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

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murderunscriptedpod@gmail.com | @murderunscripted

35 years cold. 6 cells worth of DNA. One pink-haired genealogist. ⬇️

Roxanne Wood was murdered in her home in Niles, Michigan in February 1987. Her husband Terry was never charged, but he was never cleared either. For 35 years, a small town called him "Slash" to his face. The real killer was a stranger who lived a few miles away and had never been in the case file.

The case was cracked by genetic genealogy using a DNA sample so degraded that experts called it unsolvable, and a genealogist named Gabriella Vargas who disagreed. She built a family tree back to the 1820s and came up with a name in four days. An undercover trooper bummed a cigarette off the suspect outside a laundromat to get the confirmation sample. The match was one in billions.

Ed covers the full story... Roxanne's victimology, the cold case, the genealogy work, the exoneration, and an ending that will stay with you. The perfect first episode to kick off August's Killer Connections block.

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#MurderUnscripted #RoxanneWood #GeneticGenealogy

She brought dogs into the courtroom! Listen to find out how.

Most true crime content is about catching the bad guy. This episode covers what happens afterwards - specifically, the moment a child has to walk into a room full of strangers and say out loud what happened to them.

Courthouse facility dogs sit with victims and witnesses (many of them children) during forensic interviews, depositions, and testimony. They reduce cortisol. They increase accuracy. They make the impossible feel possible. And in most courtrooms, the jury never even knows they're there.

To close out the Dog Days of Summer block, Ed and Melissa sit down with Dr. Celeste Walsen - co-founder and Executive Director of the Courthouse Dogs Foundation, the organization that coined the term, built the field, and has been MU's charity partner from the beginning.

Watch til the end to see Celeste take part in a round of "Paw & Order." It gets good!

Learn more and donate: https://www.courthousedogs.org

LISTEN ON AUDIO:

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/murder-unscripted/id1750146409

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Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/MurderUnscriptedPod/membership 20% of every membership goes directly to Courthouse Dogs Foundation 🐾

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If this one moved you, please consider leaving us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

#MurderUnscripted #CourthouseDogs #TrueCrime

Frances Fritts was murdered in a house fire in Brenham, Texas in 1994. Her husband Charles walked out without a scratch. He had $800,000 in insurance lined up, a girlfriend abroad, and a Mercedes ad running in the local paper.

Investigators had plenty of motive. What they needed was proof the fire was set deliberately. That proof came from two dogs named Samantha and Jager - hydrocarbon-sniffing K-9s who alerted to accelerant in the ruins of the Fritts home and helped put Charles away for life. And when the defense challenged their evidence in court, the Texas Court of Appeals made history. Fitts versus State, decided in 1998, became the case that put arson dogs in Texas courtrooms permanently.

Melissa covers Frances's case and the remarkable legal legacy it left behind - including a note from the heart about a victim she couldn't find enough about, and the reason she still needed to say her name.

LISTEN ON AUDIO:

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/murder-unscripted/id1750146409

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If you knew Frances Fritts, please reach out to murderunscriptedpod@gmail.com. We would love to tell her story properly.

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#MurderUnscripted #FrancesFritts #TrueCrime

He named his murder plan "Operation Slop Shop" and his neighbor was first on the list.

Carlos Maldonado was a 55-year-old dad rebuilding his life - starting a window tinting business and rekindling a relationship with his daughter Talisa. On April 14th, 2024, he vanished without a trace. His body wasn't found until October 30th - wrapped in tarp and garbage bags, tied with rope, hidden on a wooded hill less than 200 feet from his own front door.

A trail camera in a tenant's garden captured Maldonado's 63-year-old neighbor, Kevin Lychwick, making trips to the hillside at 12:41am. His explanation: he feeds the rabbits at night. But his apartment told a different story. In the living room, police find a stack of handwritten documents. One was labeled 'Operation Slop Shop.' It named his neighbor Carlos Maldonado as a threat. It was stamped November 2023...six months before Maldonado's murder.

Lychwick represented himself during a shocking and entertaining trial, and was eventually found guilty of first-degree intentional homicide.

Sentencing is scheduled for August 20, 2026. Subscribe so you don't miss the update.

LISTEN ON AUDIO:

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/murder-unscripted/id1750146409

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#MurderUnscripted #OperationSlopShop #TrueCrime

Two fires. One night. Four bodies. His own brother was behind everything.

In the early hours of November 20th, 2018, a 911 call came in reporting a house fire in Ocean Township, New Jersey. Within hours, a second 911 call came in from a neighborhood fifteen miles away in Colts Neck. A man had gone outside to check on his generator after a mysterious power failure. He never came back in. His wife and two children were still inside when the house was set on fire.

The victims were Keith Caniero, 50. His wife Jennifer, 45. Their son Jesse, 11. And their daughter Sophia, 8.

The man who set the first fire at his own home, as a decoy) was Paul Caniero...Keith's older brother. The man who had been secretly embezzling from Keith's life insurance trust for years, spending the money on a lavish lifestyle and a mistress, and who faced financial ruin the moment Keith discovered the truth.

If not for a New Jersey State Police K-9 named Creed, he might've gotten away with it.

LISTEN ON AUDIO:

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/murder-unscripted/id1750146409

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#MurderUnscripted #CanieroFamily #TrueCrime

Kaylee's parents sit down to address the recently released autopsy details, the relentless online conspiracies, and share never-before-heard stories about their daughter Kaylee.

The media dubbed them "The Idaho Four." But behind that moniker were four individuals with four families and four futures. One of them was Kaylee Goncalves...a bright, bubbly 21-year-old who had the world by a string. And while everyone knows the story of what happened to her few know the REAL Kaylee. Like how fiercely independent she was from the time she was small...the kind of kid who didn't ask for help and didn't need to be told twice. Like the prankster who liked throwing cell phones in the toilet and once told her dad she saw a cougar, only to show him a photo of an African leopard. That was Kaylee.

In this powerful conversation, Steve and Kristi Goncalves also address the relentless media scrutiny, the release of case details not meant for the public, and the hateful online conspiracies that keep them up at night. They also speak to the work of the Murder Has a Name Foundation, which they founded in Kaylee's memory to advocate for victims' families navigating the criminal justice system.

This is an interview that personifies Murder Unscripted, and it's one of the most important conversations we've ever had.

To learn more about the Kaylee Goncalves Foundation: "Murder Has a Name" visit: www.murderhasaname.com

LISTEN ON AUDIO:

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SUPPORT THE SHOW:

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Socials: @murderunscripted

If this one moved you, please consider leaving us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

#MurderUnscripted #KayleeGoncalves #SteveGoncalves

They were the 3 musketeers. One of them was a killer.

In February 1980, 18-year-old University of South Alabama freshman Katherine Foster was supposed to meet her two best friends for a trip to the mall. She never showed up. Days later, a search party found her body in the woods just a few hundred yards from campus -- laying flat on her back, fully clothed, makeup intact, looking for all the world like she had simply laid down to take a nap. She had been shot twice in the head. Investigators were baffled. There was no struggle, no drag marks, no sign of sexual assault. Whoever did this, Katherine had trusted enough to walk into the woods with.

Police chased every lead they had, but Katherine's case went cold for more than 22 years. Until a single phone call from an AA sponsor changed everything.

Ed and Melissa cover the full case: the friend group at the center of it, the disturbing items found in a dead security guard's garage, the forensic science breakthrough at the University of Tennessee's Body Farm that rewrote the entire timeline, and the obsession that drove Jamie Kellam Letson to kill the friend who stood between her and a boyfriend who barely knew she existed.

Content warning: murder, stalking, obsessive behavior.

LISTEN ON AUDIO: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/murder-unscripted/id1750146409

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Socials: @murderunscripted

If this one got you, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

#MurderUnscripted #KatherineFoster #TrueCrime