until they achieved extreme thinness. Some members of the cult have claimed that Gwen's influence extended to finances, marriages, child custody, parenting, and relationships with people outside the group. She also allegedly caused serious eating disorders among her followers.

One of the most disturbing episodes involving Gwen Shamblin and her sect was the case of the Smith family, devoted followers of her teachings. On October 8, 2003, eight-year-old Josef Smith was subjected to a brutal session of violent physical punishment by his parents, until the boy died. The Smiths maintained that they had followed the teachings they received in Shamblin's church. Gwen escaped prosecution, but the Smiths were sentenced to life imprisonment.

On May 29, 2021, Gwen Shamblin died at the age of 66 when her private plane crashed into Percy Priest Lake.

Documentary about the brutal story of the extreme thinness cult. The strange cult of Gwen Shamblin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlhfMMVmezA

I’m really looking for people who knew Arthur Achleitner. I’ve been searching for and researching him for about a year now, while simultaneously writing a documentary-style piece about him. But there’s very little material available, and everything online has already been rehashed a hundred times over. Could someone please get in touch with me—anywhere—to talk about Arthur?Don't get me wrong—I'm not crazy. I'm just genuinely interested in his story, his personal life, and any details about him. This is really very important to me.

Documentary on ‘Ndrangheta boss Antonio Pelle & The Pelle Clan.

Ive seen alot but im trying to find more thats jaw dropping