Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes explores true stories of belief taken too far: murderous cults, criminal cover-ups, mass manipulation, and the conspiracies that still won't die. Hosted by Vanessa Richardson, three weekly episodes dig into cases like Jonestown, Heaven's Gate, CIA mind control experiments, and presidential assassinations. This is true crime at the intersection of faith, fear and manipulation.Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes is a Crime House Original, powered by PAVE Studios. Follow us on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe to @crimehousestudios on YouTube and follow us @crimehouse on Instagram.
Latest episodes
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49 min
CONSPIRACY THEORY: Amityville: Hoax or Haunting?
In November 1974, Ronald DeFeo Jr. shot and killed six members of his family in their house on Ocean Avenue in Amityville, New York. Thirteen months later, George and Kathy Lutz mo…
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42 min
HAUNTED TAKEOVER: Hidden History | The Voynich Manuscript
Something has crept into this feed…For Halloween, Hidden History with Dr. Harini Bhat has slipped through the walls to haunt your feed with an episode just for you.Locked in Yale's…
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43 min
CRIME: Danny Rolling: The Killer Who Inspired Scream
Over four days in August 1990, five students were murdered near the University of Florida campus in Gainesville. Their names were Sonja Larson, Christina Powell, Christa Hoyt, Trac…
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45 min
CULT: Human Sacrifice: The Wicker Man
Around 53 BC, Julius Caesar wrote that the Gauls built enormous human figures out of woven branches, filled them with living people, and set them alight. That passage, written by a…
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44 min
CONSPIRACY THEORY: Annabelle: The Warrens' Haunted Doll
In 1970, a nursing student in Connecticut was given a Raggedy Ann doll for her birthday. Within weeks she and her roommate believed it was moving around their apartment on its own,…
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36 min
CRIME: The Astronaut Love Triangle
Early on February 5th, 2007, Air Force captain Colleen Shipman was walking to her car at Orlando International Airport when a woman in a wig and a trench coat followed her, banged…
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43 min
CULT: The Family: Australia's LSD Cult
In the hills outside Melbourne, Australia, a yoga teacher named Anne Hamilton-Byrne convinced several hundred followers that she was Jesus Christ. Her members were not dropouts: th…
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46 min
CONSPIRACY THEORY: The Mandela Effect
In 2009, at a science fiction convention in Atlanta, a paranormal researcher named Fiona Broome discovered that strangers shared her vivid memory of Nelson Mandela dying in prison…
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41 min
CRIME: Britain's First Female Serial Killer: Mary Ann Cotton
Long before the name Jack the Ripper struck fear into Victorian England, a respectable-looking widow named Mary Ann Cotton was quietly killing her way through the north of the coun…
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44 min
CULT: When Prophecy Fails: The Seekers
In 1954, a housewife in Oak Park, Illinois named Dorothy Martin began taking down messages from beings she called the Guardians, and told the small circle around her that a flood w…
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44 min
CONSPIRACY THEORY: Is Anyone Real Anymore? The Dead Internet Theory
In 2021, an anonymous forum post floated a theory that sounded absurd: the internet effectively died around 2016, and most of what we now see online, the posts, comments, arguments…
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38 min
Introducing WHAT THE FACT with Connor Tomlinson and Carter Roy, a new Rewind podcast!
Fun fact: Did you know Jaws almost never existed because the shark kept sinking while filming? That is Connor Tomlinson just getting started. If that sounds fascinating, you are go…
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35 min
CRIME: Victor Lustig: He Sold the Eiffel Tower Twice
In 1925, a con man calling himself Count Victor Lustig read that the Eiffel Tower was costly to maintain. He took a suite at one of the best hotels in Paris and invited five scrap…
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41 min
CULT: The Church Universal and Triumphant
In the 1980s, a charismatic woman named Elizabeth Clare Prophet convinced thousands of followers that she was channeling messages from Jesus, Buddha, and a spiritual entity called…
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44 min
CONSPIRACY THEORY: Aviation Industry Whistleblowers
John Barnett spent 32 years at Boeing before going public with alarming claims about faulty oxygen masks, substandard parts, and a corporate culture that punished anyone who dared…
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35 min
CRIME: MH370
On March 8th, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished from the sky with 239 people aboard, disappearing during a routine flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. The plane's transp…
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38 min
CULT: The Rosicrucians
In the early 17th century, mysterious manifestos appeared in Europe announcing the existence of a secret brotherhood called the Rosicrucians, said to possess hidden knowledge of al…
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49 min
CONSPIRACY: The Mad Monk Who Controlled the Romanovs
In the final years of Imperial Russia, a mysterious peasant mystic named Grigori Rasputin rose to extraordinary influence over the royal Romanov family. Trusted by the Empress for…
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32 min
CRIME: The Murder That Started World War I: Franz Ferdinand
On June 28th, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was shot and killed alongside his wife on the streets of Sarajevo by a young nationalist named Ga…
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38 min
CULT: The Thule Society: The Secret Group That Birthed the Nazi Party
In the aftermath of World War I, a secretive occult group emerged in Germany called the Thule Society, blending Norse mythology, racial mysticism, and extreme nationalism into a da…