When the night guards passed Frank Morris’s cell, in San Francisco’s “inescapable” island super-prison, Alcatraz, he seemed to be sleeping soundly. But what they saw was a dummy head made of plaster, soap and real human hair. And Morris was already making his way to the shore – and his homemade raft, stitched together using 50 prison raincoats.

This week we look at the history of the US’s big bad citadel in the war on crime; its most infamous inmates; and find out if anyone ever really escaped The Rock.

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The idea of human beings floating in space used to feel as likely as time travel. But after WWII, the world’s two strongest superpowers had to find a way of outdoing each other that didn’t involve the total eradication of the human race. So they decided to race to the stars instead.

Here’s how that ideological moonshot became a reality.

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When elderly women started being murdered around Mexico City in the early 2000s, it sparked the nation’s first ever serial killer manhunt…

But the fearsome monster targeting the city’s beloved grandmas? She was actually (gasp!) a woman.

The search for the so-called “Mataviejitas” – The Little Old Lady Killer – was hampered by media hysteria, clueless (and maybe corrupt) coppers, and one gigantic misunderstanding.

Because Juana Barraza – a middle-aged woman with a sinister lucha libre alter-ego called “The Lady of Silence” – was the very last culprit the authorities were expecting to unmask…

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Louisiana has more than its fair share of real monsters hiding in its deep, dark bayous. So, settlers’ nightmares about what else was hiding there – spiced up with African folk beliefs, plus Cajun and Creole folklore and a dash of Haitian voudou – quickly became a rogues’ gallery of gruesome monsters that couldn’t exist anywhere else.

From a grim scaly monster, born in a voodoo ritual from the devil’s testicles, to a big hairy hominid known as ‘Swamp Thang’, these are the very worst of Louisiana’s cryptids.

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As part of our virtual road trip around North America inspired by the 2026 World Cup, we're revisiting some of our most classic cases. This week we stop off in North Carolina, to revisit the infamous staircase of Michael & Kathleen Peterson...

From the outside the Petersons had it all; the perfect family, a beautiful mansion and more money than they could spend. But on 9th December 2001 all that changed, when Michael Peterson claimed to have found his wife, Kathleen, dead at the bottom of their stairs.

What followed would become a bizarre tale of strange family secrets, shocking revelations and a true crime case obsessed over like nothing before, or since.

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If someone told you they could read your mind, levitate, walk through walls, or make your heart explode in your chest, you’d probably say they were crazy.

But for over 30 years, the US government spent tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer money attempting to create psychic super soldiers of the future, with all those skills and more. This is the ShortHand on Jim Channon, and the First Earth Battalion.

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After the search of Vancouver’s missing women finally brought them to the gates of Robert ‘Willie’ Pickton’s grisly pig farm, Canadian police faced the gigantic task of bringing the country’s most prolific serial killer to justice.

But with much of the evidence literally eaten by the pigs, how much would be left to piece together this puzzle?

And even long after the cell doors clanged shut on old Willie Pickton, the case raised serious questions about the plight of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women in Canada – many of which remain unanswered to this day.

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