Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Sidney Dorsey, once the elected sheriff of DeKalb County, Georgia, slid from power into infamy after a bitter 2000 election he lost to challenger Derwin Brown. Investigators later uncovered that Dorsey, desperate to keep control of the department and shield himself from internal corruption probes, orchestrated a murder plot targeting Brown before he could take office.

Irina Gaidamachuk was a Russian serial killer who spent nearly a decade preying on elderly women across the Sverdlovsk region, posing as a social-services worker to slip into their apartments before bludgeoning them to death and stealing small amounts of cash to fuel her alcoholism. Her crimes stretched from 2002 to 2010 and baffled investigators, partly because police assumed the killer was a man.

Wallace Souza was a former police officer turned TV host in Manaus who rose to fame in 1996 with his crime show Canal Livre, a sensational program that often arrived at murder scenes faster than law enforcement. As his popularity grew, he leveraged his tough-on-crime persona into political power, winning a seat as a state legislator. But in 2009, investigators uncovered evidence suggesting that Souza and his inner circle were operating a criminal organization that not only trafficked drugs but allegedly ordered murders so his TV crew could film exclusive footage for higher ratings.

Tom Monfils’s death in 1992 at the James River paper mill in Green Bay became one of Wisconsin’s most controversial homicide cases. After Monfils made an anonymous call reporting a coworker for theft, the recorded tip was improperly released to the mill, exposing him and heightening already strained workplace tensions. He vanished during his shift, and the next day his body was found submerged in a pulp vat with a rope and weight attached. Investigators concluded he had been murdered in retaliation.

Missy Giove rocketed to fame in the 1990s as one of the most aggressive and charismatic downhill mountain bikers in the world, blasting through the NORBA circuit and winning the 1994 UCI Downhill World Championship while turning herself into an extreme-sports icon with her punk-charged energy. After retiring from competition, her life swerved into scandal in 2009, when she was arrested in a federal operation for transporting hundreds of pounds of illegal drugs.