Murder Unscripted

A cigarette, three matches, and a rubber band. For most of the 1980s, that was all it took for a serial arsonist to burn his way across California and vanish before the smoke was even spotted. Most of the fires destroyed property. One destroyed a family. A fire at a crowded hardware store in South Pasadena killed four people, including a child, and was quietly ruled an accident, letting the man responsible keep going for years. Melissa opens a two-part story on the hunt for one of the most prolific arsonists in American history. And the truth about who he was is something almost nobody saw coming. Ep. 120 | Burning Desires | Murder Unscripted | September 2026 | Part 1 of 2 Hosted by Ed Hydock & Melissa Spivey | A Darkcast Network Production Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/murder-unscripted/id1750146409 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2AUGh12ei1wk8x7CvcX9qH Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/MurderUnscriptedPod/membership [email protected] | @murderunscripted Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shoreline, Washington, 1995. Firefighters knock down a small apartment fire and find a woman's body inside. One month later, 50 feet away, it happens again. Two ordinary, kind women were murdered in nearly identical attacks by a man who brought nothing with him. He used the victims' own belongings, disabled their smoke detectors, and set the fires to erase himself completely. For two years, it worked. Ed opens September’s “Burning Desires” (a month of arson cases) with the story of how one piece of evidence that survived the flames finally brought Renee Powell and Barbara Walsh's killer to justice. Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/murder-unscripted/id1750146409 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2AUGh12ei1wk8x7CvcX9qH Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/MurderUnscriptedPod/membership [email protected] | @murderunscripted Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Her degree says nuclear physics but her work changed the way cold cases are solved. ⬇️ To close out our Killer Connections block, Ed and Melissa sit down with the woman whose name has come up all month long: Dr. Colleen Fitzpatrick. Before forensic genetic genealogy was a headline, before it was even a field, Colleen saw a different way to use DNA. She founded Identifinders International, helped turn distant relatives into the key that unlocks decades-old cold cases, and became a legend in true crime genre along the way. In this insightful conversation, Colleen discusses the road from physics to the front lines of cold case work, the cases that never left her, and where this science goes next. Ep. 118 | Killer Connections Finale | Murder Unscripted | August 2026 Hosted by Ed Hydock & Melissa Spivey | A Darkcast Network Production Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/murder-unscripted/id1750146409 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2AUGh12ei1wk8x7CvcX9qH Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/MurderUnscriptedPod/membership [email protected] | @murderunscripted Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Billings, Montana, November 1973. Cliff and Linda Bernhardt set their dinner table for three and welcomed a guest they trusted. By the next morning, the young couple were dead, and the killer had staged the scene in a way so strange it would puzzle investigators for the next 45 years. Cliff had survived the jungles of Vietnam. He didn't survive dinner at his own table. Melissa covers Week 3 of Killer Connections: a bizarre 1973 cold case, decades of dead ends, and the genetic genealogy breakthrough that finally gave the Bernhardt family a name. Ep. 117 | Killer Connections | Murder Unscripted | August 2026 Hosted by Ed Hydock & Melissa Spivey | A Darkcast Network Production Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/murder-unscripted/id1750146409 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2AUGh12ei1wk8x7CvcX9qH Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/MurderUnscriptedPod/membership [email protected] | @murderunscripted Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On the morning of May 2, 2001, Leslie Preer -- a warm, generous 48-year-old woman who her family said saw the world through rose-colored glasses -- didn't show up to work in Washington DC. Her boss drove to the family home in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Her husband Sandy met him there. When police arrived, they found Leslie on the bathroom floor, under the running shower, having suffered a brutal attack. From the beginning, investigators focused on Sandy. He failed a polygraph. His behavior seemed odd. The couple had debt, arguments, a history of tension. But the male DNA found at the scene and under Leslie's fingernails was never his. Sandy was never charged. He was also never cleared. In 2017, sixteen years after Leslie's murder, Sandy Preer died -- still, in the eyes of many in his community and even Leslie's own family, a suspect. In 2022, two female cold case detectives picked up the file with fresh eyes, refused to accept Sandy's guilt, and campaigned to get the case approved for forensic genetic genealogy through Othram, a Texas lab specializing in advanced DNA sequencing. The results pointed to a surname: Gligor. A Romanian family with deep roots in Chevy Chase -- and a connection to Lauren, Leslie's daughter, that nobody had looked at closely enough. Getting the suspect's DNA without alerting him required ingenuity. When he landed at Dulles Airport in June 2024, detectives had bottles of water waiting. He drank. He left. They collected the bottle. The DNA matched the evidence from Leslie's home, definitively and completely. Melissa covers the full story: Leslie's life and family, the decades of wrongful suspicion, the two detectives who cracked it open, and the interrogation scene that has to be heard to be believed. Sandy didn't live to see his name cleared. Lauren did. And she had 23 years worth of things to say at sentencing. Hosted by Ed Hydock & Melissa Spivey | A Darkcast Network Production Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/murder-unscripted/id1750146409 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2AUGh12ei1wk8x7CvcX9qH Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/MurderUnscriptedPod/membership [email protected] | @murderunscripted Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices