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Just after Christmas 2011, Russ Faria came home from a game night with friends and found his wife, Betsy, dead inside their Missouri home.

Police quickly decided that Russ had killed her. But four people said he had been with them that evening. Receipts, phone records, and surveillance footage supported his alibi. Meanwhile, the last person known to have seen Betsy alive had recently become the beneficiary of her $150,000 life-insurance policy.

Russ was convicted anyway.

Years later, a second trial exposed evidence the first jury never heard, and attention returned to Betsy’s friend, Pam Hupp. Then another death made the failures in Betsy’s investigation much harder to dismiss.

In this episode of Tell Me the Crime, Febriana tells John the story of Betsy Faria’s murder. They discuss confirmation bias, why investigators trusted Pam, how strong evidence can become invisible once police commit to a suspect, and what happens when the justice system builds a case around its theory instead of the facts.

Listener discretion is advised. This episode discusses cancer, murder, wrongful conviction, and failures within the criminal justice system.

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A young woman is found dying on the side of a highway after an apparent hit-and-run. But when police try to identify her, they uncover something far stranger: multiple names, a mysterious past, and a life shaped by secrets that began when she was just a child.

In this episode of Tell Me the Crime, Feb tells John the story of Suzanne Sevakis, a woman whose true identity remained hidden for decades, and the disturbing circumstances that explain why.

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On December 7, 2009, Susan Powell vanished from her Utah home. Her purse, wallet, identification, and other belongings were still inside, but Susan, her husband Josh, and their two young sons were gone.

Josh returned hours later with an extraordinary explanation: he had taken the boys camping after midnight in the freezing desert while Susan slept at home. Then one of the children made a troubling comment about who had gone with them.

As investigators examined Josh’s story, they uncovered contradictions, hidden warnings, and disturbing secrets surrounding the Powell family. Yet Susan has never been found, and no one was ever tried for her disappearance.

In this episode, Febriana tells John the disappearance of Susan Powell and the evidence that made investigators believe the midnight camping trip concealed something much darker.

Listener discretion is advised. This episode discusses abuse, child murder, suicide, voyeurism, and disturbing family behaviour.

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In today’s episode of TMTC, John tells Febriana about a man in Florida who spent nearly $200,000, mostly stolen from his family, on a webcam performer in Bulgaria whom he believed truly loved him.

His family protected him, paid for treatment, and gave him one final chance. Then they contacted her themselves to expose his lies.

Within weeks, all three were dead - and Grant Amato had disappeared.

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Peter Porco was attacked in his bed with an axe. Despite catastrophic injuries, he got up, went downstairs, completed parts of his morning routine, and collapsed near the front door. His wife, Joan, was found alive upstairs.

In this episode, John tells Febriana the case of Christopher Porco, the 21-year-old accused of murdering his father and attempting to kill his mother. Police said Joan initially identified Christopher with a nod, but after recovering, she remembered nothing and became his strongest defender.

The case was built through accumulation: a yellow Jeep, toll records, alarm data, financial deception, a weak alibi, and an earlier burglary that prosecutors said Christopher had staged.

We discuss procedural memory, unreliable identification after traumatic brain injury, motivated reasoning, betrayal blindness, and whether unconditional love can survive the belief that your own child tried to kill you.

Listener discretion is advised.

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Nineteen-year-old Ashley Wadsworth travelled from British Columbia to England to spend time with Jack Sepple, a man she had built a relationship with online. At first, it looked like a romantic adventure: sightseeing, smiling photos, and the excitement of finally being together in person.

But behind the pictures, the relationship became controlling and dangerous. Ashley decided she wanted to return home to Canada. Before she could leave, Sepple killed her.

In this episode, Febriana tells John the story of Ashley Wadsworth’s murder, the warning signs in Jack Sepple’s past, and the difficult questions this case raises about coercive control, international relationships, online intimacy, and what can happen when an abusive partner realizes they are losing control.

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In this episode of TMTC, John tells Febriana about Rachel Barber who was 15 years old and training full-time at a performing arts school in Melbourne when she told her boyfriend she had a job after class.

An old female friend was going to pay her a lot of money. Rachel didn’t say the woman’s name. Then she never came home.

In this episode, we cover the murder of Rachel Barber and the case against Caroline Robertson, a former family friend and babysitter whose obsession with Rachel became much darker than ordinary jealousy.

Police would later uncover clothing that did not belong to Caroline, handwritten planning material, a fake identity, and a murder that had been thought through step by step.

This case raises disturbing questions about envy, self-hatred, identity, and what happens when someone stops seeing another person as real.

Listener discretion is advised. This episode discusses the murder of a minor, strangulation, body disposal, and psychological obsession.

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Today's episode is one of the strangest and most unsettling cases we've covered so far: a woman who wrote a children's grief book after her husband's death, then was later convicted of murdering him.

Febriana tells John the case of Kouri Richins, a Utah mother and real estate investor whose husband, Eric Richins, died from a lethal dose of fentanyl in 2022. At first, Kouri publicly presented herself as a grieving widow trying to help her children process the loss of their father. But investigators uncovered a very different story involving financial pressure, life insurance, forged documents, a prior poisoning attempt, and a marriage where Eric had reportedly feared his wife was trying to kill him.

In this episode, John hears the case for the first time as we talk through public grief, image management, financial desperation, and the disturbing question at the center of the case: what kind of person turns a death they caused into part of their public identity?

Content warning: murder, poisoning, fentanyl, family trauma, grief, and children affected by parental death.

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