In January of 1980, twenty-one-year-old Helene Pruszynski was interning at a radio station in Denver, Colorado. At the end of her shift she left to take the bus home to her aunt and uncles' home in Englewood, Colorado. She never arrived. The next day her brutalized body was found in a barren field. Her murder would go unsvolved for forty years. Fin…

Tammy Schuster is a psychic medium, life coach and paranormal investigator in northern Michigan. In this episode we talk about her experience as a medium, her beliefs about good and evil and her experiences doing paranormal investigations. You can find Tammy on her website here: https://www.tammyschuster.com/ Show Sponsor: The Troubled Spirits Seri…

This is a short update with information about some changes happening on the podcast. Primarily those include the name change from Bitter Endings to Between Light and Dark as well as new episodes featuring interviews with mediums and paranormal investigators in addition to true crime cases.By JR Erickson

The horrors began in Scarborough, Ontario in Canada in 1987 with the rape of a young woman who was attacked in front of her parents’ home. Eventually the rapist would gain a partner and escalate his crimes from rape to murder. The couple behind the terrible crimes would eventually be dubbed the Ken and Barbie killers. Show notes: The Biter Endings …

It was March 21st of 1980, and residents of Newport, Rhode Island were on the cusp of spring and 19-year-old Diane Drake was in the spring of her life. A time when most young people have given little thought to their own mortality. Unfortunately for Diane, that March would be her last. After departing for work on that stormy Friday, she was abducte…

It was after eleven pm on April 4th, 1991 in Clinton, Missouri when twenty-year-old Angela Hammond’s friends dropped off at her car which was parked in a grocery store parking lot. She walked to the payphone and called her fiancé. As they spoke a man in a green pickup truck pulled up to the phones and violently abducted Angela. Horrified, her fianc…

It was May 12th, 2018, an ordinary day in the life of Joleen Cummings, but one tinged with excitement because the next day was her birthday and Mother’s Day. The mother of three worked her shift at Tangles Hair Salon in Yulee, Florida. What came after would be a mystery that baffled her family, friends, and investigators. It appeared that Joleen ha…

Mina Dekker was just nineteen years old when she walked into work in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan on March 4th, 1938. She would never walk back out. Sometime in a span of mere minutes while she was alone, someone walked into the building and brutally beat Mina Dekker to death. Show Notes at Bitter Endings Show Sponsor: Ashes Beneath Her (a North…

Today's episode covers two unrelated murders that I originally released on my Patreon as mini episodes. Eve Wilkowitz was murdered in New York IN 1980 and the idenity of heR killer would remain unknown for more than forty years. Christina Harris was murdered in Michigan in 2014. Her family would spend years demanding justice when police ruled her d…

Saturday, October 24th, 1953, was an otherwise ordinary day for fifteen-year-old Evelyn Hartley. She left her home to babysit the young daughter of her father’s colleague. That evening as many of the community in La Crosse, Wisconsin were attending a homecoming game, someone would enter the house where Evelyn was babysitting and violently abduct he…

This episode of the Bitter Endings Podcast was originally a mini episode for Patreon members. It features two unrelated cases of girls who vanished and were later found murdered. Caroll Ann Cole and Stacey Chahorski were both young women from Michigan who went missing and met with foul play in other states. Show notes: https://bitterendingspod.com/…

It was September 7th, 1979, a time of freedom for young people including twelve year old Lesia Michelle Jackson who lived in Conroe, Texas. That Friday the shy, blonde Lesia swam in the lake after school. When she emerged from the water, she had no idea that the day would be her last. That evening Lesia disappeared, her brutalized body would be fou…

It was labor day, usually a time for celebrating but for Valerie Pride and her two daughters it would be the last day of their lives. Valerie was just 24 years old on September 6th, 1982. She’d just moved into a beautiful new home with her beloved little girls, Shonita who was eight and Duana who was four. She could not have imagined when the she p…

The weekend of October 3rd, 1997 began as a fun weekend of camping for fourteen year old Lauren Barry and sixteen year old Nichole Collins in Kalaru area near Bega, Australia. Hanging with friends, horseback riding and siting around the bonfire were the extent of their plans. However, on Sunday October 5th, the girls made a fateful choice to leave …

Almost five decades ago on January 23rd, 1974, 56-year-old Athalia Ponsell Lindsley was brutally attacked and murdered on the front steps of her home in St. Augustine, Florida. A month later, a man was arrested and charged with her murder—and yet, to this day, the case remains officially unsolved. Shiw notes: https://bitterendingspod.com/podcast/at…

This is episode 2 of the MacDonald Murders. You’ll want to listen to episode 41 before listening to today’s episode. Part 2 begins with the convening of a grand jury hearing to examine the evidence that Jeffrey MacDonald murdered his wife, Colette and daughters, Kimberly and Kristen. Show sources: https://bitterendingspod.com/podcast/macdonaldmurde…

This is a two part case on the murders of Colette, Kimberly, and Kristen MacDonald. They should have had it all and for a time it seemed they did. Jeffrey MacDonald was a surgeon and a green beret. Colette MacDonald was his beautiful, doting wife, pregnant with their son. They had had two lovely daughters, Kimberly and Kristin. The life before them…

It was a cold Michigan night on March 12th, 2004 when 39-year-old Mary Denise Lands vanished without a trace in Marshall, Michigan. Allegedly she got into an argument with her boyfriend Chris Pratt that evening and leaving her cell phone and keys to her Dodge Durango behind, she walked into the frigid night. She was never seen again. Show notes: ht…

If life had unfolded for Susan Smith the way it did for most residents of Pikeville, Kentucky, she never would have met FBI agent Mark Putnam. But life is unpredictable and in Susan’s case, a relationship which should have been among the safest in her life turned out to be the deadliest. Susan vanished on June 8th, 1989. It would be a year before h…

It was a windy October night in 1995 when the family of Debora Green and Michael Farrar was forever ripped apart. A fire had started at an upscale house in Prairie Village, Kansas, and by the time it had run its course, the once immaculate home would be little more than charred ruins. Amongst those ruins lay the bodies of 12 year old Tim Farrar and…

It was an ordinary morning in Helena, Montana for nineteen-year-old Pamela Dorrington on February 17th, 1968. Pamela slept in her second story apartment, her black lab nearby, as her cousin and roommate left for her shift at the hospital. Pam’s roommate would return that afternoon to find Pam gone. The vanishing of Pamela Dorrington would spur a ma…

It was a chilly spring day on May 8th, 2002 when a farmer drove onto his wooded property in Ottowa County, Michigan. It was an area where he grew and harvested blueberries. As he drove through the property he made a chilling discovery. A burned body lay in a trunk in an area of scorched forest. The murder victim would remain unidentified for more t…

She looked like an ordinary housewife, a mother, a grandmother. Full bodied, always smiling as she prepared dinners and baked pies. But the innocent appearance of Nannie Doss belied a much darker, much uglier persona. Nannie was a murderess, a woman who killed not only callously, but casually, eliminating husbands and members of her own family with…

It was Sunday, April 12th, 1992 when nineteen-year-old Amanda Davies left her home in Dansville, Michigan to meet a friend. She would never return home. Eleven days later her brutally murdered body would be found in an isolated location in Mason, Michigan. Complete show notes: https://bitterendingspod.com/podcast/amandadavies Show sponsor: https://…

It’s been fifty two years, more than five decades, since a terrible mystery that continues to haunt a small northern Michigan town occurred. It was Halloween day, October 31st 1969, when 16 year old Patricia Spencer and 15 year old Pamela Hobley walked away from Oscoda High school in Oscoda, Michigan. They had fun plans for the evening, which inclu…

It was an unseasonably warm day on March 13th, 1996 when 25-year-old Danielle Shinaver finished work and prepared for an evening hanging out with friends at her new apartment. Danielle’s life had not been easy, but the tide was turning and things were looking up. However, sometime in the early morning hours of March 14th, 1996 a person entered Dani…

It was the kind of crime that lingered, that ripped apart families, that left detectives sleepless and wondering. It was October 28th, 1994, just three days before Halloween when the bodies of twenty-three-year-old Stacy Ann Falcon-Dewey and her three-year-old son Jacob were found shot and discarded in the middle of an isolated street in Renton, Wa…

It was December 7th, 1993, weeks away from Christmas when eighteen-year-old Rosie Larner climbed into a car in the cold, early morning hours in Lansing Michigan. She had no reason to be afraid. She was with friends, people she loved and trusted. She did not know she was hours away from breathing her blast breath, and that her brutal murder would se…

It was a spring Sunday on April 18th, 1943 when four boys wandered into Hagley Wood in Worcestershire, England. They had no idea they were about to stumble upon a crime scene that would mystify the world for decades to come. Hidden inside a strange looking tree known as a wych elm was the body of a woman. This woman's identity still remains a myste…

On June 30th, 1987 22-year-old Anita Carlson had a lot to be excited about. Two months before she’d graduated with honors from Bemidji State University with a degree in communications and she’d already been offered a job at a television station. The upcoming weekend was an exciting time for residents in Bemidji. It was the fourth of July and many p…

It was an odd weekend for camping on October 8th, 2000 in Wallowa County, Oregon. The weather was cool and would soon be turning cold, especially in places like the Wollowa-Whitman National Forest, but that didn’t deter 44-year-old Chris Northon and 38-year-old Liysa Northon from taking their three-year-old son into the mountains for a weekend in t…

It was warm spring day on Friday April 25th, 2008 in Aiken, South Carolina when 47-year-old Ann Fox Smith didn’t show up for work. Ann was a beloved special education teacher at Kennedy Middle School and this was definitely out of the ordinary. As the day went on with no word from Ann, her friend and fellow teacher, Sally Ferriter drove to Ann’s ho…

Nothing about Cherryl’s day on Friday January 4th, 2002 foretold the trouble awaiting her. The 37-year-old pediatrician lived in Bartlett, Tennessee; a city located northeast of Memphis with a population of more than 50,000 people. That evening, she attended a Memphis Grizzlies game at the Pyramid Arena in Memphis. Cherryl had season tickets and as…

It was a seemingly ordinary day for thirty-one-year-old stay-at-home mom Joan Risch on October 24th, 1961 at her home in Lincoln Massachusetts. Joan was married and lived with her husband and two children, a son and a daughter, in a nice suburban home in a quiet, safe neighborhood. That morning Joan’s husband went of of town on a business trip, and…

In the cold early morning hours of April 9th, 2011, 26-year-old Adam Campbell left Baron’s Bar where’d been hanging out with friends in downtown Escanaba, Michigan. He walked west on Ludington Street and seemed to vanish into the night. Adam would not be gone for long, just one hour after he left the bar, his body was found burning in a parked car …

It has been nearly 27 years since 15 year old Chanty Shiverdecker disappeared after basketball practice in Alexander City, Alabama, nearly 27 years since her body was discovered at an abandoned lumberyard, and nearly 27 years without answers for her family. On December 9th, 1994, Chanty attended girls varsity basketball practice which was being hel…

Many people will never have heard of Derry Township Pennsylvania. Those that have might think of small town America or perhaps that most iconic of American company’s Hershey Chocolate whose first factory was built and remains in Derry Pennsylvania. But every city has its mix of light and dark. In Derry Township the dark doesn’t get much worse than …

Bob Durst might have faded from the spotlight after Kathie’s case went cold, but the man would end up in the news again and again and each time a violent death seemed to be at the center of the focus on Bob Durst. Two more murders would occur that would put his name back in the headlines. The first was the shooting death of his close friend Susan B…

It probably seemed like a fairytale when 19 year old Kathleen McCormack met Robert Durst in New York in 1972. Kathie had grown up in a blue collar family. Robert, or Bobbie had grown up in one of the most wealthy and influential families in New York City. Friends later said it was love at first sight. Sadly the fairytale was not meant to be for Kat…

It was a hot summer Saturday in Henderson County, Kentucky on August 26th, 1995. 23 year old Heather Teague went to an isolated area on Newburgh Beach to sunbathe and perhaps have some time alone. Her peaceful tranquility was shattered when a bearded man stole from the woods and grabbed Heather by her hair. He dragged the 23 year old away from the …

In July of 1989, Fawn Cox was just sixteen years old, working at as a cashier at Worlds of Fun Amusement Park in Kansas City Missouri, and enjoying an ordinary life as teenage girl in the Midwest. Sadly, Fawn’s life would come to a bitter end on July 26th, 1989 when someone crept into a second story window in the home Fawn shared with her parents a…

It was a chilly February day in 1981 when Deanie Peters, just 14 years old, stepped away from her brother’s wrestling practice to use the bathroom at Forest Hills Central Middle School in Ada, Michigan. She’s never been seen again. Today, nearly forty years later, what happened to Deanie Peters remains a mystery. For complete show notes visit: http…

It’s December 9th, 2012, and 23 year old Julia Niswender is excited for Christmas. Santa and penguin decals cling to the windows of her first floor Ypsilanti apartment and candy canes hang from the door. She works her shift at Walmart and heads home for a relaxing evening in the apartment she shares with her two roommates. However, her quiet evenin…

Imagine it. It’s October 26th, 2014, just five days short of Halloween in southeast Michigan. The air is cool, the golden and red leaves of autumn have begun to fall from the trees. 22 year old Chelsea Bruck is excited for a Halloween bash at a large rural farm in Monroe County. The party is being thrown by the lead singer of a local metal band, it…

A century has passed since the roaring 20s, nearly a century since the Great Depression that shook the foundation of most American lives. It was a time of unrest in our country, a time of changing values and for Mamie Thurman the peak of her life as well as its tragic end would arrive. On a rainy summer night in West Virginian, 31 year old Mamie Th…

There are certain places in this world we almost always feel safe. Our homes generally come in at number one, our workplaces are second. In the tragic and troubling death of Lorraine Kirkley, called Lori by friends and family, both of those two spaces would become places of danger. On July 21st, 1999, Lori, a cardiac nurse at the Northwest Indiana …

It’s a warm September evening in 2014 in the wooded hills of Butte County in northern California. Flames and smoke fill the sky as a car burns. Inside the car is the body of 25 year old California State University Chico student Marc Thompson. Marc is a brilliant young man, a psychology and sociology student, a human rights activist and a man friend…

Robert and Vicki Graves thought they were purchasing their dream house when they discovered Fox Hollow Farm in Indianapolis, Indiana. Soon, they would realize they were not alone in the house. Are the spirits of Herb Baumeister’s victims haunting the property where they were brutally murdered? Or perhaps, it is Herb himself who is behind the parano…

Something was happening to gay men in Indianapolis in the early to mid 1990s. Over the course of two years, beginning in May 1994, 10 men would vanish, mostly from clubs and bars that catered to gay men. This was, in a way, just the tip of the iceberg, other men and boys had been murdered in the previous decade. They were found strangled in streams…

On Friday September 15th, 1972, 19 year old Pamela Milam was excited for the weekend ahead. A sophomore at Indiana State University and a member of the Sigma Kappa Sorority, Pam had plans of attending several days worth of sorority activities including meetings, rush parties and more. Around 11 pm that fall evening, she ducked out of Holmestead Hal…