Beers with Queers A True Crime Podcast

A friendly favor. An insidious plan. And a disappearance that would expose one of the most disturbing crimes in Sioux Falls deaf community’s history.In February 2006, Darlene VanderGiesen, a beloved member of the deaf community in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, left work to meet someone she trusted. She told friends she was helping plan a Valentine’s Day surprise for a mutual friend. But she never came home. Days later, investigators uncovered a trail of evidence that revealed a chilling story of jealousy, secrets, and unimaginable violence, one that would ripple through the tight-knit world she belonged to.In this episode of our LGBTQ+ true crime podcast, we explore the complicated relationships, cultural misunderstandings, and media narratives that surrounded the case. From the early panic in the deaf community to the courtroom battle that followed, this story sits at the intersection of queer history, disability, and one of the most shocking gay-related murder cases to make national headlines.Hosted by Jordi and Brad, Beers With Queers dives into chilling crimes, queer stories, and twisted justice, all with a cold one in hand.Press play, grab a drink, and join us as we uncover another dark chapter of LGBTQ+ true crime. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thirteen men walked into the woods of Paturis Park seeking a moment of freedom, only to be met by a predator who treated their lives like a "social cleansing." In a case where the justice system's silence was as deafening as the gunshots, the line between the hunters and the law began to blur.From 2007 to 2008, the busy suburbs of São Paulo were haunted by a serial killer who specifically targeted gay and bisexual men in their most vulnerable sanctuaries. This chilling gay murder case exposed the deep-rooted "impunity" within the Brazilian legal system, where victims were blamed for their own deaths and the investigation was sabotaged by systemic bias. Join us as we track the hunt for the Rainbow Maniac, explore the high-stakes DHPP investigation into a retired military officer, and examine one of the most prolific unsolved LGBTQ+ mysteries in true crime history. This episode dives deep into a queer history of survival and the 2011 trial that left an entire community demanding justice.Hosted by Jordi and Brad, Beers With Queers brings chilling crimes, queer stories, and twisted justice to light—all with a cold one in hand. Press play, grab a drink, and join us as we uncover the darkest corners of LGBTQ+ true crime from a perspective you won't find anywhere else. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A quiet night in a small Alabama town ended in a brutal, fiery betrayal that shocked the nation. He wasn’t just a victim of a crime; he was a man targeted for the simple truth of who he loved.Billy Jack Gaither was a well-liked, hard-working man who lived a quiet life in Sylacauga until a chance encounter at a local boat ramp turned into a horrific nightmare. This week, we examine the 1999 gay murder case that stripped away the veneer of small-town safety and exposed a deep-seated hate that demanded a reckoning. Billy Jack’s story became a catalyst for change in the American legal system. We dive into the queer history of the Deep South to look at how a community heals when one of its own is taken by senseless violence.Hosted by Jordi and Brad, Beers With Queers brings chilling crimes and true crime with a queer perspective to light, all with a cold one in hand. Press play, grab a drink, and join us as we honor Billy Jack’s memory and uncover the darkest corners of LGBTQ+ true crime. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A selfie of a beautiful couple posted to Instagram. A whispered secret exposed. And a queer icon found stabbed to death just 24 hours after lawmakers passed a massive anti-LGBTQ bill.When Georgian transgender model, actor and influencer Kesaria Abramidze posted a photo to her Instagram that publicly acknowledged her relationship, some say it triggered a fatal rage in her closeted partner, leading to her stabbing in her Tbilisi apartment. That killing came just one day after Georgia’s parliament passed a sweeping anti-LGBTQIA+ bill that critics say entrenches stigma and emboldens hostility toward queer people, fueling fear that what might have been dismissed as domestic violence is actually entangled with state-sanctioned dehumanization of LGBTQIA+ lives. In this episode we explore who Kesaria was, the significance of that selfie and the dynamics of her relationship, and how her death became a flashpoint in ongoing debates about queer history, hate, and justice in a country where anti-LGBTQIA+ laws and rhetoric are on the rise.Hosted by Jordi and Brad, Beers With Queers brings chilling crimes, queer stories, and twisted justice to light all with a cold one in hand. Press play, grab a drink, and join us as we uncover not just a murder, but the cultural forces that shaped it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A secret love. A world at war. And a queer bond Nazi history nearly erased.In 1943 Berlin, a Jewish resistance fighter and a Nazi officer’s wife risk everything for a forbidden love that defied hate, ideology, and the very machinery of genocide.In honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day we bring you an incredible true queer love story. Lilly Wust, a mother of four married to a German soldier, never expected to fall for Felice Schragenheim, a Jewish woman in hiding whose hidden resistance work put her life on the line. Through flowers, poems, and letters signed Aimée and Jaguar, their love blossomed in secret homes, cafes, and wartime streets — illuminating queer history in the darkest shadows of the Third Reich. Their story, captured in Aimée & Jaguar, reveals queer identity under persecution, the brutality of Nazi antisemitism, and the courage it took to love out loud in a world built on fear.Hosted by Jordi and Brad, Beers With Queers brings chilling crimes, queer stories, and twisted justice to light, all with a cold one in hand.Press play, grab a drink, and join us as we uncover the untold queer love that survived hate and changed history. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On November 30, 2013, in Portland, Maine, police discovered the bodies of two men inside an apartment near Deering Oaks Park. One of them was 22-year-old Matthew Rairdon, a graduate student and aspiring educator. The other was Patrick Milliner, his former partner. What initially appeared to be an isolated tragedy soon revealed a devastating case of intimate partner violence that unfolded quietly—without police reports, restraining orders, or public warning signs.In this episode, we examine the documented relationship between Rairdon and Milliner, the weeks leading up to their breakup, and the final hours before the murder-suicide. Using police records, court findings, and contemporaneous reporting, we trace the investigation, the unanswered questions, and the systemic failures that left friends and family grappling with how this could have happened. Above all, this episode centers Matthew Rairdon—his life, his future, and the loss that reshaped a community—while confronting the uncomfortable reality that not all violence announces itself before it strikes.You are Not Alone, Help is avaiable if you or someone you know is experiencing DV. Please visit the website below for more details.https://www.dvafoundation.org/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What starts as a casual encounter ends in a shattered sense of safety, when an online date becomes the bait for a chilling crime spree in the heart of London. Two men used Grindr to get into gay men's homes, leaving victims robbed, violated, and forever changed.In a disturbing UK case of 2024–2025, 22-year-old Rahmat Khan Mohammadi and 21-year-old Mohammed Bilal Hotak built fake profiles on the gay dating app Grindr to target unsuspecting men, arranging meetups at their London homes and then tricking them into unlocking their phones to play music on YouTube before stealing phones, cash and personal data and mobile banking apps.. The Metropolitan Police uncovered a pattern of 35 burglaries and 20 related frauds affecting at least 22 victims, revealing how digital trust can be weaponized. This episode digs into the crime of the future, the human cost behind the headlines, the trauma left in the wake, and what this case says about safety, vulnerability and connection in queer spaces.Hosted by Jordi and Brad, Beers With Queers brings chilling crimes, queer stories and twisted justice to light with heart and honesty. Press play, grab a drink and join us as we explore how a night out online turned into a sobering true crime with a queer perspective. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A crew member vanishes without a trace on a cruise where magic should meet the sea, and the official explanation raised more questions than answers. A video of her last distressed phone call was her last known moment alive, and a family still demands truth from the deep.When 24-year-old Rebecca Coriam, a young British cruise employee working aboard the Disney Wonder, disappeared from the vessel in March 2011 off the coast of Mexico, her absence ignited one of the most baffling unsolved maritime mysteries in LGBTQ+ true crime history. CCTV captured her distressed on a crew phone early one morning, then nothing—no body, no confirmed sighting, and no clarity about what happened next. As her parents pressed for answers, questions swirled about botched procedures, jurisdictional loopholes, and whether the cruise line’s priority was reputation over justice, leaving a haunting gap in queer history where a vibrant life should still be. This episode digs into the discomforting shadow cast by international waters and the unresolved disappearance that still echoes across the oceans.Hosted by Jordi and Brad, Beers With Queers brings chilling crimes, queer stories, and twisted justice to light, all with a cold one in hand. Press play, grab a drink, and join us as we uncover the darkest corners of LGBTQ+ history. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A trusted priest with a collar and a gun walked into a funeral home, and two lives were cut down in cold blood, shaking a small Midwestern town to its core. What was Father Ryan Erickson hiding behind his vows and sacred duties?In February 2002, life in Hudson, Wisconsin was upended when funeral home director Dan O’Connell and his young intern James Ellison were found shot to death in broad daylight. The case went cold for years, until shocking leads surfaced pointing to a charismatic Catholic priest whose life of rigid conservatism, secrets, and misconduct may have masked something far darker. In this LGBTQ+ true crime podcast episode, we unpack how allegations of abuse, a failure in both the system and the church, and a double homicide intersect with broader questions about power, identity, and justice in small town America. True crime with a queer perspective isn’t just about the mystery, it’s about the systems that let these horrors persist.Hosted by Jordi and Brad, Beers With Queers brings chilling crimes, queer stories, and twisted justice to light, all with a cold one in hand. Press play, grab a drink, and join us as we uncover the darkest corners of LGBTQ+ true crime history. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A celebrated playwright at the height of fame, Oscar Wilde became fodder for scandal and ruin when he chose love over self-preservation. His brilliant career was extinguished in a courtroom where his queerness became the weapon used to destroy him. In 1895 Victorian England, homosexuality was not just taboo, it was a crime, and Oscar Wilde’s passionate affair with Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas drew the wrath of Bosie’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry. What began as a libel suit against that father’s public accusation of “posing as a sodomite” thrust Wilde into a nightmarish legal spectacle that exposed his private life to the world’s prying eyes. As the libel case collapsed, the evidence gathered was turned over to authorities, leading to multiple trials for gross indecency under laws that criminalized queer intimacy. Newspapers and courtroom spectators dissected Wilde’s love, his works, and the very phrase “the love that dare not speak its name,” turning a queer history moment into a public obsession. Hostile judges, invasive testimony, and Victorian moral panic culminated in a devastating conviction, years of hard labor, and exile in France, where Wilde’s health, reputation, and family were forever altered. This episode examines the personal cost of queer desire under oppressive laws and the cultural backlash that followed one of the most infamous queer trials ever. Hosted by Jordi and Brad, Beers With Queers brings chilling crimes, queer stories, and twisted justice to light, all with a cold one in hand. Press play, grab a drink, and join us as we uncover the darkest corners of LGBTQ+ history. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

He was the most celebrated writer in London, adored on stage with a bright future ahead of him. But he was living a secret life that Victorian society was waiting to punish.Before courtrooms, prison cells, and public disgrace, Oscar Wilde was a literary star at the height of his power. A brilliant author and celebrated playwright, he moved through London society with wit, charm, and dangerous visibility. But beneath the applause was a rigid moral world built on repression, surveillance, and fear of difference. In this episode of our LGBTQ+ true crime podcast, we explore Wilde’s rise, the social rules of Victorian England, and the unspoken risks of queer life in an era where reputation was everything. This is not yet the scandal, but the pressure building beneath it, and the society that made his fall inevitable.Blending queer history with true crime from a queer perspective, this episode sets the stage for one of the most consequential persecutions of a gay figure in history, and why Wilde’s story still resonates today.Hosted by Jordi and Brad, Beers With Queers examines chilling crimes, queer history, and twisted justice through a sharp and thoughtful lens.Press play, grab a drink, and join us as we step inside the world Oscar Wilde ruled, just before everything collapsed. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A shadow lurked in Manhattan’s gay nightlife. A quiet loner by day, a ruthless predator by night. The city’s forgotten serial killer struck from the closet, leaving tragedy and terror in his wake.In the mid-1970s, Waldo Grant moved to the Upper West Side of New York City, blending into the gay community as a soft-spoken, unassuming loner. But behind closed doors, he harbored a horrifying compulsion. Between 1973 and 1976, he killed at least four young men. Each encounter ending in brutal violence: beatings, stabbing, even dismemberment, sometimes dumping bodies in trash bins or tossing them from rooftops. Decades later, his name remains little-known, a grim footnote in queer history, buried under the weight of stigma and silence. This is an episode about queer identity, violence, and how society’s marginalization helped a monster stay free.This episode of Beers With Queers is a raw deep dive into LGBTQ+ true crime as we trace the story of a serial killer hunting gay men in 1970s New York. We reconstruct Waldo Grant’s chilling crimes: the first victim bludgeoned and thrown from a rooftop, another discovered in a trash can, a third beaten to death in an East Harlem apartment, and a 16-year-old boy dismembered and abandoned in Central Park. Through these crimes and Grant’s eventual confession, we examine a dark chapter of queer history: a time when fear, shame, and police neglect made LGBTQ+ communities uniquely vulnerable.Hosted by Jordi and Brad, Beers With Queers brings chilling crimes, queer stories, and twisted justice to light — all with a cold one in hand. Press play, grab a drink, and join us as we uncover the darkest corners of LGBTQ+ history. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A burst of gunfire on a quiet November night. Two lives lost, more injured and an icon gay bar turned crime scene forever.On November 19, 1980, 38-year-old ex-transit cop Ronald K. Crumpley opened fire on patrons entering RAMROD, a beloved gay leather bar in Greenwich Village. What began as a night out ended in chaos. People ducked behind parked cars, others ran but two men, Vernon Kroening and Jörg Wenz, were killed, and many more wounded. In this episode of our LGBTQ+ true crime podcast we trace the horror of that massacre, the homophobia and mental illness behind it, and the ripple effect it had in a community already living in the shadows. We explore how a single act of hatred cracked open the illusion of safety for queer New Yorkers and why that reckoning still echoes today.Hosted by Jordi and Brad, Beers With Queers brings chilling crimes, queer stories, and twisted justice to light with a cold one in hand. Press play, grab a drink, and join us as we uncover the darkest corners of LGBTQ+ history.To sign our online petition to have a memorial or plaque added to the building that once was the RAMROD please visit: https://c.org/L6QfmV4Q6N Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It started as a normal trip home. A group of teenage girls coming back from a night in Greenwich Village, laughing, tired, just minding their own business waiting for the bus in downtown Newark. Minutes later, one of them was bleeding on the sidewalk, stabbed for saying one simple truth. “We’re lesbians.” She was just fifteen years old, a child. Her tragic death would expose the risks that queer people, including children face daily while navigating public spaces. But it also revealed the strength of a community that refused to let her disappear into silence. This episode of our LGBTQ+ true crime podcast unpacks the intersection of racism, homophobia, and the dangerous cost of visibility.Hosted by Jordi and Brad, Beers With Queers brings chilling crimes, queer stories, and twisted justice to light all with a cold one in hand. Press play, grab a drink, and join us as we uncover the darkest corners of queer history. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A wealthy housewife found dead. A husband with everything to lose. And a scandalous relationship put on trial.In 1960, 52-year-old Mary Burge was discovered brutally murdered in her upscale Macon home, a crime that stunned the city and exposed fractures beneath its polished Southern image. When investigators dug deeper, suspicion turned not toward an intruder but toward her husband, Chester Burge, a powerful local businessman with a reputation as a ruthless slumlord. But Chester seemed to have an airtight alibi. The case only grew more explosive when allegations surfaced about Chester’s relationship with his male chauffeur, thrusting queer identity into a courtroom and a jury that struggled to separate truth from prejudice, the trial became one of Georgia’s most infamous murder mysteries. In this episode, we revisit a story where class, sexuality, and Southern respectability collided in ways the public never saw coming, pulling this LGBTQ+ true crime back into the light.Hosted by Jordi and Brad, Beers With Queers brings chilling crimes, queer stories, and twisted justice to light, all with a cold one in hand.Press play, grab a drink, and join us as we uncover the darkest corners of LGBTQ+ history. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A quiet town. A string of brutal killings. And a killer who's self hatred would make him take the lives of others.In the early 1990s, fear gripped Sunderland, England, as young men began turning up dead strangled and hidden away in abandoned buildings and then set on fire. The press called him “The Sunderland Strangler.” His victims were all teenage boys. What no one could see was the dark self-hatred driving the man behind the murders. A closeted predator who turned his rage inward and took it out on others.This episode of Beers With Queers: A True Crime Podcast digs into the chilling story of Steven Grieveson, exploring how internalized homophobia, secrecy, and shame collided in one of the UK’s most disturbing LGBTQ+ murder cases. It’s a story of identity and violence.Hosted by Jordi and Brad, Beers With Queers brings chilling crimes, queer stories, and twisted justice to light, all with a cold one in hand.Press play, grab a drink, and join us as we uncover the darkest corners of LGBTQ+ history Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A routine walk home. A man beaten for being himself. And a city forced to confront its quiet complicity.In 2005, 24-year-old Jody Dobrowski was walking home through Clapham Common when he crossed paths with two strangers who decided his sexuality made him a target. The attack was so violent that even seasoned detectives were shaken. But what began as another hate-fueled assault soon sparked a national reckoning and a moment that would expose the limits of tolerance in modern Britain and change the way the country talked about queer safety forever.In this episode of Beers With Queers: A True Crime Podcast, we trace the life and legacy of Jody Dobrowski, a young man whose death helped shape the conversation around homophobia, violence, and justice in the UK’s LGBTQ+ community. This is not just a gay murder case. It’s a story of systemic failure, activism, and resilience that still echoes today in queer history.Hosted by Jordi and Brad, Beers With Queers brings chilling crimes, queer stories, and twisted justice to light, all with a cold one in hand.Press play, grab a drink, and join us as we uncover the darkest corners of LGBTQ+ history. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A basement bar. A drag queen with fire in her veins. And an attack turned counterattack.Long before Stonewall, one night in Milwaukee changed everything. It was 1961 when the Black Nite, a hidden queer bar downtown, became the site of a violent confrontation that would ignite the city’s first gay uprising. At the center stood Josie Carter, a fearless Black trans woman and performer who refused to back down when outsiders stormed the club. What followed was chaos, resistance, and a moment of defiance that history almost forgot.In this episode, we dive into the night Milwaukee’s queer community fought back, decades before the world was ready to listen. This is a story of courage, identity, and survival in the face of hate. Hosted by Jordi and Brad, Beers With Queers brings chilling crimes, queer stories, and twisted justice to light—all with a cold one in hand.Press play, grab a drink, and join us as we uncover the darkest corners of LGBTQ+ history. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.