The world of online dating can be a precarious one, filled with peril. When Sydney Loofe met a young girl by the name of Audrey, she thought she had made a friend and potential girlfriend. Instead, she got sucked into the deceptive and bizarre world of Bailey Boswell and Abrey Trail.
Dating apps like Tinder have completely transformed the dating scene, particularly among millenials. They allow users to swipe ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on hundreds, maybe even thousands, of profiles in their area. Some people go on these apps looking for friendships, others for romantic connections.
But not everyone on these apps is in the market for friendship or romance...
Anchorage, Alaska can be a cold and dark city. In the summer of 2016, it was clear this coming winter would be one of the coldest and darkest winters yet. By June there were 11 murders, putting them on track for one of the deadliest years in decades. In the month of July, 9 more people died and by August the community was worried that a serial killer had made the scenic bike paths and parks their personal hunting ground at night. Dead bodies were piling up but local James Dale Ritchie wasn’t afraid. He was used to the cold and no stranger to the darkness either but even he would find this winter to be particularly dreary.
Right in the middle of Wisconsin, that’s where you’ll find the small rural town of West-Salem. It’s an idyllic little village that exudes the small-town stereotypes one would expect, its home to kind and hospitable folks who all know one another. And it’s where Barbara and Todd Kendhammer called home. On the morning of Friday, September 16th 2016, what seemed like a sudden freak accident would change their lives forever.
From a young age we are instinctually scared of the evil that lurks in darkness. The name we've culturally given this idea is "The Boogeyman". On July 10, 2012 Aaron Schaffhausen became the Boogeyman to his own children.
On the evening of March 3rd, 2015, two individuals in their car were stopped by a young man stumbling into the roadway of Magazine Street in Boston. The young man, identified as 17-year-old Luis Rodriguez, was bleeding profusely from a gunshot wound to his head.
When investigators asked Luis who shot him, the only words he could get out were “Rev”. Who was “Rev” and what connection did he have to Luis? What were the events that led to the senseless attack on this teenager? The only Reverend that had any connection to Luis was the well-known Reverend Shaun Harrison, Dean of Academics at Boston’s English High School. Further investigation would show Shaun had another side of his life that only few were aware of…
Throughout the day of October 17th, none of 27-year-old Sasha Samsudean's friends couldn't reach her. Obviously concerned, they phoned 911. When police arrived at Sasha’s apartment, there was no answer to their knocks. Eventually they were able to get inside and found the young woman’s lifeless body, battered and wrapped in a comforter. Bleach had been poured on certain areas of her body and it had been determined through an autopsy that Sasha had been strangled to death.
Brenton Walker would always try to pick up on women in the small towns surrounding his 80-acre parcel in rural Michigan but on July 30th, 2016, he was actually successful. He met Heather Young and she came home with him after the last call. They had such an exciting night that changed both of their lives forever.
In this special early-release two-part PLUS Episode, we go back to further examine the strange case of the death of Natalie Bollinger (first covered in S&S Episodes 109 & 110). The bizarre events surrounding this case are just as curious and interesting as the social media madness that followed, with amateur WebSleuths taking to the internet in droves to try and solve a case with little to no information. At the center of it all was a disheveled homeless man by the name of Shawn Shwartz, who Natalie Bollinger had sought a protection order against and who posted dozens of angry rambling videos talking about his uncontrollable panic attacks. After a year of silence, Shawn has reemerged, multiple videos a day attacking the victim, the victim's friends and family, anyone who has ever assisted him, along with the host of this show.