The Devil Within

THE DEVIL WITHIN

GUSTAVE — Episode Two: Built to Kill

What makes a predator perfect?

In Episode Two of our three-part investigation into Gustave, we leave Lake Tanganyika behind for a moment and travel to Tsavo, Kenya, in 1898, where two maneless male lions began pulling railway workers from their camps. The animals that became known as the Ghost and the Darkness terrorized the Uganda Railway project for months before Lieutenant Colonel John Henry Patterson finally killed them. More than a century later, their preserved remains would give scientists something Patrice Faye never had with Gustave: a killer they could actually examine.

Then we go inside the Nile crocodile.

Calling Gustave a dinosaur isn't scientifically accurate, but crocodilians belong to an evolutionary lineage whose basic predatory strategy has survived for an extraordinary span of time. Eyes and nostrils positioned above the water allow the animal to disappear almost completely beneath the surface. A muscular tail provides explosive acceleration. Armored osteoderms protect the body. Conical teeth seize rather than chew. And when prey is too large to swallow, the infamous death roll can tear it into manageable pieces.

Everything about the design is built around one principle:

Don't waste energy.

That principle makes Gustave's story considerably stranger.

Crocodiles are ectothermic ambush predators capable of waiting extraordinary periods between meals. They don't need prolonged pursuit. They wait until an animal enters the narrow strip of geography where water meets land—and then patience becomes explosive violence. For people who depend upon Lake Tanganyika for fishing, bathing, washing and drinking water, that kill zone is also an unavoidable part of everyday life.

But Patrice Faye encountered reports of victims attributed to Gustave whose bodies were recovered or only partially consumed. That helped create the sensational legend that Gustave killed for pleasure.

The biology tells a more complicated story.

Crocodile ecologist Alison Leslie rejected the idea of a crocodilian psychopath. Attacks can be interrupted. Crocodiles can behave territorially. Large prey may be consumed over several days. And some of the deaths attributed to one famous crocodile may have belonged to entirely different animals. Faye nevertheless wondered whether decades of conflict in Burundi and neighboring Congo had provided Gustave with opportunities to scavenge human remains—and thereby learn that humans were simply another available food source. It remains a hypothesis, not an established scientific explanation.

Finally, we meet the Old Man of the Lake.

Faye estimated Gustave at approaching twenty feet long and perhaps a ton in weight. His enormous body carried distinctive scars, including wounds Faye believed came from gunfire, allowing him to distinguish Gustave from other crocodiles. After decades of survival, this wasn't simply a giant animal. It was an experienced predator capable of learning the repetitive patterns of the people living along its territory.

Perhaps Gustave wasn't terrifying because he broke the rules of nature.

Perhaps he was terrifying because he followed them perfectly.

And Patrice Faye had finally decided that understanding Gustave wasn't enough.

He was going to catch him.

LISTEN, WATCH & FOLLOW

Follow The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a five-star rating and review to help new listeners discover the show.

Watch The Devil Within on the Evio Creative YouTube channel. Subscribe and turn on notifications so you never miss a new episode.

Follow @thedevilwithinpod for episode clips, archival material and more from the stories we investigate. Have a story or case you think belongs on the show? Send it to info@eviocreative.com.

The Devil Within is written and hosted by Branden Morgan and produced by Evio Creative.
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THE DEVIL'S LEDGER

Week of September 28, 2026

Fall has officially arrived, playoff baseball is back, and apparently Mother Nature decided the Northeast needed to celebrate with a violent nor'easter.

This week on The Devil's Ledger, Branden sends some love to everyone currently getting battered by wind, rain and coastal flooding—and finally answers a question some of us have somehow avoided asking our entire lives: What the hell actually is a nor'easter?

Then we head into considerably darker territory.

THE CREEPIEST THING I HEARD THIS WEEK: THE MOSQUITO

Brazilian authorities say they've captured Jorlan Lopes da Silva, a suspected serial killer nicknamed “Mosquito” because of his thin, frail build.

Police accuse da Silva of involvement in sixteen murders around Mulungu in northeastern Brazil. Investigators say he evaded capture by disappearing into dense vegetation and living in makeshift camps hidden in the wilderness. But it's the bizarre circumstances of his arrest that elevate this one into Creepiest Thing territory: when police finally cornered him after a two-day pursuit, da Silva was reportedly wearing a dress, wig and painted fingernails—and carrying an unrelated baby in his arms.

THIS WEEK ON THE DEVIL WITHIN: GUSTAVE

The New Monsters has come to an end, which means we're returning to something considerably more familiar:

Serial killers.

Sort of.

Our new three-part series travels to Burundi and the shores of Lake Tanganyika for the extraordinary story of Gustave, the enormous, heavily scarred Nile crocodile blamed in legend for more than 300 human deaths.

That number has never been verified—and naturalist Patrice Faye offered far more conservative estimates—but behind the mythology was a very real, exceptionally large crocodile that Faye spent years tracking.

How do you hunt a serial killer with no motive, fingerprints or confession—one who can simply disappear beneath the surface of one of Africa's great lakes?

Meet Gustave: The Killer of Lake Tanganyika.

CRIMINAL MISCHIEF: TOMASZ KOSOWSKI

Over on Criminal Mischief, Carolyn investigates the extraordinary case of plastic surgeon Tomasz Kosowski, recently found guilty of murdering attorney Steven Cozzi.

Cozzi vanished from his Largo, Florida, law office in March 2023. His wallet, phone and keys were left behind, while investigators discovered blood inside the men's restroom. His body has never been recovered.

Then Kosowski made the already extraordinary case even stranger: facing first-degree murder and the possibility of a death sentence, he represented himself.

Carolyn breaks down the evidence, the disappearance and one of the stranger murder trials we've encountered in quite some time.

THE SLIPPERY: THE PONZI KILLER MOM

Scott and Nancy bring us the rise and spectacular collapse of Natalie Cochran.

Natalie and Michael Cochran appeared to have everything: high-school sweethearts turned successful suburban family, with Natalie working as a pharmacist and Michael as a popular baseball coach and businessman.

Behind that success was a multimillion-dollar fraud scheme involving supposedly lucrative government and defense contracts. As the money poured in, so did the lies—and when Michael began asking questions, prosecutors said Natalie chose murder over exposure.

A jury ultimately convicted her of killing her husband with insulin.

Money. Marriage. Fraud. Defense contracts. Murder.

This week, The Slippery takes on The Ponzi Killer Mom.

THIS WEEK IN HORROR: VICTORIAN PSYCHO

Finally, we're going Gothic.

Maika Monroe stars as Winifred Notty, an eccentric young governess who arrives at a remote English manor in 1858 to educate the children of a wealthy family.

Then people begin disappearing.

Also starring Jason Isaacs, Thomasin McKenzie and Ruth Wilson, Victorian Psycho gives us a remote manor, Victorian repression, disappearing servants and a governess who may have considerably more on her mind than afternoon lessons.

LISTEN • WATCH • FOLLOW

Follow The Devil Within, Criminal Mischief, The Slippery and The Devil's Ledger wherever you get your podcasts.

Leave us a five-star rating and review to help more listeners discover the Evio Universe.

Watch and subscribe on the Evio Creative YouTube channel, and turn on notifications so you never miss a new episode.

Follow @thedevilwithinpod for clips, episode imagery, stories and updates.

Have a story or tip for us? mailto:info@eviocreative.com

Fall is here. The sweaters are coming out. The leaves are changing. Playoff baseball has arrived.

Nature is healing.

We'll see you this week across the Evio Universe.
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THE DEVIL WITHIN

GUSTAVE: THE KILLER OF LAKE TANGANYIKA

Episode One — Pattern

For years, people living along the shores of Lake Tanganyika told stories about something enormous moving beneath the water. Fishermen disappeared. Bodies were recovered bearing catastrophic injuries. Survivors described attacks that happened with terrifying speed, often in places where generations of Burundians had fished, washed clothes and collected water.

Then French naturalist Patrice Faye began looking for a pattern.

Faye was an unlikely investigator: a self-taught naturalist and herpetologist from Lyon who had worked as a plumber and lumberjack, traveled through Africa and eventually made Burundi his home. During some of the country's darkest years, he developed an extraordinary knowledge of its wildlife—and became increasingly troubled by the stories emerging from Lake Tanganyika.

In Episode One of our three-part investigation into Gustave, we travel deep into the history of Burundi, a breathtaking country scarred by colonialism, political assassination and a civil war that killed an estimated 300,000 people between 1993 and 2005. Against that backdrop, Faye developed a disturbing theory: could years of human bodies entering the region's waterways during the violence have taught an opportunistic predator that human beings were food? It was a theory he could never prove, but one that connected Burundi's human tragedy to the mystery developing along its shoreline.

Faye collected eyewitness accounts, compared locations and studied descriptions until he became convinced that many of the attacks were connected. Witnesses repeatedly described extraordinary size and distinctive scars, including an injury on the animal's head. Eventually, Faye saw his suspect himself and gave him a name: Gustave.

Gustave wasn't a man.

He was an enormous Nile crocodile—estimated by Faye at roughly twenty feet long, perhaps a ton in weight and around sixty years old, although the animal was never captured and scientifically measured. And while the sensational claims that Gustave killed two or three hundred people belong more comfortably to legend than established fact, something very real remained beneath the mythology: an exceptionally large, scarred crocodile that Faye would spend years trying to understand.

This is the story of a naturalist, a country haunted by war, and a predator that became a legend.

This is Gustave: The Killer of Lake Tanganyika.

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The Devil Within is written and hosted by Branden Morgan and produced by Evio Creative.
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THE NEW MONSTERS: THE LOVELAND FROGMAN

Episode Three: The Monster Loveland Kept

By the summer of 2016, hunting monsters had changed. Armed with smartphones and Pokémon Go, two teenagers wandered near Ohio's Little Miami River and reportedly encountered something that wasn't supposed to be part of the game. Their footage was ambiguous, but the name attached to it was unmistakable: the Loveland Frogman.

The alleged sighting resurrected a legend stretching back decades—mysterious humanoid figures beside an Ohio road in 1955, police encounters in 1972, and the wonderfully bizarre story of a frog-like creature carrying a wand that produced sparks. But the renewed attention also brought former Loveland police officer Mark Mathews back into the story. Mathews had encountered and shot the animal associated with the legend in 1972, and his explanation was considerably less supernatural: according to him, it was a large, tailless iguana, probably an escaped or abandoned exotic pet.

That should have killed the legend.

Instead, Loveland kept the Frogman.

In the conclusion of our three-part investigation, we explore what happens when a monster outlives the eyewitnesses who created it. From the arrival of the internet and the 2016 Pokémon Go encounter to the transformation of regional cryptids into hometown mascots, merchandise and cultural identities, the Frogman reveals something important about the way modern folklore survives. Evidence may weaken a legend, but once enough people inherit the story, evidence isn't the only thing keeping it alive.

We also bring The New Monsters full circle, from alligators beneath Manhattan and the Bunny Man of Northern Virginia to the strange amphibious resident of the Little Miami River. Cameras, smartphones and instant communication were supposed to make monsters obsolete. Instead, technology gave folklore a distribution system.

Maybe the Loveland Frogman really was an iguana.

If so, the iguana lost.

The monster survived.

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JOIN THE CONVERSATION

Follow @thedevilwithinpod for clips, stories, archival material and more from The Devil Within.

Have a strange story, unexplained encounter, case or legend you think we should investigate? Send it to info@eviocreative.com.

The Devil Within is written and hosted by Branden Morgan and produced by Evio Creative.
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THE DEVIL WITHIN

THE NEW MONSTERS: THE LOVELAND FROGMAN

Episode Two — The Creature Gets a Name

Before the Loveland Frogman became one of America's strangest regional cryptids, it may have been something else entirely.

The story takes us back to Loveland, Ohio, in 1955, where a businessman or traveling salesman supposedly encountered three small humanoid figures beside a country road near the Little Miami River. Later versions describe creatures standing three or four feet tall, with leathery skin, deeply wrinkled heads and vaguely frog-like faces. Then one of them reportedly raised a strange metal rod above its head—and sparks began shooting from it.

A Frogman is strange enough.

A Frogman with a magic wand requires considerably more explanation.

In Episode Two of The New Monsters, we investigate how a handful of separate encounters gradually became the mythology of the Loveland Frogman—and why the creature's bizarre origins may have more in common with America's flying-saucer obsession than traditional cryptozoology.

The problem begins with the 1955 encounter itself. Unlike the better-documented police sightings that followed seventeen years later, there is no readily available contemporary police report establishing the version of the story we know today. Its famous details reach us largely through later researchers, paranormal literature and decades of retelling, meaning the Frogman's origin story belongs much more securely to folklore than verified history.

And then there's that wand.

America in 1955 was deep in the first great age of flying-saucer fascination. UFO reports were multiplying, science-fiction theaters were filled with extraterrestrial visitors, and stories of strange humanoids carrying mysterious technology occupied a very different corner of the American imagination. Three small beings beside a road carrying a sparking device don't necessarily sound like unknown amphibians at all. They sound suspiciously like visitors. The documentary trail is too weak to conclude that the Frogman began as a UFO story, but the possibility reveals just how dramatically a story can change depending upon the name we eventually give its creature.

Then came 1972.

Loveland police officers Ray Shockey and Mark Mathews encountered unusual animals near the Little Miami River seventeen years after the alleged 1955 incident. Suddenly, the older story had something it had previously lacked: recognizable witnesses and the authority of a police uniform. Three mysterious humanoids from 1955 could become earlier examples of the same creature encountered by police in 1972, while those later encounters appeared to prove that something had been returning to the river for decades.

Separate stories became sightings. Sightings became a pattern. And eventually, the pattern became a monster.

Once the name Loveland Frogman took hold, the transformation accelerated. Paranormal books, cryptozoology collections and eventually the internet standardized a creature that eyewitness testimony had left frustratingly incomplete. Artists supplied enormous eyes, long limbs, webbed hands and unmistakably amphibian features until generations of people who had never seen the creature nevertheless knew exactly what a Loveland Frogman was supposed to look like.

And somehow, through every transformation, the sparking wand survived.

This week on The Devil Within, we follow one of America's strangest cryptids from an uncertain roadside encounter through police reports, paranormal publishing and the internet, examining how folklore can create a coherent history from stories that may never have belonged together in the first place.

Because the Loveland Frogman wasn't simply discovered.

It was assembled.

Next time, the Frogman enters the smartphone age when teenagers playing Pokémon Go near Loveland encounter something strange beside the water. We'll also meet the police officer who publicly tried to kill his own legend by insisting that the Frogman he encountered in 1972 was actually a tailless iguana—and discover why Loveland kept its monster anyway.

Listen & Follow: Follow The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts.

Rate & Review: Leave us a 5-star rating and review to help new listeners discover the show.

Watch & Subscribe: Watch The Devil Within on the Evio Creative YouTube channel. Subscribe and turn on notifications so you never miss a new episode.

Join the Conversation: Follow @thedevilwithinpod and send your stories, sightings and tips to info@eviocreative.com
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