Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Laverne Pavlinac story is a bizarre case of a false confession that derailed a murder investigation and allowed a serial killer to remain free. In 1990, following the murder of 23-year-old Taunja Bennett in Portland, Oregon, 57-year-old Pavlinac concocted a detailed lie to frame her abusive boyfriend, John Sosnovske, as a desperate way to get him out of her life. She eventually implicated herself as an accomplice, leading to both of them being convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 1991, despite Pavlinac recanting her story at trial. Because police closed the case based on her fabrications, the real perpetrator—the notorious "Happy Face Killer" Keith Hunter Jesperson- went undetected and murdered at least seven more women over the next several years.

The 2004 Transylvania University book heist was an audacious, movie-inspired plot orchestrated by four affluent Kentucky college students- Spencer Reinhard, Warren Lipka, Eric Borsuk, and Chas Allen- who attempted to steal over $5 million worth of rare books from the university's Special Collections Library.

Hamish McLaren (born Hamish Watson) is a notorious Australian serial fraudster and con artist often dubbed the "Bondi Swindler" or "Australia's King Con". Over a deceptive career spanning three decades and four continents, he is estimated to have scammed between $60 million and $70 million globally from victims in Australia, the US, Canada, Britain, and Hong Kong.

Brittany Norwood is a former Lululemon employee convicted of the brutal 2011 murder of her coworker, Jayna Murray, inside a Bethesda, Maryland retail store.

Christa Pike is an American convicted murderer who became one of the youngest women in modern U.S. history to be sentenced to death. In 1995, Pike, her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, and an accomplice lured their classmate Colleen Slemmer into a secluded wooded area in Knoxville, Tennessee, where they murdered her.