More people know about the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten today than knew about him just 100 years after his death. But Akhentaten was no average ruler.

He fundamentally changed religious worship forever, and may even have started Judaism itself. So why did he disappear from history? Was he simply forgotten to the sands of time – or did he fly too close to the ‘Aten’?

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This week, RedHanded is joined by Cassie and Danielle from National Park After Dark for an exploration of the myths, outlaws and bloody history of Louisiana.

First up: legendary “land pirate” John Murrell, the mysterious Leather Britches Smith, and the stories lurking along Louisiana’s Myths and Legends Byway.

Then: between 1910 and 1912, several entire families were slaughtered with axes across Louisiana and Texas. Police blamed Clementine Barnabet, a Black teenager who they claimed was the high priestess of a murderous voodoo cult. If guilty, she would easily rank as the worst female serial killer in history.

But looking back on the changing confessions, questionable police work, and some impossible crimes – and almost nothing is as it seems...
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At first, OnlyFans seemed like a shiny new frontier for safer sex work – a platform that promised unprecedented financial autonomy for its creators. But wherever there’s sex work, there will inevitably be men who try to profit off it…

And through the manosphere’s lingo of online hustle culture and misogyny, a new breed of so-called “OnlyFans managers” emerged to claim their piece of the digital-sex-work pie, using the oldest tricks in the exploitation handbook: coercive control, financial bondage and physical violence. Welcome to the dark world of E-Pimping.

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In 2007, child protection officers in Pinella County, Florida, spoke with a 14-year-old girl who’d been sexually assaulted by a musician she’d met on MySpace. But thanks to their failed investigation, more than 20 preteen fans would suffer the same fate.

Dahvie Vanity, frontman of scene kid band Blood On The Dance Floor, spent over a decade using social media to prey on his band’s enormous preteen fan base – seemingly, with absolute impunity.

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In 2018, married couple Jen and Sarah Hart accelerated their SUV over the edge of a 100ft cliff in Mendocino County, California… with their six Black adopted children in the back.

The world was left in total shock. Jen and Sarah had seemed like model parents: social justice-loving lesbians who’d bravely taken in six Black children from disadvantaged backgrounds, and – according to Jen’s gushing Facebook posts – giving those kids the dream life they’d never had.

But behind the glossy image the Harts presented, a far more sinister reality lurked…

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Remember the time London was overcome by a stench so foul that it shut down Parliament, and convinced terrified city-dwellers that the end was surely near?

No? Well let us remind you of the grim summer of 1858: otherwise known as The Great Stink.

The crisis brought about a long overdue transformation of the city’s sanitation system that formed the basis for the sewers we still use today – so thanks, Victorian engineers!

This is the stinky ShortHand.

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Today, catch the first episode of The Poet, a new six-part true crime series from The Binge.

Hosted by journalist Rachel Browne, The Poet is an investigation that drops you into Wichita, Kansas in 1977, where a woman named Ruth Finley is receiving threatening, obsessive poems from an unknown stalker – at the exact same time police are trying to track down the notorious serial killer known as BTK.

Is Ruth’s stalker the same person? You’ll have to listen to find out.

To keep listening, here’s Episode 2: Where’s Ruth?

For The Binge’s free true crime newsletter on Patreon, head to GetTheBinge.com.

Watching slaves being ritually hacked to pieces may not seem like many people’s idea of a great day out. But 2,000 years ago, Romans turned up in their thousands to watch exactly that. So, with Gladiator back on our screens, we set out to find the truth behind the spectacle – and it’s even bloodier than the movies could ever allow.

So what exactly happened in the gladiatorial games? Were there really lions, elephants, bears – and even full-scale naval battles in water-filled arenas? And did Maximus Decimus Meridius really have his vengeance? Find out in this week’s ShortHand.

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