It took only a moment for a birthday celebration to turn into a nightmare. When 22-year-old Brandon Mitchner drowned during a night out with friends, a surveillance system caught nearly the entire incident on camera. Everything but the eleven seconds it took for Brandon to plunge from the safety of a neighborhood sidewalk to the raging waters of the Grand River, some thirty feet below. Was it a tragic accident, as ruled by authorities? Or was something more sinister at play the night Brandon died?
69- Killing Season
68- Party Girl
67- The X Factor
In the 1920s and 30s, an ultra-violent sect of the KKK called the Black Legion ran rampant in the Midwest. When a proud black man and activist moved his family to Lansing, Michigan to escape death threats from white supremacists, he had no idea he was walking into a snake pit. The violence that ensued destroyed a family and shaped the life of a man who went on to shake the world.
66- The Witness
65- False God
Born in 1902 Detroit to a prominent family, Charles Lindbergh was handsome, talented, and charismatic. When he made aviation history in 1927, he instantaneously became the most famous man in the world. But when his young son was kidnapped from the family home in 1932, Lindbergh's secret life began to unravel, leaving the world wondering just what kind of man they'd been worshipping for so long.
64- Lost Boy
63- Brotherhood
Only once in recorded history have two individual serial killers hailed from the same household. Brothers Danny and Larry Ranes did not kill together. Their murder sprees occurred in different decades, their MOs were different, and their victim demographic was vastly different. But their motive was the same- to win. Raised in an abusive home, conditioned to compete against one another in all aspects of life, when Danny and Larry battled it out for the title of most lethal serial killer, no one in their hometown of Kalamazoo, Michigan was safe.
62- Massacre
On a dark and stormy night in 1883, there was a massacre in Jackson County. Unknown assailants murdered wealthy land owner Jacob Crouch and his entire family as they slept in their beds. While authorities raced against the clock to find the killers, bodies continued to pile up, and the case became more twisted and scandalous than anyone could have imagined.
61- A Family Matter
When a young wife and mother disappeared from her Hartford, Michigan home in the middle of the day, suspicion fell upon her high school sweetheart and husband of 12 years almost immediately. But the truth of what happened to Amy Henslee was much more complicated, and more sinister, than anyone could have imagined.
60- Gone Girls
Halloween is a time for scary fun. But the fear that gripped one small Michigan town on Halloween night 1969 is the kind no one ever wants to experience. Two teenage girls ripped from their happy lives, never to be seen again. A killer on the loose. And a community that was nowhere near done experiencing tragedy. No one pays these cases much attention, so it's well past time we talk about the missing girls of Oscoda.
59- Ghosted 2.0
58- Murderess!
57- Mountain Man
In the summer of 1973, a Farmington, Michigan family set off on a month-long road trip out west. What was meant to be a time of adventure and family bonding instead became a nightmare when the youngest member of the family, a seven-year-old girl, was stolen out of her tent in the middle of the night. Over the next year, the family was taunted and tormented by anonymous calls purportedly from the kidnapper. But would the calls lead to answers in the unsolved case?
56- The Boy Who Lived
55- Ride or Die
54- Ninety Steps
53- Where There's Smoke
Taco Break #7
True crime queen Ann Rule wrote dozens of best-sellers about crimes around the globe, including 'The Stranger Beside Me,' about her unlikely friendship with serial killer Ted Bundy. Ann's love for true crime began in Michigan, where she was born, and where she spent her summers working for her grandfather, a celebrated sheriff in a small Mid-Michigan town.