Send us a Text Message.A relaxing day on the river turned into a deadly moment of terror and horror for a group of young people and a middle-aged man they had surrounded. Video of the deadly encounter shows 54-year-old Nicolae Miu looking for a friend’s lost cell phone when a group of intoxicated teens and young adults began taunting and teasing him over unfounded suspicions he was preying on children. Miu, who is originally from Romania, tried to avoid them, but the group kept push...
Send us a Text Message.Urban legends are nothing new, but tweenagers attempting to murder a friend at a sleepover in order to appease an ominous one certainly is. In 2014, two 12-year-old girls, Anissa Weier and Morgan Geyser, lured their friend Payton Leutner into the woods and stabbed her 19 times in sacrifice to the fictional character Slender Man. The girls’ shared madness nearly cost Payton her life, but the girl managed to stumble, walk, and crawl to the side of a road fo...
Send us a Text Message.The Florida Department of Health has issued an emergency order immediately restricting the medical license of Dr. Ben Brown, the Gulf Breeze plastic surgeon whose wife, Hillary Brown, died after he performed several procedures on her after hours in his office last November.State Surgeon General Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo said Brown’s “inability or unwillingness” to follow basic medical procedure presents an “immediate serious danger to the health, welfare, and safety of the p...
Send us a Text Message.Alex King, one of two brothers who made headlines worldwide in 2001 when they confessed to beating their unsuspecting father to death with a baseball bat in Pensacola, Florida, when they were just 12 and 13 years old, has died. Now 35, Alex died of a drug overdose according to family. It's a demon he has been battling for years and his family says he lost the fight against addiction in Missoula, Montana where he was living when he overdosed. His family is now ...
Send us a Text Message.Eric Smith was only 13 years old when he murdered a child. Smith, a red-headed, freckle-faced boy with thick glasses, was something of a loner and said he was often targeted by bullies. When he saw four-year-old Derrick Robie walking alone to a summer day camp at the park, in 1993, he became the bully.Smith lured the happy, blonde headed boy neighbors nicknamed “the mayor” into the woods where he strangled him and dropped a large rock on his head, among other atrocities...
Send us a Text Message.Frances Hall’s husband and business partner of more than 30 years was cheating, and he didn’t bother to hide it. Adding insult to injury, the trucking tycoon’s girlfriend flaunted their affair in France’s face.The scorned wife couldn’t put the brakes on her fury when she saw her husband’s mistress driving the Hall’s Range Rover and chased her down the highway, repeatedly ramming the car. Unfortunately for unfaithful husband Bill Hall, Jr., he was caught in the mid...
Send us a Text Message.A popular Florida teacher happily opened the door of her home to her son when he came to visit, but her gladness turned to fear and horror when the young man pulled a knife and started stabbing his mother until she lay dead on the floor. Sound familiar? This is not the case of popular middle school teacher Sharon Aydelott who was stabbed to death by her son, Brandon Aydelott, in the doorway of her Gulf Breeze home on Christmas Eve 2013, but the murder of 46-ye...
Send us a Text Message.Cheesecake, poison, and a Russian dominatrix – what a recipe! A Russian born woman is now serving time in prison for trying to steal the identify of her look-a-like aesthetician by killing her with a piece of poisoned cheesecake. It turns out it was just the latest act in an international crime spree.Join us for this episode of Gulf Coast Confidential: “Murder, it’s as easy as pie…um, or cheesecake - Russian dominatrix poisons look-a-like." Support the Show.
Send us a Text Message.Jealousy can kill a friendship in a heartbeat. Just ask Annette Harvey. Harvey’s best friend since childhood, Robin Leonard, took in the struggling mother’s children after Harvey had a mental breakdown in 2021. Leonard, a college professor and mother herself, was glad to help her friend while she recovered and got back on her feet. However, Harvey grew to resent Leonard’s generous gesture and the stable life she gave her kids. In a brutal and calculated attack...
Send us a Text Message.Dr. Charles Stamitoles is only a few months into his two-year prison sentence for lying to an Escambia County judge. The Pensacola dentist accused of inappropriately touching patients and employees wouldn’t be spending as much time behind bars if he hadn’t. Stamitoles was convicted of multiple battery charges including cornering a young woman who worked for him and slapping her backside, kissing her neck, and grabbing her from her behind, leaving her scared and sha...
Send us a Text Message.Mothers are naturally expected to love and protect their children, not torture and torment them. Ruby Franke claimed to be a loving mother. In fact, the young, passionate mom amassed a billion views and millions of dollars from her YouTube-famous show, “8 Passengers,” which followed the daily lives of Franke, her husband, and their six children in Utah. The wholesome show took an unholy turn behind the scenes, though, when it was discovered Ruby Franke and her...
Send us a Text Message.Confessed mommy killer Brandon Aydelott has a status hearing coming up, Tuesday, March 26, to determine where he should go now that the Department of Children and Families says he no longer meets the criteria for placement at Florida State Hospital, for the criminally insane. Aydelott’s aunt and the victim’s sister, Pam Hill, sat down with me on the Gulf Coast Confidential podcast to talk about the possibility of her nephew’s eventual release back into the communit...
Send us a Text Message.Death is the last thing on the minds of most college students when they go off to school. It’s supposed to be a time of new beginnings, not tragic endings. For three young women and their families, dreams and lives were cut short all because they unknowingly crossed paths with a predator.Just last month, 22-year-old Laken Riley was killed while jogging on campus at the University of Georgia in February. It’s similar to what happened to 20-year-old University of Iow...
Send us a Text Message.Kouri Richins was well-known in her hometown as a busy mom, wife, and realtor. In all her family and work photos the pretty brunette flashed the same sparkling, white-toothed smile, giving the appearance of a picture-perfect life. However, behind her killer grin was someone police say friends and neighbors didn’t know – a cold, calculating woman driven by greed who would stop at nothing to get what she wanted, even murder her husband. Investigators say the mot...
Send us a Text Message.Hillary Brown’s cause of death is still pending, but answers are slowly coming out. Besides Major Crimes with the Santa Rosa Sheriff’s Office, the Florida Department of Health is also investigating Dr. Ben Brown, who was performing procedures on his young wife at his Gulf Breeze office when she went into cardiac arrest. Although the details of the state’s investigation aren’t being released, it comes as more patients are sharing their experiences with Ben Bro...
Send us a Text Message.Armed with a steel mallet, a BB gun, a knife and pepper spray, astronaut, and married mother of three, Lisa Nowak, set out on a mission in 2007, to get rid of the new girlfriend her astronaut boyfriend was seeing.To save time on her cross-country mission, police said Nowak wore a diaper so she wouldn’t have to stop on her way from Houston, Texas to Orlando, Florida to confront the younger woman at the airport. Only this mission didn’t turn out as planned and it cos...
Send us a Text Message.School shooter mom, Jennifer Crumbley, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for missing or ignoring red flags prior to her son, Ethan, opening fire at his high school and killing four teenagers. Crumbley faces at least 15 years in prison when she’s scheduled to be sentenced April 9, in a landmark case about parental responsibility. It’s part of a push by some prosecutors to hold parents accountable if they’re suspected of enabling their children to commit...
Send us a Text Message.Murder by yoga instructor took the life of a young, professional cyclist. All Moriah “Mo” Wilson did to make herself a target was date Kaitlyn Armstrong’s boyfriend when the two had taken a break.Kaitlyn stalked the pro cyclist to a friend’s house, gunned Mo down, and then ran from police when evidence of the crime led them to her door. The yoga instructor went on the lam, even going as far as having plastic surgery to change her appearance, but investigators saw throug...
Send us a Text Message.Can cannabis make someone a killer? During this month of love on the Gulf Coast Confidential podcast, we’re catching up on cases of romance-gone-wrong. In this episode, a young woman took two hits of marijuana from her boyfriend’s bong and then took him out. The attack was so vicious, there was a hole in his chest where his heart used to be. The victim’s family called it murder. She called it cannabis induced psychosis. When a jury agreed, the young man’s fami...
Send us a Text Message.Death was Dr. Bill Sybers' business. The Panama City medical examiner was the one who investigated when someone died, especially when it was unexplained. When his own wife, Kay, passed suddenly in 1991, Sybers insisted she died of natural causes. He didn’t even order an autopsy and went straight to embalming her body. Why wouldn’t people take the expert word of the top doc of death in the Florida Gulf Coast city? Many people did until police found several...