Crime Scene

Crime Scene

From The Binge, Crime Scene is a weekly show that plunges you into cases you can’t stop thinking about.    Join Jonathan Hirsch, host of My Fugitive Dad and Dear Franklin Jones and producer behind shows like The Thing About Pam and Dr. Death, as he teams up with investigative reporter and podcaster Cooper Moll to crack open the cases that deserve a second look.    Each episode weaves an intricate true crime story with real photos and videos from the cases-- the kind of reporting you could only get from two experts who spent years in the field.   Step inside the Crime Scene office and feed your true crime obsession with The Binge.    The Binge is a Sony Music Entertainment Original Production.   Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow @sonypodcasts   To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email podcastsales@sonymusic.com
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Episode's summary

Mary Carole McDonnell spent decades in television producing true crime shows. But in 2017, she allegedly pulled off a multimillion-dollar con of her own. Her company, Bellum Entertainment, made syndicated true crime shows like Corrupt Crimes, Murderous Affairs and I Married a Murderer. In December 2017, she walked into a bank and said she was heir to the McDonnell Douglas aerospace fortune — with an $80 million trust about to pay out. The bank extended her a line of credit, and over the next six weeks, she obtained $14.7 million. She drove a Porsche and kept a boat in Newport Beach. Meanwhile her staff went unpaid for weeks at a time. Her on-camera experts were retired FBI agents, including Joe Pistone, the agent known as Donnie Brasco. None of them saw through her the alleged scheme. So how did a woman who made television about criminals allegedly pull off a fraud of this scale? Jonathan and Cooper break down the case, from a fabricated family fortune to the people who were left dealing with the fallout. A…

Episodes

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The True Crime Con: The TV Producer Who Faked a Fortune

Mary Carole McDonnell spent decades in television producing true crime shows. But in 2017, she allegedly pulled off a multimillion-dollar con of her own. Her company, Bellum Entertainment, made syndicated true crime shows like Corrupt Crimes, Murderous Affairs and I Married a Murderer. In December 2017, she walked into a bank and said she was heir to the McDonnell Douglas aerospace fortune — with an $80 million trust about to pay out. The bank extended her a line of credit, and over the next six weeks, she obtained $14.7 million. She drove a Porsche and kept a boat in Newport Beach. Meanwhile her staff went unpaid for weeks at a time. Her on-camera experts were retired FBI agents, including Joe Pistone, the agent known as Donnie Brasco. None of them saw through her the alleged scheme. So how did a woman who made television about criminals allegedly pull off a fraud of this scale? Jonathan and Cooper break down the case, from a fabricated family fortune to the people who were left dealing with the fallout. A…

29 Oct 2026
104-

The Rise and Fall of Elizabeth Holmes, and the Documentary That Reopens It All

Elizabeth Holmes said a single drop of blood could run dozens of lab tests in a few hours. Investors believed her. So did Walgreens, a board full of former cabinet secretaries, and Forbes, which named her the world’s youngest self-made billionaire. But the technology never worked as promised. Jonathan and Cooper trace how Theranos raised more than $700 million, and sent most patient samples to other companies’ analyzers. They also cover how a pathologist’s blog, two young lab workers, and Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou helped bring the company down. The story was supposed to end with Holmes’s 2022 conviction and 11-year sentence. Then came You Can See Everything, the new A24 documentary from Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim. Filmed inside Holmes’s home during the 34 days before she reported to prison. Jonathan and Cooper ask what a film like this owes the patients and investors who still haven’t been paid back. Stay until the end to hear their reactions, recorded outside the theater on opening…

22 Oct 2026
103-

Boys on the Tracks: Why We Are Reopening Arkansas’s Most Notorious Cold Case

In August 1987, two teenage boys were found lying side by side on railroad tracks in Saline County, Arkansas. Don Henry and Kevin Ives were dead, partly covered by a tarp, with a rifle nearby. The initial ruling was that they had fallen asleep on the tracks after smoking marijuana. A second autopsy raised serious questions. Nearly 40 years later, their deaths remain unsolved. Co-host Jonathan Hirsch returns to the case that started Crime Scene to examine where the investigation stands today, the troubling questions surrounding the original inquiry, and why he still believes there are answers to be found. The prosecutor who led a grand jury investigation was later convicted on drug charges, while questions about a possible connection to drug trafficking have never fully gone away. Now Jonathan has acquired boxes of archival material collected by the Ives family, along with files from a federal task force investigator whose work on the case reportedly put him at odds with local authorities. Could any of the…

15 Oct 2026
102-

He Paid Online Spellcasters to Curse His Wife. Then She Vanished | Maya Millete

In January 2021, Maya Millete, a mother of three from Chula Vista, California, disappeared. Surveillance cameras captured no footage of her leaving her neighborhood, and her body has never been found. Jonathan and Cooper walk through the case against her husband, Larry Millete. Maya had told her family that if anything happened to her, Larry would be the reason. She had just borrowed $10,000 to hire a divorce attorney. After she disappeared, investigators found 1,700 pages of messages on Larry's laptop. For more than a year he had paid online spellcasters. At first he wanted spells to keep her in the marriage, but later he asked them to make her sick, break her bones and put her in an accident. Two days after she vanished, before anyone had reported her missing, he asked them to lift every hex off her. The episode also covers the 444 unexplained miles on the family Lexus, the freezer rolled out of the house, Maya's secret relationship with a coworker, and how prosecutors won a first-degree murder conviction…

08 Oct 2026
101-

Heidi Planck: She Walked Into an LA High-Rise and Vanished — w/The First Degree’s Alexis Linkletter

On October 17, 2021, Heidi Planck left her son’s football game at halftime and disappeared. About an hour later, surveillance footage captured her walking her dog behind a luxury high-rise in downtown Los Angeles. Three hours after that, the dog was found alone on the building’s 28th floor. Heidi was nowhere to be found. The building had cameras throughout its corridors and key-card access at its elevators. Heidi’s phone, smartwatch, laptop, and car tracking were all switched off. Yet despite an extensive investigation, her disappearance remains unexplained. Producer, journalist, and podcast host Alexis Linkletter (The First Degree, Crimes of Reddit, Unraveled: Long Island Serial Killer) joins Jonathan and Cooper to examine the disappearance of Heidi Planck, the LAPD’s decision to classify the case as a homicide, and a massive landfill search that yielded no answers. They also explore the financial fraud allegations involving Heidi’s employer, an underground poker ring that drew investigators into a federal…

01 Oct 2026